🛝 The Gaps Keep Getting Wider At Every Level

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

This week's reality check: 57% of special education teachers now use AI to draft legally binding student plans, up from 39% in a single year, because there aren't enough humans to do the work. And California's math achievement gap between rich and poor students widened 40% in 15 years while the state couldn't keep the $220 million it promised for math coaches.

Data Gem

AI adoption among Gen Z is nearly universal: only 6% of students don't use AI at all, down from 36% in 2024. But 69% say AI will have a negative impact on society, up from 59% two years earlier.

57% of Special Ed Teachers Use AI to Draft IEPs

Mary Acebu used to arrive at Riverview Middle School in Bay Point, California at 6:30 in the morning and leave after dark. Often with paperwork in tow.

She doesn't do that anymore.

For two years, Acebu has been using AI to speed through the documentation that defines special education: individualized education programs. 

She points to a blue binder on her shelf, at least five inches thick, containing California's education standards. "It used to be flipping through all those pages" to match standards to student goals, she says. 

What took 45 minutes per student now takes a fraction of that.

A Center for Democracy and Technology survey found 57% of special education teachers used AI to help develop individualized plans in 2024-25. 

The year before, it was 39%.

In a single year, AI became the fastest-growing tool in special education.

The reason is simple: there aren't enough teachers. 45 states reported special education teacher shortages in 2024-25. More than 8 million students have IEPs. And the paperwork is relentless.

Research from the University of Virginia and University of Central Florida found that when used appropriately, AI can help teachers craft IEPs of equal or higher quality than when produced alone.

But there's a line.

CDT found that 15% of teachers are relying entirely on AI to develop IEPs with no human review. 

Ariana Aboulafia of CDT calls AI a "Band-Aid" and warns that models built on pattern recognition are "to a certain extent, inherently incompatible with a process that legally requires individualization."

Acebu agrees the human step is non-negotiable. "You're double-checking everything. You have to put that human touch. That's the final step."

The payoff is in what the saved time makes possible. King, one of Acebu's eighth graders, was a non-reader at the start of seventh grade. He's reading now. He goes to math class without additional support.

"That's the dream of every special educator," she says. "But that takes a lot of hard work."

For education innovators, the 39%→57% jump signals a market forming in real time. 

The product is compliant AI copilots designed for legally binding educational documents, with built-in human review workflows, privacy guardrails for student data, and audit trails that satisfy federal requirements. The 15% using AI without review names a specific risk that governance tools can address.

1 in 3 Students Use AI for Emotional Support

The Rithm Project surveyed almost 2,400 young people ages 13 to 24 and interviewed 27 of them in depth.

One in three were using AI for emotional or relational support, or talking to AI characters.

When researchers asked what started it, the answer was never "I wanted to try AI."

Every single time, it was an acute moment of need.

"AI was very effective in providing that space," said Alison Lee, chief research officer at The Rithm Project. "It was nonjudgmental, accessible and, at least in the beginning, pretty effective."

The risk factors weren't about technology, they were about relationships.

The strongest predictors of high-risk AI use were students who felt they were a burden to others, had no one to turn to, or couldn't be their unfiltered selves with the people around them.

One finding hit especially hard: students reported feeling less connected sitting in class with their classmates than sitting alone in their rooms talking to friends online.

"The institutions we've created have deprioritized human connection and relationships in favor of other pressures," Lee said. "It's coming at a real relational cost."

61% of the young people surveyed said they had not had a single conversation with an adult about AI.

College fellows on Lee's team told her they don't go to office hours anymore. They ask AI instead. The relationships that used to provide mentorship, career guidance, and social capital are being quietly replaced.

"The best way to have a village is to be a villager," Lee said.

For education innovators, the Rithm data reframes the AI-in-schools conversation entirely. The problem isn't that students are using AI. It's that human support systems are so inaccessible that AI became the default. The opportunity is in AI-to-human escalation tools that detect acute need and connect students to real people. Office-hours access platforms that remove the friction driving students to chatbots.

California's Math Gap Widened 40% in 15 Years

The gap in math achievement between California's highest and lowest-income students grew from 1.9 grade levels in 2009 to 2.7 grade levels in 2024.

That's a 40% increase. The highest-income students are now nearly three grade levels ahead.

Reading gaps, while also wide, narrowed 5% over the same period. Math went the other direction.

The operational failures behind the number are specific and compounding.

Only 16% of California districts ranked math as their top priority. 63% ranked English language arts first.

One in five districts offered no consistent math training in 2024-25. Most existing professional development was voluntary, and teachers lacking confidence in math were the least likely to attend.

The percentage of eighth graders taking Algebra 1 essentially collapsed: from 64% in 2012-13 to 19% in 2018-19. Many middle schools eliminated the course entirely.

The state approved 64 math textbooks and told districts to choose. Compare that to early literacy, where the state will select a short list of evidence-based curricula and require districts to choose from it.

The state's math framework is 900 pages. 

One school leader explained the problem: "Sometimes we design for maybe the top 10% of teachers who really can do this. Meanwhile, there's 90% of teachers who are just like, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'"

Alabama, by contrast, passed a Numeracy Act in 2022: created an Office of Mathematics Improvement, revised teacher preparation, and hired a full-time math coach in every elementary school. Alabama made the largest math gain in the nation on the 2024 NAEP.

For education innovators, California's math crisis is the same pattern we saw in literacy five years ago: fragmented instruction, voluntary training, too many choices, no accountability. The market needs math-screening diagnostics that identify struggling students early, coaching platforms that build teacher confidence in math content, and curated curriculum tools that do for math what the approved-list approach did for reading.

⚡️More Quick Hits

This week in education:

• NYC mandates city-approved elementary math curriculum for the first time — Mayor Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels mandated approved math curricula in four elementary and ten middle school districts, extending the earlier NYC Reads model to math and creating the largest single math procurement event of the year

• 12.6 million children lack access to summer programming, low-income kids three times less likely to participate — An Afterschool Alliance survey of 30,515 parents found 38% cite cost and 18% cite transportation as the primary barriers, with 89% supporting public funding for summer programs

• Detroit's chronic absenteeism rate is 60.9%, bus pilot expanding from 2 to 4 schools — DPSCD's $1.1 billion proposed budget expands a yellow-school-bus intervention targeting the 30 percentage-point gap between the district and the Michigan state average

• Four states now require formal AI policies for schools, 35 have issued guidance — Arkansas, Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee mandate that districts and postsecondary institutions adopt AI policies, while 29 cybersecurity and privacy bills became law in 2024 and 43 states have passed laws targeting deepfakes

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