What does the report say?
According to Reuters, in a report carried by CNA on 28 October 2026, US middle and high school teachers are rethinking how they assess learning now that generative AI is everywhere. The reporting draws on interviews with a dozen teachers and education experts. The common thread: less take-home work, more writing and discussion in class, and assignments built to measure how a student thinks rather than only the final answer.
- Oral exams. In San Francisco, sixth-grade humanities teacher Tristen Chang dropped take-home essays last year. She now asks 15 questions on character, plot, theme and metaphor, which a student can answer in as little as five minutes.
- More time in class. Rusty Shabe, a middle school English teacher, spends a month working on a single essay with seventh-graders. In New York, high school maths teacher Bobson Wong gives fewer homework questions and more in-class practice, and asks students which method they prefer and why.
- Grades that follow the classroom. Meghan Hyland, an English teacher near New York City, noticed some students heading to the bathroom to use AI on their phones. She now asks them to leave their phones behind, counts classwork for more of the grade and no longer relies on homework as practice.
- Prompts AI handles badly. Pian Rockfeld, a teacher in the Bronx, writes questions that ask for interpretations away from the mainstream, and sets readings that sit behind a paywall.
- Back to paper. Rex Ovalle, near Chicago, limits Chromebooks to roughly 10 per cent of school days and has students write in notebooks.
Is everyone against AI?
No. The report says school systems remain divided, which leaves many teachers to work it out on their own. Michael Zagari, a social studies teacher, uses AI to adapt the vocabulary of historical documents to different reading levels. His view: "AI is not going away." Reuters also cites mixed evidence: a 2025 Harvard randomised trial found a custom AI tutor improved learning gains, while a small 2025 MIT Media Lab study found people who used ChatGPT to write essays worked faster but seemed to think less. A 2025 RAND survey found that most US students and English, maths and science teachers use AI for schoolwork.
What can a school head take from this?
Many schools already rely on written, supervised exams, so the lesson is less about going back to paper and more about what the mark actually measures:
- Decide what homework is for. Practice at home is fine; if it counts heavily towards the grade, you cannot tell who did the thinking. Let the mark rest mostly on work seen in class.
- Add short oral checks. Three or four questions of two minutes each, on a sample of pupils each week, show quickly who understood. It does not need to be a full oral exam for everyone.
- Ask for the reasoning, not only the result. "Why did you choose this method?" is hard to answer from a copied solution and easy to answer from your own work.
- Agree a written position on AI, subject by subject. Where it is allowed, where it is not, and what pupils must declare. The report shows what happens when teachers are left to decide alone: every classroom has different rules.
- Tell parents what you decided. One short note explaining why more marks now come from the classroom prevents misunderstandings when homework grades change.