Alpha School student talks about how AI helps her learn
11-year-old Alpha School student Everest Nevraumont joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss her experience attending the State of the Union address and her experience using AI at Alpha School to accelerate learning.
Leave it to the government’s school monopoly to waste $30 billion of taxpayer money on laptops and tablets that were supposed to revolutionize education but instead produced a generation of children less cognitively equipped than their parents.
American schools spent that staggering amount on educational technology in 2024 alone – roughly ten times what they spent on textbooks. The promise was access to endless knowledge at the fingertips of every student, but the result has been a cognitive nosedive that leaves Gen Z struggling with basic skills like attention, memory, literacy and numeracy.
Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath laid it out clearly in his Senate testimony: Gen Z is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the generation before them. Data from more than 80 to land shows the same pattern: declines in IQ, executive function and creativity, all accelerated around 2010, when digital devices flooded classrooms.
This disaster stems from the same old story: a bloated, inexplicable system that throws money at shiny gadgets to mask its failures. Public schools lack real incentives to innovate wisely or face the consequences of poor results, so administrators chase trends. They will buy devices en masse under the guise of “equality” and “modernization,” but without strategies to ensure those tools improve actual education.
Government schools deliver too much work via screens and that has held Generation Z back. (Cecilie_Arcurs/Getty Images)
Kids spend hours parked in front of a screen scrolling through low-effort apps rather than engaging in deep, hands-on learning. The result is atrophy in critical thinking and problem solving – the very skills education is supposed to build. Horvath pointed to data from the Program for International Student Assessment that revealed a direct connection: more screen time at school correlates with poorer performance.
Technology itself holds enormous promise for education. Personalized learning apps can adapt to a student’s pace, virtual simulations can bring history or science to life, and online resources can connect rural children with world-class experts. If deployed properly, these tools can increase performance and close gaps. The problem arises when schools view technology as a lazy alternative to quality education.
Teachers unions are exacerbating the problem by pushing for more EdTech spending that eases the workload of their members without demanding better outcomes. Think AI assessment papers, automated lesson plans, and screens that essentially babysit students. Unions are demanding less handwriting and more outsourcing of core education functions, while shielding underperforming teachers from liability.
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In July 2025, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) announced a formal partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft and Anthropic joined to create a $23 million initiative for free AI training and curriculum.
Unions are positioning themselves to control how AI develops, potentially programming it with biased narratives that serve their agenda rather than the needs of students. AFT President Randi Weingarten has already stated this. She unveiled a partnership between her union and the World Economic Forum (WEF) to “create a curriculum that will lead to good jobs and solid careers in American manufacturing.”
Handing over the curriculum design to globalist organizations such as the WEF raises alarm signals. They want to impose a one-size-fits-all agenda on American children, bypassing parents and local communities. If unions and international bodies dictate AI and technology integration, expect more indoctrination disguised as innovation – left-wing narratives embedded in algorithms, all funded by taxpayers.
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This over-reliance on technology as a crutch harms children in tangible ways. Teens now spend more than half of their waking hours staring at screens, and the cognitive toll is clear. People learn best by interacting with real people and through immersive study, not by endlessly swiping for summaries. Excessive device use weakens focus and deep processing, leading to the drops we see.
Yet unions protect the status quo and fight measures such as performance-based pay or making it easier to fire ineffective teachers. In this environment, technology becomes a band-aid for systemic rot, shortening actual instructional time and stunting development.
The problem arises when schools view technology as a lazy alternative to quality education.
The solution lies in breaking the government’s school monopoly through school choice. Competition forces providers to innovate responsibly – by using technology as a real tool and not as a shortcut. Charter schools and private options are already showing how this is working out: they are thoughtfully integrating devices, tying accountability to results.
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In high-choice states like Arizona and Florida, performance is rising as schools must earn the trust of families. A thousand flowers can bloom if markets stimulate education and use technology to personalize education without the waste and over-dependency that plague public systems.
Imagine a landscape where parents select schools that combine screens with proven methods like phonics-based reading or project-based math. Teachers, freed from union-imposed bureaucracy, could leverage AI for efficiency while focusing on mentorship. Underperforming institutions would close or reform and be replaced by better alternatives. This model aligns incentives with student success, not special interests.
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The $30 billion debacle proves that the current system cannot adapt. It wastes resources on fads while children suffer. Generation Z’s lower scores require urgency. We cannot afford another generation handicapped by monopoly incompetence.
School choice is critical to saving education from this selfish cycle. Parents know their children best, and they deserve the power to choose environments in which teachers and technology improve cognition. Let’s fund students, not systems, and watch innovation flourish.
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