Half of Parents Say AI Makes It Easier for Kids to Hide Gaps in Understanding

Survey of 1,177 U.S. parents of K–10 students also finds 48.4% turn first to the teacher when worried about schoolwork, and 2.0% to an AI assistant

LAS VEGAS, NV, UNITED STATES, September 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — As AI chatbots become part of homework, many parents worry the tools are making it harder to tell what their child actually understands. In a national survey of 1,177 U.S. parents of students in kindergarten through 10th grade, 50.9% agreed that AI tools make it easier for their child to hide that they don’t understand something. Online learning platform Brighterly published the full results.

Agreement was higher among parents who use AI chatbots themselves. Among parents who turn to AI chatbots for schoolwork advice at least weekly, 68.7% agreed, compared with 38.6% of parents who never do.

Parents still rely on people first. When worried about their child’s schoolwork, 48.4% turn first to their child’s teacher. Only 2.0% turn first to ChatGPT or another AI assistant.

The findings follow PISA 2025, released by the OECD on Sept. 8. Across participating countries, students who did not use AI chatbots for schoolwork generally scored higher in science than students who did. In the U.S., 15-year-olds’ average reading score fell 14 points from 2022, to 490, among the lowest results recorded for the country.

“When a child outsources thinking to a chatbot before the thinking is fully built, we’re depriving them of the cognitive work that produces durable understanding,” said Claire Smizer-Muldoon, a former classroom teacher who helped develop Brighterly’s ELA curriculum. “The right question isn’t ‘did the student use AI?’ It’s ‘did AI support the student’s thinking or replace it?'”

Smizer-Muldoon recommends that parents explore AI together with their children. “Get curious. Use a chatbot with your kid. Ask it something. See what it gets wrong, and talk about why,” she said.

Grades may not show the gap.

The survey also points to a gap between report cards and what parents see at home. Among parents whose child earns mostly A’s or A’s and B’s, 58.6% said the child struggled or fell behind in math or reading in the past 12 months, close to the 60.7% of all parents surveyed. Among parents of mostly-A students, 46.5% said the same.

Persistence also drops when the task is math. 29.5% of parents said their child keeps trying until they get it in a game or app they enjoy. Only 17.8% said the same about math homework.

“An A tells you your child is keeping pace with their class. It doesn’t tell you whether the class is keeping pace, and if a chatbot helped with the homework, it doesn’t reliably tell you even that,” said Eugene Kashuk, founder and CEO of Brighterly. “Schools are policing whether a machine wrote the answer. Parents are worried about something else: whether their child learned anything either way.”

The survey measures parents’ perceptions. It did not test students and does not show that AI use caused the declines PISA reported.

Full findings, charts and methodology: https://brighterly.com/blog/child-struggling-in-school/

For parents comparing state rules, Brighterly also publishes a guide to AI in schools policy: https://brighterly.com/blog/ai-in-schools-policy-guide/

Methodology: 1,177 U.S. parents were surveyed Aug. 5–15, 2026. Parents answered about one focal child.

About Brighterly: Brighterly is an online learning platform that helps K–12 students build strong foundations in math and reading.

Hanna Mishchenko
Brighterly
hanna.mishchenko@brighterly.com
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