Happy Tuesday in New York City, where few institutions have been more upended by the AI revolution than education.
Ever since the public release of ChatGPT in 2022, educators across the five boroughs struggled to make sense of a technology that allows students and teachers to outsource their work, leading to a spike in plagiarism and parental concerns over how their children are learning to think. Some schools adopted their own guidelines, but many remain unequipped to handle the tech’s explosive proliferation. The New York City Education Department has largely remained inconsistent, see-sawing from banning ChatGPT on students’ devices in 2023 to encouraging classroom experimentation with AI tools.
Today, the Education Department took its first major step toward standardizing AI use across classrooms by releasing a comprehensive AI policy for the approximately 1,600 public schools in the city.
Students, under the new guidance, will generally be permitted to use AI for help generating ideas, conducting research and exploring creative projects, with the permission of their instructor. However, using it to complete graded assignments or misrepresent authorship remains off limits.
Teachers, meanwhile, are given a broader set of permissions to explore the educational potential of the tool, alongside stricter boundaries on its student-facing applications. According to the new guidelines, teachers can use generative AI to assist in lesson planning, research and creating accessibility materials but not to grade assignments, determine disciplinary action for students or engage in behavioral monitoring and surveillance.
Still, the guidelines leave significant discretion to educators on how to integrate AI as a learning booster, leaving day-to-day implementation largely up to the judgment of individual schools and teachers.
I think these latest DOE rules have the potential to really catalyze student cognition. Nothing stimulates a child’s ingenuity quite like searching for a loophole.
Stories of survival emerge from Sunday’s deadly New York airport collision as officials investigate its cause.
A woman passed away after being rescued from the East River in Sunset Park on Saturday.
Nearly 1,000 non-tenured New York University teaching staff began a strike yesterday morning over stalled contract negotiations.
A new 15,000-square-foot basketball training center opened in Fort Greene. The $3 million project was created by MADE Hoops and HMBL Development.
The Brooklyn Museum’s historic African art collection will get permanent galleries in a major new project to renovate and design the spaces. For the first time, the installation will connect seamlessly with the museum’s Egyptian art galleries, uniting North Africa with the rest of the continent.
Popular music venue Elsewhere launched “Class of 2026,” a donation-powered program offering a full year of free concerts to New York City residents between the ages of 16 and 21.
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Our World In Photos
Photo: Majdi Mohammed/AP
WEST BANK — Missiles landing but not exploding create a different kind of event: Israeli soldiers take their photo beside the wreckage of an Iranian missile that landed in the West Bank village of Kifl Haris, Tuesday, March 24, 2026.
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Thomas McKean pays homage to the MetroCard and his New York family history
“Cricky on the Picket Line.” Photo: Thomas McKean
Artist Thomas McKean has gained notoriety for his tributes to the MetroCard, but his art is really a tribute to his family.
McKean comes from a long line of New Yorkers, and he has a family connection to many locations throughout the city. Anyone who visits his art on view at the New York Transit Museum’s “ Inspired by MetroCard” exhibition, for example, will notice the collages of characters depicted in vivid scenes at specific New York locations.
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For the Road
Community space for women: The Bechdel Project and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs host “Coffee’s On Us,” a free community space for women and gender expansive people to work and connect. Free admission includes light snacks and drinks, WiFi and charging areas, a swap table and more. Learn more.
Happy Birthday to “It” star Jessica Chastain!
On This Day in 1935, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Better get new tubes for your radio set. Television won’t be here for some time.”
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