AI Panic?
As the 2026-2027 school year gets underway, critical thinking and creativity are on educators’ and parents’ minds. Generative AI (GenAI) utilization has become all the more common in classrooms and student work with each new school year, with the percentage of high school students using GenAI tools in their schoolwork growing from 79% to 85% between January and May 2025 alone. At the college level, college and university professors are raising the alarm:
Listen: Matthew and Andrew Ferguson take on AI, critical thinking, and “cognitive surrender” in Episode 3 of our podcast, Beyond the Test.
- 90% of faculty surveyed predicted that the use of GenAI tools will diminish students’ critical thinking tools
- 83% predict the use of GenAI will decrease student attention spans
- 48% noted student research skills had gotten worse as a result of GenAI (though 20% believed it had improved)
Research backs up these concerns. A landmark 2025 study identified a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities. At the same time, AI-focused schools are rapidly proliferating. Is the mind-boggling pace of adoption creating a generation of young adults unable to succeed in a world of increasingly complex problems to solve?
But also…
Of course, correlation is not the same as causation, and students are using GenAI in a large variety of contexts. Moreover, there’s not substantial evidence that more traditional educational experiences are leading to great accomplishments in building critical thinking skills. Research from 2011—well before the introduction of GenAI—found that 45% of students demonstrated no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, or writing skills in their first two years of college. And some students report that AI has helped them attempt more challenging work and spend less time on repetitive tasks:
It seems fair to anticipate that the tools educators and students use will continue to rapidly evolve—as will their impact. As we try to direct what may seem to be an unstoppable force in a productive direction, here at Academic Approach we’re also considering how we can use our time with students in schools to explicitly teach and improve creative, flexible thinking.
Wait, what does standardized testing have to do with this?
The idea of creativity in standardized testing may seem like an unlikely pairing. We, however, view it as essential. Standardized tests like the ACT and SAT reward creative thinkers: students who can identify multiple paths through problems or challenges and identify the most efficient and accurate way forward. Our core math instruction relies on the research-based technique of identifying multiple approaches. Consider the ACT math problem below:
A high school math class would likely encourage students to factor and manipulate the given equation to arrive at choice D. Perfectly reasonable! Great mathematical practice!
However, the creative problem solver might find a quicker (and perhaps less error-prone) path to a solution—if they simply chose a value for x other than 2 (as required in the problem), they can find a value for y. For example, if I select 3 for x, I can calculate y to be equal to 5. I can then assess each of the four answer choices to see if the values of 3 and 5 also work—and only answer choice D provides this.
The creative critical thinker must have strong background knowledge of how these equations work—that an equivalent equation like D will allow the student to use the same x and y values as the equation provided in the question—and must have the flexibility and adaptability to choose a process that will provide a timely and accurate solution without getting stuck in a process they’ve memorized.
It’s not just math. Consider the reading section of the ACT.
Students must read dense, complex texts efficiently and effectively. We explicitly teach students the critical thinking skills to identify the overall goal of a text, as well as the author’s perspective (the “what?” and “so what?”), by quickly identifying key information and high-leverage portions of the text. Readers with strong critical thinking skills are not just summarizing, they are analyzing and evaluating what an author says. We teach students to base their understanding of a text in the text itself while assessing the choices an author makes in structure and language to understand greater meaning.
Effective instruction for standardized tests like the ACT and SAT is instruction in how to think critically and process creatively in real time. We work to build those muscles in students in each session of our school programs—so they are prepared to solve the challenging problems of standardized tests and the challenges of the world outside a test.
Explicit and effective instruction in critical and creative thinking is essential as AI use becomes more and more commonplace, and we’re committed to keeping it as the centerpiece of our instruction.
What does this mean for schools?
For schools, the question isn’t whether students will use AI—they already are. It’s whether the time we spend preparing them for high-stakes tests is also time spent building the thinking those tests (and everything after them) demand. Test prep that amounts to memorized procedures and answer-choice tricks leaves students stuck the moment a problem looks unfamiliar. Test prep that teaches students to weigh multiple approaches, choose the most efficient one, and explain why can do double duty.
That’s the approach we bring to the schools we partner with. A semester of ACT or SAT preparation is a rare chance to practice flexible, critical thinking in a structured, focused setting—and students come away ready for test day and for the creative problem solving that follows it. Interested in bringing this approach to your school or district? Contact us today.
