PEN America released an analysis on May 7 titled "Facts & Fiction," examining the more than 3,700 unique book titles banned from U.S. public schools during the 2024-25 school year. The breakdown cuts against the rationale usually offered for removals: 44% of banned titles feature characters or people of color, and 29% are nonfiction, while only 10% contain what the analysis calls "on the page" sexual content, the category the ban movement has consistently cited as its justification. The most-banned topics were non-sexual violence (57%), death and grief (48%), empowerment and self-esteem (39%), and LGBTQ+ topics and metaphors (36%). Consensual sexual content ranked fifth, at 34%.
The gap between stated rationale and actual pattern matters for how you handle a challenge in your own building. If a parent or administrator frames a specific title as removed for "inappropriate content," the national data says the more likely underlying trigger is a nonfiction text, a book by or about a person of color, or a story dealing with grief or violence, not explicit material. Knowing that distinction changes how you respond: a book about the Holocaust, a slave narrative, or a memoir about a parent's death is being caught in the same net as material actually flagged for sexual content, even though the reasons for concern are entirely different.
Columbus County Schools in North Carolina will incorporate an artificial intelligence platform for the first time this coming school year, WECT's Reyna Crooms reported July 28. The district is paying $29,950.61 for Magic School, an education-specific AI platform built with school-approved tools rather than open-access chatbots, and students will lose access to other AI platforms, including ChatGPT, on school networks. Chief Academic Officer Laura Hunter said the shift followed a marked uptick in AI use among students and teachers last year: "AI is here to stay. We couldn't keep our heads in the sand. We knew that it was our job to teach our students how to responsibly use AI and critically evaluate what AI generates so they can be active adults in the AI landscape." Magic School will roll out slowly across middle and high school classrooms, and teachers will also get access to it for lesson planning.
Hunter's description of how the platform works is the more useful detail than the purchase itself: "We limit and control those chatbots; we can create them using our learning framework, our curriculum documents, and really kind of shape the experience so we are pointing the users in the direction that we would like them to go." That's a materially different posture than either an outright ban or unrestricted access, and it's a model available to any district willing to spend roughly $30,000, not just large or well-funded ones. If your district is still stuck choosing between "block everything" and "allow everything," Columbus County's approach is the third option worth raising at the next curriculum meeting.
A survey of 1,125 U.S. respondents from education technology company Instructure, reported by EdSource on July 22, found that AI is already in near-universal use across schools: 90% of higher education students, 68% of K-12 educators, and 61% of higher education educators use AI in class at least occasionally, and 73% of parents said their own children used it at least occasionally. Melissa Loble, Instructure's chief learning officer, put it directly in the report: "The conversation has moved beyond whether AI belongs in education. Students, educators and families are already navigating it. The work now is helping institutions build the insight, support and guardrails to use AI in responsible, human-centered ways that strengthen learning." Only 33% of K-12 educators and 30% of K-12 parents favored restricting AI use outright, and "teaching responsible AI use and building critical AI literacy" ranked first or second among what respondents said they expect from schools.
If your building is still having the "should we allow AI" conversation in a staff meeting, this data says that debate has already been settled by actual behavior, not policy. The open question, according to the people surveyed, isn't permission, it's training: educators want clearer guidance on where AI helps, where it creates risk, and when students need to rely on their own judgment instead. A staff conversation reframed around those three questions will get further than one still stuck on whether to allow the tool at all.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation July 28 establishing a statewide "bell-to-bell" cellphone framework for Illinois public schools, according to a release from his office. Kindergarten through eighth grade students face a full-day restriction covering class time, lunch, and passing periods; high schools must implement the same bell-to-bell ban but may opt to allow access during passing periods or lunch. The Illinois State Board of Education will issue a template policy September 1, and districts must have finalized policies in place by the 2027-28 school year, with a later 2031-32 deadline for districts that already had qualifying policies. The release cited a 2024 figure that 72% of high school teachers considered cellphone distraction a "major problem" in their classrooms. Notably, the law bars enforcement through fines, suspensions, or law enforcement, after the release noted that other states with bell-to-bell policies saw a temporary rise in suspensions, particularly among Black students.
The exceptions built into the law are the part that will actually shape your classroom: devices stay permitted when a medical professional requires one, when an IEP or 504 plan calls for it, when an English learner needs a device to access materials or communicate, and when a student is a family caregiver. Because the law explicitly rules out discipline-office enforcement, day-to-day compliance becomes a classroom-routine problem, not a referral-slip problem. State Superintendent Dr. Tony Sanders framed the goal plainly: "Students learn best when they are fully present in the classroom... this new law gives schools the tools and flexibility to reduce distractions, strengthen student engagement and support healthier learning environments."