The largest AI adoption case to date: Reversing AI ban and providing Google chatbot 'Gemini' to over 105,000 students
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest school district in the US, is deploying Google's chatbot Gemini to more than 105,000 high school students, marking the largest-ever adoption of AI in a US school district after it banned the use of AI two years ago over concerns about fraud and misinformation.
How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the AI Future - The New York Times
How Miami schools are leading 100,000 students into the AI future
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/05/19/how-miami-schools-are-leading-100000-students-into-the-ai-future/
In April 2025, Tracy Rowe, a social studies teacher at Southwest Miami High School in Miami, Florida, USA, was learning about John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States.
During a discussion of President Kennedy's New Frontier policy, Roude instructed 24 high school seniors to open their laptops and type into Google's chatbot Gemini, 'Act like President Kennedy. What was the New Frontier policy?'
Gemini immediately began outputting sentences that sounded like President Kennedy's speech, including phrases like 'my fellow Americans.' Next, Roude asked the students to analyze whether Gemini's output accurately reflected the speeches of President Kennedy that they had learned in class. Although they found the output awkward and a little strange, the students rated Gemini's output as highly credible.
'Gemini did a great job of imitating John F. Kennedy,' said Afree Aced, one of Lawd's students.
Miami-Dade Public Schools, the third-largest school district in the United States, is at the forefront of a rapidly evolving national experiment to incorporate generative AI technologies into teaching and learning. In 2024, Miami-Dade Public Schools will train more than 1,000 educators on new AI tools and will offer Gemini to more than 105,000 high school students by 2025, the largest deployment of AI in a single school district in the United States to date.
In 2023, Miami banned chatbots due to concerns that AI tools were being used to cheat in schools and spread misinformation. Trained on text databases, chatbots can write human-like emails, take quizzes for humans, and quickly create lesson plans.
But the district is moving forward with generative AI tools with the goal of helping students prepare for evolving career needs. District officials say they want students to critically evaluate new AI tools and learn how to use them responsibly.
'All students need some introduction to AI because it will impact all of our lives in some way through the tools we use at work,' said Roberto J. Alonso, a member of the Miami-Dade County Board of Education.
The introduction of AI in the US education sector comes as President Donald Trump and Silicon Valley leaders are pushing for AI in schools. Some leaders in the tech industry are promoting AI as 'powerful tutoring bots that instantly customize content to each student's learning level.' Google and OpenAI are in a fierce race to dominate the education sector with AI tools.
Microsoft argues that training young Americans in AI skills for the workplace will be essential in the AI race against China, and President Trump agrees, signing an executive order calling on schools to 'embed the fundamentals of AI into every build' for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The New York Times reports that if AI is introduced into the educational field in the United States, it could 'dramatically transform teaching and learning, using chatbots as intermediaries where students can first seek guidance and feedback before teachers even see their work. However, researchers expressed concern that the introduction of AI could erode
'AI is just another piece of equipment in the education kit,' said Daniel Mateo, Miami-Dade County Schools' assistant superintendent for innovation and architect of the district's AI initiative. 'We need to make sure we use it ethically and responsibly and have certain guidelines in place, and all of that goes through a vetting process.'
In Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the district's technology staff spent several months evaluating nearly a dozen AI tools for accuracy and privacy fairness before deciding to deploy them in schools. The results showed that Google's Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Microsoft's Copilot were the top candidates.
The team also tested the chatbot's racist, violent, or sexually explicit responses by posing as teenage hackers and typing in rude comments. 'We asked the AI the most inappropriate questions we could imagine,' explains Janette Tejeda, one of the team's developers.
After this investigation, Miami-Dade County Public Schools ultimately decided to introduce Gemini, citing reasons such as 'Google offers specific content and privacy guardrails for teenagers' and 'information entered into Gemini will not be used to train Google's AI models.'
In addition, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools District conducted AI training workshops for 17,000 teachers, holding dozens of live virtual sessions to teach teachers how to 'transform lesson plans with AI' and 'how AI language models can revolutionize writing instruction.'
Gemini is being piloted in the Miami-Dade County Public School District, and at Southwest Miami High School, one of the first pilot schools, many teenage students are already using Gemini outside of school. 'We have a responsibility to help them understand how to use chatbots properly,' said Jorge M. Bulnes, principal of Southwest Miami High School, speaking about the new role of teachers in introducing AI into the educational field.
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