Little Impact of ChatGPT Availability on High School Student Test Score Performance

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Huntington-Klein, Nick
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Huntington-Klein, Nick
author_facet Huntington-Klein, Nick
contents In educational settings, AI can be used as a learning aid, but can also be used to avoid schoolwork, thereby passing classes while learning little. Many existing studies on the impact of AI on education focus on AI use in controlled settings or with specialized tools. In this paper, the dropoff in ChatGPT activity during non-school summer months in 2023 and 2024 is used to identify areas with heavy educational AI use and thus estimate the educational impact of AI as it is actually used. I find no meaningful impact of AI usage on high school test score averages in either direction. These results imply that, to the extent that high school students use AI to avoid learning, it either does not matter much for their test performance or is cancelled out by positive uses of AI in the aggregate.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_08812
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Little Impact of ChatGPT Availability on High School Student Test Score Performance
Huntington-Klein, Nick
General Economics
Economics
In educational settings, AI can be used as a learning aid, but can also be used to avoid schoolwork, thereby passing classes while learning little. Many existing studies on the impact of AI on education focus on AI use in controlled settings or with specialized tools. In this paper, the dropoff in ChatGPT activity during non-school summer months in 2023 and 2024 is used to identify areas with heavy educational AI use and thus estimate the educational impact of AI as it is actually used. I find no meaningful impact of AI usage on high school test score averages in either direction. These results imply that, to the extent that high school students use AI to avoid learning, it either does not matter much for their test performance or is cancelled out by positive uses of AI in the aggregate.
title Little Impact of ChatGPT Availability on High School Student Test Score Performance
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08812