Secondary Education Leads in Prioritizing AI Literacy

For the second time since ChatGPT launched, Turnitin sees high schools in the U.S. lead in adopting new technology to promote responsible use of AI

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Turnitin, a global leader in academic integrity and learning solutions, announced that in its first 60 days of availability, Turnitin Clarity has had nearly 100 secondary schools and/or districts across the U.S, launch pilots, demonstrating the demand from educators to responsibly integrate AI into their classrooms. For the second time since ChatGPT launched, Turnitin is seeing U.S. high schools at the forefront of adopting new technology to promote responsible use of AI in education.

"Education is about more than answers, it's about growth. Turnitin Clarity helps students see and strengthen their learning journey, so it is not a surprise to us to see the early adoption from secondary education," said Chris Caren, chief executive officer, Turnitin. "Looking ahead, our responsibility extends beyond detection, it's about shaping the future of feedback, fairness, and academic integrity in an AI-powered world."

The rapid integration of AI tools has presented unprecedented challenges for educators and school districts across the country. With many educators seeing widespread AI use and misuse by students, educators have found themselves reverting back to traditional teaching styles, using written work and oral presentations, which limits quality and timely feedback and increases grading challenges.

According to national research, 60% of K12 teachers used AI tools during the 2024-2025 school year, with high school and early-career teachers even more likely to use AI tools (at 66% and 69%, respectively)¹. Year-over-year adoption of AI tools has increased, with a notable 18% increase in teachers who recently started using Generative AI prior to this semester/school year (40%; compared to 16% in 2024). This suggests that secondary education is experiencing the fastest growth rate in AI adoption².

As AI tools continue to reshape student learning, educators are struggling with how to integrate the technologies into the classroom while prioritizing academic integrity, fairness and meaningful learning outcomes. Many time-crunched educators are attempting to balance providing quality feedback with the critical task of building AI literacy among their students, often leading to AI fatigue caused by an overwhelming number of tools, applications, plug-ins and other detector tools. 

"We are hearing from educators that students are struggling to use AI ethically and openly, educators are overwhelmed by grading fatigue, and trying to keep up with endless detection tools," said Stephanie Gladfelter, vice president of secondary education sales. "Turnitin Clarity has shifted that paradigm, giving educators visibility into students' writing habits, providing a structured way to guide responsible AI use while maintaining feedback quality and building AI literacy."

Turnitin's 2025 global research study³, further supports that there's a demand for clear guidelines on responsible AI use. The majority (95%) of academic administrators, educators, and students surveyed believe AI is being misused in some capacity, with 47% of educators and administrators wanting to leverage AI, but admit they lack the know-how to do so effectively.

Turnitin Clarity, in many ways introduces the "show your work" concept normally associated with mathematics to writing, providing educators visibility into the journey behind a student's work, not just the final product. This solution helps educators provide targeted, timely and personalized feedback, reducing grading fatigue, and empowering students to reflect on and refine their approach.

Caren adds, "This represents a pivotal moment in our 25-year journey as a company moving from primarily a detector tool to a true collaborator in the learning process, helping guide responsible use of AI and foster academic integrity."

Additionally, Turnitin is making two product updates to Turnitin Clarity this month. First, educators can now enable an AI-powered citation assistant that offers students real-time feedback on citation formatting and missing citations supporting APA and MLA styles, helping them become more confident writers. Later this month, Turnitin Clarity will integrate Turnitin's AI writing detection into the writing report to identify large blocks of likely AI-generated text (over 300 words), including text that may have been modified by leading bypassers, designed to humanize AI writing. This will provide educators even greater visibility into students' writing processes. AI writing detection will be available to all customers licensing Turnitin Originality alongside Turnitin Clarity.

Turnitin Clarity is available as a paid add-on to Turnitin Feedback Studio customers. For more information, please visit https://www.turnitin.com/campaigns/clarity.

¹ Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation's Teaching for Tomorrow: Unlocking Six Weeks a Year With AI
² Cengage Group, AI in Education Report
³ Turnitin Crossroads: Navigating the intersection of AI in education (Turnitin was a partner in providing compensation to conduct Vanson Bourne's research)

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About Turnitin
In 2025, the company launched Turnitin Clarity, enhanced Turnitin Feedback Studio, pioneered AI bypasser detection, and published its first global research study on AI in education—all while earning a spot on TIME's list of the World's Top EdTech Companies. 

Turnitin is a global company dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and meaningfully improving learning outcomes. For more than 25 years, Turnitin has partnered with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Turnitin products are used by educational institutions and certification and licensing programs to uphold integrity and increase learning performance, and by students and professionals to do their best, original work.

Over 16,000 academic institutions, publishers, and corporations in 185 countries, use Turnitin services: Gradescope by Turnitin, iThenticate, Turnitin Clarity, Turnitin Feedback Studio, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, ExamSoft, ProctorExam, and Ouriginal.

About Vanson Bourne
Vanson Bourne is an independent specialist in market research for the technology sector. Their reputation for robust and credible research-based analysis is founded upon rigorous research principles and their ability to seek the opinions of senior decision-makers across technical and business functions, in all business sectors and all major markets. For more information, visit www.vansonbourne.com.

Methodology for the Crossroads: Navigating the Intersection of AI and Academia
Turnitin commissioned Vanson Bourne to survey a total of 3,500 respondents, including academic administrators (500), educators (500) and students (2,500) in August 2024, with interviews in Australia (350)/New Zealand (350), India (700), Mexico (700), U.K. / Ireland (700), and the U.S. (700). The academic administrators and educators were from both secondary (500) and higher education institutions (500), whilst students were from higher education institutions, studying both full time (2,064) and part time (436). The survey was conducted online using a rigorous multi-level screening process to ensure that only suitable candidates were given the opportunity to participate.

SOURCE Turnitin