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(CHALKBEAT) - Paige Wyatt heard plenty from administrators about using AI to generate lesson plans at the school where she taught high school English.

Her students used AI to cheat so frequently she resorted to spending her own money on detection tools. Yet she never got help with what she really wanted: how to effectively catch and stop the cheaters, some of whom were very clearly just copying and pasting from Google’s AI summaries.

Teachers like Wyatt consistently identify cheating as a major concern in the AI era, and 70% of teens report using AI for schoolwork, a Common Sense Media survey published last month found. But that concern is getting little recognition from states. While at least 13 states have passed laws about AI in education, the laws most often direct state agencies and districts to create their own AI guidance, meaning lawmakers have frequently absolved themselves from making tough decisions.

Meanwhile, roughly three out of four states have published information to help guide AI use in education. But a Chalkbeat review found these documents tend to skirt the issue of cheating, offering little in the way of concrete steps to halt or deter students from offloading work to AI. Instead, they dedicate more real estate to AI literacy and ways teachers can use AI for efficiency.

All of that beating around the bush has left educators and districts to their own devices to come up with ways to deter and catch AI-enabled cheaters. It’s become an exhausting endeavor that hasn’t turned up any definitive solutions, educators and researchers said.

There’s no surefire way to detect AI-generated content. Nor is there an agreed-upon definition for cheating: Can students use AI to outline an essay but not write it? Can they use it to copy edit? Some states have crafted acceptable use policies which make some, but not all, of these distinctions.

Wyatt quit her teaching job last year. She didn’t leave solely due to AI, but its impact on her work was a factor.

“We really need real consequences,” she said. “We need workshops for teachers to detect cheating. We need workshops for kids.”

Most of the nation’s 10 largest school districts are developing or have developed more specific policies to try to prevent using generative AI to cheat. But it hasn’t always been easy: New York City delayed the rollout of its AI guidance for months amid fierce backlash, before announcing a new policy this week. Half of those districts explicitly discourage using AI detection tools.