The educational policy equivalent of a call to arms has been setting off alarm bells in the U.S. and abroad.
In June, UNESCO published global survey data from more than 450 K12 schools and universities. The key finding: Fewer than “10% have developed institutional policies and/or formal guidance concerning the use of generative AI applications.”
The Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization based at Arizona State University, reached out to all 51 State Departments of Education, requesting updates on their approach to AI guidance. CRPE reports that only two states – California and Oregon – have provided any official guidance or policy to assist school districts in the deployment of AI.
The Policy Analysis for California Education organization at Stanford states this need quite clearly: “… all districts need to enter the 2023–24 academic year with a clear policy for use of AI and educator training to support the policy.”
National Organizations Are Responding with AI Toolkits
There has been a rapid response from national organizations. The Council of Great City Schools released a comprehensive K12 Generative AI Readiness Checklist that will serve as a template for the work we are doing at the New Tech HS Center for Excellence. ISTE offers Bringing AI to Schools: Tips for Leaders. Closer to home, the California Department of Education provides guidance via its Learning With AI, Learning About AI toolkit.
I conducted an informal survey of the 10 largest (by student population) school districts in the U.S. to get a heat check on how this process is unfolding at a more local level. Everyone is still in the starting blocks. New York City schools first banned the use of generative AI (with a special focus on ChatGPT) then reversed course and decided to form an AI Study Committee tasked with creating policy. Miami Dade USD has created a study group as well and like NYC Schools hopes to complete that work in the spring of 2024.
LAUSD has already revised its Acceptable Use Policy (Responsible Use Policy (RUP) for District Computer and Network Systems) for students and teachers to reflect the arrival of generative AI in the classroom.
Undoubtedly, school districts will be required to amend their AUPs. I fear though, simply adding verbiage about the ethical use of generative AI ignores the fact that ChatGPT and its large-language model peers (BARD and Gemini from Google) are fundamentally a different beast. As I’ve written before, generative AI is not just a better search engine.
It’s Like Electricity
President Barack Obama is not known for his use of florid language. If anything, he overuses a measured tone to describe profound events. During an interview in which he provided his reaction to President Biden’s Executive Order on the deployment of AI, Obama shared a conversation he had with an executive of a giant Silicon Valley tech firm.
“There’s no shortage of hyperbole in the tech world,” Obama said, “but this is a pretty sober guy. Like an adult who’s seen a bunch of these cycles and been through boom and bust. And I asked him, I said, “well when you say you think this technology is going to be transformative, give me an example.’ He said, “you know I sat with my team and we talked about it and after going around and around what we decided was, maybe the best analogy was electricity.’ “
Banning AI Is Not an Option
So, what do schools and districts do when “electricity” arrives in the building and is widely available at home? The knee-jerk reaction would be to ban generative AI, but that, according to PACE, is a bad idea.
“Because virtually any device (including phones) can now access AI, banning it is no longer a viable policy option: there is no practical way to block all AI websites in schools and no way to limit student access to AI after school,” PACE writes. “The plethora of models and their increasing quality will also likely continue to thwart efforts to detect when AI has been used to cheat. So, districts must shift tactics from banning AI to channeling its power.“
Next Steps
Based on a small sample size, these are a few of the concrete steps schools districts can take to create policy that guides the effective and ethical use of generative AI in their schools.
- Form Study and Implementation groups composed of stakeholder groups, including students.
- Do not sunset the Study/Implementation groups – the capabilities of gen AI change on a monthly basis so policy must keep pace.
- Use the K12 Generative AI Readiness Checklist from CCSSO to guide the practical and legal rollout of gen AI.
- Budget funds for teacher training (a recent survey from Study.Com indicates 72 of K12 teachers say they have received no training in how to use AI).
- Conduct town halls to demystify AI and its use for both public (including, of course, parents).
- Plan with the knowledge that age restrictions on creating individual accounts (ranging from 13 with parent permission to 18 with no permission) will have zero impact on use of gen AI in the home.
- Plan with the knowledge that economically advantaged homes are likely to give their children access to the paid (and more capable) version of the software.
- Create lab schools within your district to learn and model best practices for the ethical and effective use of gen AI in your context.
- Designate one or more staffers in your ed tech departments to receive intensive training in the design of custom GPTs for use by your staff, teachers and students.
- Contribute your best ideas and planning documents to our nascent AI policy library.
President Obama informs this next bit of advice. To use one of Obama’s pet phrases, borrowed from his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, we must be driven by the “fierce urgency of now.” AI will not be kind to those who lag behind.
David Ross (@davidPBLross) is the retired CEO of the Partnership for 21st Century Learning and the former Senior Director of the Buck Institute for Education (now PBLWorks). David was an 11th grade American Studies (History and English 11) team teacher. David created curriculum design templates, exemplary projects, rubrics for critical thinking and collaboration, and project management techniques.
