Since the introduction of ChatGPT, educators have been considering the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) on education. Different approaches to AI codes of conduct are emerging, based on geography, school size and administrators’ willingness to embrace new technology.

With ChatGPT barely one year old and generative AI developing rapidly, a universally accepted approach to integrating AI has not yet emerged.

Still, the rise of GAI is offering a rare glimpse of hope and promise amid K-12’s historic achievement lows and unprecedented teacher shortages. That’s why many educators are contemplating how to manage and monitor student AI use. You can see a wide range of opinions, including some who would like to see AI tools outright banned.

There is a fine line between “using AI as a tool” and “using AI to cheat,” and many educators are still determining where that line is.

Related: How AI can teach kids to write – not just cheat

In my view, banning tech that will become a critical part of everyday life is not the answer. AI tools can be valuable classroom companions, and educators should write their codes of conduct in a way that encourages learners to adapt.

Administrators should respect teachers’ hesitation about adopting AI, but also create policies that allow tech-forward educators and students to experiment.

A number of districts have publicly discussed their approaches to AI. Early policies seem to fall into three camps:

Zero Tolerance: Some schools have instructed their students that use of AI tools will not be tolerated. For example, Oklahoma’s Tomball ISD updated its code of conduct to include a brief sentence on AI-enhanced work, stating that any work submitted by a student that has been completed using AI “will be considered plagiarism” and penalized as such.

Active Encouragement: Some schools encourage teachers to use AI tools in their classrooms. Michigan’s Hemlock Public School District provides its teachers with a list of AI tools and suggests that teachers explore which tools work best with their existing curriculum and lessons.

Wait-and-See: Many schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to drafting policies. In the meantime, they are allowing teachers and students to freely explore the capabilities and applications of the current crop of tools and providing guidance as issues and questions arise. They will use the data collected during this time to inform policies drafted in the future.

A recent Brookings report highlighted the confusion around policies for these new tools. For example, Los Angeles Public Schools blocked ChatGPT from all school computers while simultaneously rolling out an AI companion for parents. Because there isn’t yet clear guidance on how AI tools should be used, educators are receiving conflicting advice on both how to use AI themselves and how to guide their students’ use.

New York City public schools banned ChatGPT, then rolled back the ban, noting that their initial decision was hasty, based on “knee-jerk fear,” and didn’t take into account the good that AI tools could do in supporting teachers and students. They also noted that students will need to function and work in a world in which AI tools are a part of daily life and banning them outright could be doing students a disservice. They’ve since vowed to provide educators with “resources and real-life examples” of how AI tools have been successfully implemented in schools to support a variety of tasks across the spectrum of planning, instruction and analysis.

AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.

This response is a good indication that the “Zero Tolerance” approach is waning in larger districts as notable guiding bodies, such as ISTE, actively promote AI exploration.

In addition, the federal government’s Office of Educational Technology is working on policies to ensure safe and effective AI use, noting that “Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities” while safeguarding against potential risks.

Educators must understand how to use these tools, and how they can help students be better equipped to navigate both the digital and real world.

Related: AI might disrupt math and computer science classes – in a good way

Already, teachers and entrepreneurs are experimenting with ways that GAI can make an impact on teacher practice and training, from lesson planning and instructional coaching to personalized feedback.

District leaders must consider that AI can assist teachers in crafting activity-specific handouts, customizing reading materials and formulating assessment, assignment and in-class discussion questions. They should also note how AI can deter cheating by generating unique assessments for each test-taker.

As with many educational innovations, it’s fair to assume that the emergence of student conduct cases within higher education will help guide the development of GAI use policy generally.

All this underscores both the importance and the complication of drafting such GAI policies, leading districts to ask, “Should we create guidelines just for students or for students and teachers?”

Earlier this year, Stanford’s Board on Conduct Affairs addressed the issue and its policies, clarifying that generative AI cannot be used to “substantially” complete an assignment and that its use must be disclosed.

But Stanford also gave individual instructors the latitude to provide guidelines on the acceptable use of GAI in their coursework. Given the relative murkiness of that policy, I predict clearer guidelines are still to come and will have an impact on those being drafted for K-12 districts.

Ultimately, AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.

It will, however, not be enough for schools just to write codes of conduct for AI tools. They’ll need to think through how the presence of AI technology changes the way students are assessed, use problem-solving skills and develop competencies.

Questions like “How did you creatively leverage this new technology?” can become part of the rubric.

Their exploration will help identify best practices and debunk myths, championing AI’s responsible use. Developing AI policies for K-12 schools is an ongoing conversation.

Embracing experimentation, raising awareness and reforming assessments can help schools ensure that GAI becomes a positive force in supporting student learning responsibly.

Ted Mo Chen is vice president of globalization for the education technology company ClassIn.

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Growing numbers of students need special education services. Yet there are fewer qualified clinicians who are willing and able to work in school buildings full time.

There is a new solution that exists, one that many other sectors have embraced: A hybrid, more flexible workforce.

The number of students deemed to need special education services increased by nearly a million students over the last decade, and it now makes up 15 percent of all public school enrollments.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a 19 percent growth in demand for speech language pathologists and a 12 percent growth in demand for occupational therapists over the next decade.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than two-thirds of public schools have reported increases in students seeking mental health services.

The effects of these strains on resources are far-reaching. Students and families are left waiting for critical services, while staffers are faced with ever-growing caseloads that lead to burnout and, in some cases, departure from the profession.

Students in low-income areas are already the least likely to have access to special education and early intervention services — a challenge exacerbated by staffing shortages.

Teletherapy services, provided online via live videoconferencing, were commonly used during the pandemic months when schools were shuttered and students needed connection with their therapists.

Related: Teletherapy has been powering virtual special education for years

Once clinicians learned how to work online, many embraced teletherapy, finding that it brought focus to their time with children and offered exciting new ways to engage in their sessions. A significant number of U.S. public school districts relied on it to provide critical special education services including psychological evaluations, speech therapy and occupational therapy to their students.

But when schools reopened, many prioritized a return to fully in-person services. Even though clinicians were ready to change how and where they worked, most schools were not. In discussions I’ve had with school leaders, many regarded teletherapy as an emergency stopgap, and in my view, that was a mistake.

Returning to the old ways of doing things just hasn’t worked. Many schools that dug in on resuming in-person services with no exceptions have been unable to fill vacancies across their special education teams.

And, for example, annual data from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association shows that despite growing student needs, the percentage of certified speech language pathologists working in schools has been declining steadily for over a decade.

With staff shortages in critical areas, backlogs and compensatory time (to make up for services not provided) have been building up, signaling a need for a better solution.

Some districts are now turning to teletherapy services for special education as more than a temporary pandemic-era solution.

Some districts are now turning to teletherapy services for special education as more than a temporary pandemic-era solution, and are creating true hybrid service models, in which schools strategically utilize their in-person staff for emergent issues or high-need students, while virtual therapists provide support for ongoing special education service needs.

Data from my organization, Presence, a provider of teletherapy solutions, shows that some of the nation’s largest districts, and at least 10,000 forward-thinking schools, have adopted a hybrid model to ensure support for students, clinicians and school and district leaders.

With the capability to deliver a portion of services online, districts can offer services and stability for students regardless of their zip code. The hybrid model also enables school administrators to increase capacity and balance workloads by retaining great therapists while adding more diversity and deeper specialties to the talent pool.

For example, Newberg-Dundee Public Schools in Oregon embraced teletherapy to assess and address the needs of their students faster and have since seen positive results. Teachers in the district told us that many students appear to be more eager to attend their teletherapy sessions. They said that students often seem more focused in the dedicated virtual setting and less distracted.

District officials say parents are now requesting teletherapy services for their children because they’ve seen such great progress.

Related: These parents want more virtual learning. New Jersey says they’re on their own

In addition to supporting students and school administrators, teletherapy serves the providers themselves. The model embraces working remotely from home, with flexible hours, including part-time.

Many of those drawn to teletherapy are working mothers seeking to reduce time outside the home and retirees who want to continue the work they love in a reduced capacity.

The thousands of clinicians who have embraced teletherapy find that when they remove themselves from day-to-day burdens inside the school building, they are better able to focus on their clinical work and target their students’ specific needs.

A hybrid staffing model alone isn’t a cure-all to address students’ increasing needs or to reverse widespread school staff shortages. But as schools search for solutions to address these issues, embracing a combination of in-person staff and remote specialists offers promise.

Kate Eberle Walker is CEO of Presence, the leading provider of teletherapy solutions for children with diverse needs.

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After an elder passed away recently in their community, the students at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School in Dzántik’i Héeni, the Tlingit name for Juneau, Alaska, got to work creating a special gift.

Using skills they’d learned in their computer science lessons, the students designed a traditional button blanket on a laser cutting machine. “They found a meaningful way to apply all of that skill and knowledge that they have learned and in such a way that it was authentic,” said Luke Fortier, the school librarian and math teacher.

Fortier’s school participates in a program operated by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society to expand access to computer science and science, technology engineering and math, or STEM, among Native American, Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students. The program trains educators at K-12 schools whose students include Native children on different ways they can introduce young people to programming, robotics and coding.

But computer science lessons like the ones at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School are relatively rare. Despite calls from major employers and education leaders to expand K-12 computer science instruction in response to the workforce’s increasing reliance on digital technology, access to the subject remains low — particularly for Native American students. 

Only 67 percent of Native American students attend a school that offers a computer science course, the lowest percentage of any demographic group, according to a new study from the nonprofit Code.org. A recent report from the Kapor Foundation and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, or AISES, takes a deep look at why Native students’ access to computer and technology courses in K-12 is so low, and examines the consequences.

Director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor Frieda McAlear, who is Native Alaskan of the Inupiaq tribe, said the study “forefronts the context of the violence of centuries of colonization and its continuing impacts on Native people and tribal communities as the driver of disparities in Native representation in tech and computing.” 

Schools serving higher proportions of Native students are more likely to be small institutions that lack space, funding and teachers trained in computer science, according to the report. In addition, many Native students attend schools that may lack the hardware, software and high-speed internet needed for these classes.

Even when the instruction is available, courses often lack cultural relevance that would allow Native students to authentically engage with the material, the report says.

Given the history of settler colonialism and the use of Native boarding schools that sought to erase Native identity, making sure that students’ tribal knowledge and traditions are celebrated and integrated into the curriculum will allow students to succeed, the report’s authors say.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities,” McAlear said.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities.”

Frieda McAlear, director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor

The situation isn’t much better at the post-secondary level, according to report co-author and director of research and career support for AISES, Tiffany Smith, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a descendant of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Since 2020, Native student enrollment in computer science courses has declined at most two-year and four-year institutions, she said, even as more students overall have received degrees in the subject. Part of the reason is that Native students don’t necessarily see a place for themselves and their culture in tech classes and spaces at predominantly white institutions, Smith said.

But the relatively few Native students who do graduate with these degrees are making significant contributions to their communities, according to Smith. She noted that graduates are using their computer science knowledge and emerging technologies to help revitalize Native languages and alleviate other issues tribal nation communities face, including climate change, biases in data collection and poverty. 

Because tribal nations are at the forefront of job growth and development in their communities, they “should be considered critical partners in the future of the technology sector,” the report’s authors write.

The report calls for more investment in training Native educators to teach computer science and related fields, and integrating Indigenous culture, traditions and languages into those classes.

A 4-year-old program run jointly by the Kapor Foundation and AISES, for example, partners with school districts and Native-serving schools to develop tribe-specific culturally relevant computer science curriculum. That instruction doesn’t only happen in computer science class, said McAlear. The program’s staff work with schools to develop project-based, culturally relevant computer science lessons that are woven into other classes including science, language and history.

In Fortier’s district, students in science classes were recently tasked with using robots to code the life cycle of a salmon. Through that activity they gained knowledge of their local tribal economies while being introduced to new tech, he said.

Before the pandemic, Fortier’s school had eliminated some computer science and technology courses due to budget cuts. But with federal Covid relief funding, along with grants from Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation, and programmatic support from AISES, the school was able to restore some of that instruction.*

Fortier said he believes these courses are essential for his students — not necessarily because they’ll have to learn all the latest cutting-edge technology for their future careers, but so they can use contemporary methods to share Native practices, knowledge and skills with the wider community.

“We can learn a lot from the elders in the traditional knowledge,” he said. “But our kids need to apply it in a new, modern, meaningful way. They need to be able to communicate to and within the world.”

*Correction: This sentence has been updated with the correct version of Sealaska Heritage Institute’s name.

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While the reading and math “wars” have gotten a lot of attention in education in recent years, writing instruction has not received that same focus. That is, until the release of ChatGPT last year.

There isn’t really an agreed-upon approach to teaching writing, according to Sarah Levine, an assistant professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. But now that ChatGPT is here to stay, experts like Levine are trying to figure how to teach writing to K-12 students in an age of AI.

“The question that teachers are having to ask themselves is, what’s writing for?” she said.

ChatGPT can produce a perfectly serviceable writing “product,” she said. But writing isn’t a product per se — it’s a tool for thinking, for organizing ideas, she said.

“ChatGPT and other text-based tools can’t think for us,” she said. “There’s still things to learn when it comes to writing because writing is a form of figuring out what you think.”

Earlier this year, Levine and her team conducted a pilot study at a high school in San Francisco. Students in an English class were given access to ChatGPT to see how they engaged with the tool.

Some were given prompts that asked them to create an argument based on directions, such as, “Some people say we should have a new mascot at our school. Some people say we should keep our old mascot. What do you think?” Other prompts were more creative, such as asking students to write an outline for a movie script about a new superhero based at their school.

Levine and her team found that students looked to ChatGPT, primarily, for help in two categories: Ideas or inspiration to get started on the prompt questions (for example, “What kind of mascots do other schools have?”) and guidance on the writing process (“How do you write a good ghost story?”).

“What the kids are now getting from this AI is what expert writers already have: a big bank of examples that they can draw from when they’re creating,” Levine said. Using ChatGPT as a sounding board for specific questions like these can help students learn to be stronger writers, she added.

Related: How college educators are using AI in the classroom

While the study is ongoing, the early findings revealed something surprising: Kids weren’t excited about ChatGPT’s writing. “They thought it was ‘too perfect.’ Or ‘like a robot,’” Levine said. “One team that was writing said, ‘We asked ChatGPT to edit our work, and it took out all of our jokes so we put them back.’”

Levine said that, to her, that was the big takeaway of the pilot. She’s heard teachers say they struggle to help students find their voice in writing. When students could contrast their own writing to ChatGPT’s more generic version, Levine said, they were able to “understand what their own voice is and what it does.”

Mark Warschauer, a professor of education at the University of California, Irvine, has spent years studying how technology can change writing instruction and the nature of writing itself. When ChatGPT was released, he decided to tailor some of his research to study ways generative AI could help students and teachers, particularly English language learners and bilingual learners.

Like Levine, Warschauer, director of the university’s Digital Learning Lab, said he believes ChatGPT can help students who struggle with writing to organize their ideas, and edit and revise their writing. Essentially, it could be used as an early feedback tool to supplement the work of a teacher, he said.

As part of a project on the effectiveness of ChatGPT as a tool for giving students feedback on their writing, his team at the Digital Learning Lab placed student essays that had already been evaluated by teachers into ChatGPT and asked the AI to provide its own feedback. Then experts blindly graded both the human and AI feedback. While the experts found the human feedback was a little better overall, the AI feedback was good enough to provide value in the classroom. It could help guide students as they progressed on an assignment, allowing teachers to spend more time with students who need extra support, Warschauer said.

Warschauer’s team has also partnered with UC Irvine’s school of engineering to create an intelligent writing coach, to be called PapyrusAI. The tool, which the teams plan to release next year, would be tailored to help middle school and high school students improve their writing through intensive coaching, he said.

In addition, he said, the tool is being designed to provide a safe and protected way to use AI, to address parents’ and educators’ concerns about student data and privacy on ChatGPT, which stores students’ data.

Stanford’s Levine also sees value in using ChatGPT to coach students on writing. 

“A lot of teachers feel intimidated when it comes to teaching writing, because they themselves don’t necessarily feel like they’re the best writers,” Levine said. ChatGPT can help teachers fill in gaps in writing instruction by working as students’ debate partner or coach she said.

ChatGPT could also help teachers more quickly analyze trends in student writing, identifying areas of success or struggle. If students “don’t understand how to connect one idea to another,” Levine said, Chat GPT could provide this feedback instead of teachers having to write, “Try connecting these ideas using a transition,” on every paper. Teachers could then devote more time to developing lessons that focus on that skill.  

“Writing should be and is a human experience,” Levine said. Teachers can retain that experience, even when using AI. If they help students learn how to use the new tool effectively — much as they now use spellcheck or Grammarly — students will understand that ChatGPT is “more or less a giant autocomplete machine, as opposed to a place that has facts,” she said.

“If we think that clarifying your own thinking is something worth doing, then we need to teach writing,” Levine said. “In other words, writing is a way of learning. It’s not just a way of showing your learning.”

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More than 40 million Americans — roughly one out of every seven adults — have earned college credit but have no degree to show for their time and money.

Florida native Alix Petkov is one of them. He enrolled in college right after high school with the idea of becoming a psychiatrist. Unaware that this career choice required medical school — and unable to afford college, much less a graduate education — Petkov changed majors twice and found himself making only halting progress toward a bachelor’s degree.

An on-campus job in information technology rekindled his interest in computers, but the gig paid just $10 per hour, and his computer science classes covered the same things he had already picked up at work.

So Petkov quit college roughly 30 credits short of a degree, with $16,000 in student loans and a credit card balance of $4,000 from paying living expenses.

He burnished his tech portfolio with freelance computer work, applied for IT jobs, worked in restaurants and stewed over his frustrating experience, later saying that “College only destroyed me.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. Like millions of other learners, Petkov was forced into an outdated and bureaucratic model of higher education that’s not designed for how people navigate learning and work today.

Far too many learners are pausing their education long before they earn a credential because they run out of money, time or patience. Or they wind up in a program that lacks the support and structure to meet their individualized needs and goals.

Related: The college degree gap between Black and white Americans was always bad. It’s getting worse

Learners need better access to lower-cost, shorter-term programs that help them achieve their career goals.

Federal and state governments and postsecondary institutions can and should adopt policies and practices that will help students build career pathways and make alternatives to a college degree more accessible, affordable and practical.

To achieve this, federal and state policymakers must ease some of the guardrails meant to protect learners from making “bad” decisions — after all, some of these guardrails have stifled postsecondary innovation and limited competition between college and noncollege options, ultimately restricting learners’ choices. Students must also receive better information about college and noncollege pathways and outcomes both before they begin a program and while they are enrolled.

College isn’t always the best option for every learner.

Petkov said he received little — and often incorrect — information in high school and college about higher education and potential alternatives. No one advised him, for example, that he could save thousands of dollars by completing university-required general education classes at a local community college.

Looking back, Petkov admits he would have pursued a different path altogether if he had a better up-front understanding of the costs and courses required to complete a degree.

His story, which he shared with me this summer over a video call after I requested an introduction, illustrates why students need more transparent financial counseling and more options for using financial aid beyond the limited college options currently afforded by student aid programs.

Giving high school students information about program costs and financial aid well before they apply to college will aid their decision-making. Students should be able to use Pell Grants for noncollege alternative programs that have proven track records of moving students into jobs that pay family-sustaining wages.

Petkov said it didn’t become apparent until later that his financial aid and campus job wouldn’t cover all of his college expenses. Because he was awarded Pell Grants, he borrowed less than other students.

But Pell Grants can be used in just one setting: college. Had Petkov been allowed to use the federal subsidy to pursue a college alternative — like an accelerated tech or healthcare upskilling program from a noncollege provider — he would have done that instead.

Related: OPINION: Often overlooked vocational-tech schools provide great solutions to student debt, labor shortages

Because of time and expense, college isn’t always the best option for every learner. Mounting evidence on program-level outcomes shows that far too many of the options that the government deems “safe” simply because they are accredited have failed learners and left them no better off than if they had not pursued college at all.

Petkov didn’t find his true path until more than a year after he quit college. While searching online for IT jobs, he stumbled on information about Merit America, a nonprofit offering low-cost programs that prepare people for tech careers. (Merit America is a grantee of the Charles Koch Foundation, part of the Stand Together philanthropic community, where the author is a senior fellow.)

Merit America built on Petkov’s existing IT knowledge to give him new tech skills that allowed him to push past self-doubt and launch a successful career. After completing the program, Petkov landed a tech coordinator’s job at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that started him at $45,000 — more than twice what he was making in food service.

Two jobs later, he’s currently the IT director of an executive coaching firm and makes a little more than $100,000 per year. A University of Virginia analysis shows that Merit America completers see an average annual wage increase of $24,000 three or more months after finishing the program.

Merit America is among the growing number of providers preparing students for placement into high-demand tech and healthcare careers. Yet students from low-income backgrounds who rely on financial aid and loans often get little guidance about such college alternatives and may instead be advised to pursue a college degree.

It’s time to open more doors to short-term, noncollege options, so that students like Petkov can access more personalized options to help them thrive.

Steven Taylor is a senior fellow on postsecondary education at Stand Together Trust. He leads the postsecondary education and workforce policy portfolio and partnership strategy.

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Last year, Brandi Pitts’ kindergarten students were struggling with a software program meant to help them with math. The tool was supposed to enable teachers to tailor their instruction to individual students’ learning needs, but even the kids who had strong math skills weren’t doing well.

At a training session this summer, Pitts, a teacher at Oakdale Elementary in Sandy, Utah, learned why: The program works best when teachers supervise kids rather than sending them off to do exercises on their own. Her school had received free software licenses through a state-funded project, but she’d initially missed the formal instruction on how to use the program because she was out sick.

“A lot of times with education, we have to figure things out on our own,” she said. “But having that training, I’m so much more encouraged that I can improve my teaching.”

School systems spend tens of billions of dollars each year on ed tech products, but much of that money is wasted. Educators, who are rarely trained on the software, often leave products unopened or unused. Meanwhile, with more than 11,000 ed tech products on the market and companies sometimes making extravagant claims about their effectiveness, it’s often impossible to determine which products work and which don’t.

But after much trial and error, Utah designed a system to ensure that the money districts spend on ed tech actually benefits students. The state’s K-12 Math Personalized Learning Software grant program, created in 2013, requires ed tech companies to train teachers like Pitts on their products and obligates the businesses to credit the state if the licenses are never used. Experts say it’s a promising model for alleviating some of the problems plaguing ed tech.

“There’s a coming reckoning as the pandemic funding comes to an end over the next year. School districts will have to make choices.”

Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking

It’s “driving more accountability,” said Tal Havivi, senior director of industry partnerships at the International Society for Technology in Education, which connects educators and ed tech providers. While he’s unaware of other states doing anything similar at this scale, he said there’s a growing movement among school districts to write contracts that require ed tech providers to show results before they are paid.

That movement can’t grow fast enough, according Keith Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, which represents school tech leaders. During the pandemic, school systems dramatically expanded the number of software products they used as companies offered free subscriptions for a limited time and the federal government showered districts with emergency funding, he said. But many of the products weren’t high quality.

“There’s a coming reckoning as the pandemic funding comes to an end over the next year,” Krueger said. “School districts will have to make choices.”

Related: ‘Don’t rush to spend on ed tech’

The Utah state legislature created the personalized learning program in response to concerns that students were falling behind in math. The project would identify software programs that showed evidence of improving student math performance and give free licenses to school districts that applied for them.

But at first, few teachers took note. Halfway through the project’s first school year, 2014-15, just 9 percent of licenses distributed were being used, said Clarence Ames, who coordinates the project for the STEM Action Center, created by the same legislation. So, starting in the second year, the center began requiring software companies to offer in-person instruction for teachers at each participating school before they were paid.

The STEM Action Center made other adjustments too. Because district-level administrators typically requested the software programs, school staff were often unaware of them or learned about them too late for teachers to receive training. So, the center began requiring that district leaders, district IT directors and school principals all sign off. The center also moved up the timeline for schools to get the software — from August to February — so teachers would have ample time to test the products before a new school year.

In addition, Ames rewrote ed tech contracts to require companies to return any unused license to the project for use the following school year. The system operates like a money-back guarantee, putting providers on the hook financially.

Because of these requirements, some companies opt out of partnering, said Ames. The onsite training is expensive. “It’s a challenge for us as an industry because it’s not something companies have typically done,” said Charles Ward, a vice president at ed tech company Derivita, based in Salt Lake City. “But I think that’s on us to figure out.” 

Related: PROOF POINTS: How can tutors reach more kids? Researchers look to ed tech

At a time of increased scrutiny of ed tech, the results from the Utah effort are notable. Since the center retooled its approach, 100 percent of software licenses in participating districts are opened and used.

The state has also made progress in assessing which math software products correlate with improved student achievement. By collecting data for almost 10 years, the STEM Action team identified nine math tools that show a statistically significant impact on student outcomes.

For students using project-approved software, the gains have been real. A 2019 evaluation found that students who used such tools for half an hour or more per week were about 57 percent more likely to test proficient in math on state standardized math tests than a comparison group who didn’t use them.

During the pandemic, when learning went online and school districts elsewhere rushed to find proven tech tools to serve students, Utah had an advantage because of its approved provider list, said Ames. When the emergency hit, the state didn’t have to scramble to find vendors whose products showed evidence of success.

That may have shown up in test scores: Utah students’ fourth and eighth grade math scores on national-level tests fell during the pandemic, but the drops were smaller than those in most states. Ames is cautious about drawing conclusions but said the math software likely played a role in keeping Utah’s numbers from falling off a cliff.

But a lot depends on individual teachers: Those whose students more regularly use the software get better outcomes.

Heidi Watson, a math coach at North Park Elementary in the city of Tremonton, said the training on ed tech tools is invaluable. Using the program’s data, teachers can diagnose individual students’ challenges and more effectively work with them in small groups, she said. Teachers have also learned to refine their assignments — for example, by asking students to complete three modules rather than to spend 20 minutes with the software.

Some believe tech tools should minimize the role of teachers. A state leader once suggested moving entirely to software-driven learning to eliminate educators, calling them “the weak link,” Ames recalled. But if anything, Utah’s data suggests that despite the increasing sophistication of tech tools, educators are needed more than ever, Ames said. “100 percent of our data points to the fact that that is inaccurate,” he said of the argument that teachers have limited value. “The most important variable is the teacher, no matter what.”

Research in 2018 on 48 school districts concluded that a median of only 30 percent of licenses ever got used.

Ames said he’s heard from some other states and districts inquiring about Utah’s model for managing ed tech. A few years ago, the Texas Education Agency adopted Utah’s practice of requiring participating school districts to use only agency-vetted software tools that show evidence of improving student outcomes on state tests.

Math teaching is going better for Pitts this fall. She just had her students take their first quiz on the software, and because she understands the program better, she’s better able to use those results to pinpoint the specific help each student needs. She also knows where on the company’s website to find guidance, including a feature that lets her access other teachers’ real-time tips on how they’re using it, which she didn’t know about last year.

Most important, she sees how the tool fits with her instruction. “It’s not teaching for you,” she said. “It’s a tool to support your teaching.”

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NEW YORK — I strap on a virtual reality headset. A screen appears and dramatic music pounds into my ears. I’m told there has been a nasty avalanche and that it’s my job to restore power to the grid.

The exercise is part of a new program that encourages learning middle school math through real world problem-solving, now in use in 190 school districts across 36 states.

The concept caught my attention during a demonstration at HolonIQ’s ‘Back to School’ summit in New York City earlier this month. The lesson seemed a lot more relevant than copying a row of equations from a chalkboard, which I remember from my own more traditional (and boring) math education so many years ago.

I was also intrigued because of the urgency of making math and science more meaningful for middle schoolers – these are the students who lost the most ground in math during the pandemic. It’s a little too early to know if VR lessons like this one will improve lagging test scores, but Anurupa Ganguly, founder and CEO of Prisms, the company behind the platform, is convinced it will.

“This is a whole new way of experiencing math instruction,” Ganguly, a former math and physics teacher, told me, pointing to promising early studies from the non-partisan research group WestEd, along with feedback from teachers and students on Prisms, which is hosted on the Meta Quest platform.

Instead of memorizing equations, students develop structural reasoning skills from solving real-life problems (such as a damaged power grid or limited hospital-bed capacity in a pandemic) with guidance from teachers trained in the purpose of the lessons.

Related: Inside the middle school math crisis

I sat through other new simulations at the summit as well, including Dreamscape Learn, something I’d heard and read about from a colleague who took a trip through its virtual Alien Zoo) and YouTube Player for Education, which is creating virtual lessons, content and assessments.

It’s never surprising to see and hear enormous enthusiasm for technology solutions at conferences: There are always a host of new apps and products on display that come and go. Entrepreneurs and investors packed Holon’s conference, eager to hear more about the global research and analytics platform’s latest survey results and reports on latest trends and ed tech for teaching and learning.

Naturally, that included lots of sessions on artificial intelligence, which many believe will be a bright spot for ed tech investing.

Instead of memorizing equations, students develop structural reasoning skills from solving real-life problems (such as a damaged power grid or limited hospital-bed capacity in a pandemic) with guidance from teachers trained in the purpose of the lessons.

Still, it’s impossible to ignore growing skepticism about the power of digital tools. Sweden moved away from tablets and technology this month in a return to more traditional ways of education – a backlash to its digital-heavy push that many in the country are blaming for student decline in basic skills. 

Sweden is instead embracing printed textbooks, teacher expertise, handwriting practice and quiet time. In addition, the recent UNESCO report entitled “An Ed-Tech Tragedy” documented vast inequality from pandemic-related reliance on technology during remote online learning, and concluded that lower-tech alternatives such as the distribution of schoolwork packets or delivering lessons via radio and televisionmight have been more equitable.

“The bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure,” the UNESCO researchers said in the report, which encourages schools to prioritize in-person learning and make sure that emerging technologies, including AI chatbots that many public schools are now banning, clearly benefit students before they are used.

Related: ‘We are going to have to be a little more nimble: how school districts are responding to AI

For her part, Ganguly is quick to note that Prisms is not an ed tech program, nor designed for remote learning: Once the VR headsets come off, teachers take over and guide students through the lessons. “Ninety percent of our resources are not in VR but in teacher training,” she told me.

I also raised questions about the use of ed-tech and screens during a session I moderated on early childhood education, where entrepreneur Joe Wolf, co-founder of the nonprofit Imagine Worldwide, described bringing solar-powered technology programs to remote areas in Africa, where few children have electricity and less than five percent have internet access; there’s also a dearth of trained teachers.

“There is no other technology in their lives,” Wolf noted, pointing to studies of a trial showing that children in Malawi not only loved using the program, they made significant gains in math and literacy using the program, despite pandemic disruption. Imagine Worldwide works with governments, communities, funders and other partners as it attempts to expand throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

“The bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure.”

UNESCO report, ‘An Ed-Tech Tragedy’

Ultimately, all of the problems both entrepreneurs and educators are trying to solve require a lot more research, noted Isabelle Hau of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, who was also on the panel, a view endorsed by Kumar Garg, vice president of partnerships at Schmidt Futures.

Garg spoke about “learning engineering,” and noted that pushback against education technology is a direct result of how quickly these tools rolled out in the pandemic.

“A billion kids got sent overnight home and we tried on the fly to create an online learning system with very little scaffolding,” Garg said, noting that it was impossible to know how many students were unenrolled and never even got online. “The crisis came, and everyone was like, ‘What’s the answer?’ ”

I suspect there never was one, as our team at The Hechinger Report found during this unprecedented interruption of education worldwide. But there is one result that is absolutely worth paying attention to: Plenty of entrepreneurs, foundations, nonprofit outlets, foundations and investors are looking for answers, and have new ideas that might (or might not) make a difference.

Regardless, we are eager to listen.

This story about teaching with VR was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.

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This summer, the White House persuaded seven major tech companies to make substantial commitments toward the responsible development of artificial intelligence; in early September, eight more joined in. The companies pledged to focus on researching the societal dangers of AI, such as the perpetuation of bias and abuse of privacy, and to develop AI that addresses those dangers.

This is a huge step forward, given AI’s potential to do harm through the use of biased and outdated data. And nowhere is this conversation more relevant than in K-12 education, where AI holds the promise of revolutionizing how teachers teach and students learn. Legislators must begin regulating AI now.

Take speech-recognition technology, for example, which has transformative applications in the classroom: Students can use their voices to demonstrate how well they can read, spell or speak a language and receive real-time feedback. The data generated helps educators tailor their lesson plans and instruction.

Related: ‘We’re going to have to be a little more nimble’: How school districts are responding to AI

However, AI tools can also heighten existing inequities, including when used in speech-recognition tools that don’t adequately reflect the unique speech patterns of many children or account for the breadth of dialects and accents present in today’s classrooms. If the datasets powering voice-enabled learning tools do not represent the diversity of student voices, a new generation of classroom technologies could misunderstand or inaccurately interpret what kids say and, therefore, what they know.

That’s why we must insist on transparency in how AI tools are built and ensure that the data used to build them includes persistent checks and balances to ensure accuracy and bias mitigation before these tools enter the classroom, along with rigorous and continuous testing thereafter.

This will require action from all sides — policymakers, education leaders and education technology developers themselves. As a first step, policymakers around the globe must prioritize writing and enacting policies that establish high bars for the accuracy and equity of AI systems and ensure strong protections for personal data and privacy.

When it comes to AI, we can’t afford the same wait-and-see approach many governments took to regulating social media.

Policy always lags innovation, but when it comes to AI, we can’t afford the same wait-and-see approach many governments took to regulating social media, for example.

Over the last year, I’ve been serving as Ireland’s first AI ambassador, a role designed to help people understand the opportunities and risks of an AI-pervasive society. I now also chair Ireland’s first A.I. Advisory Council, whose goal is to provide the government with independent advice on AI technology and how it can impact policy, build public trust and foster the development of unbiased AI that keeps human beings at the center of the experience.

I’ve been advocating for more than a decade for policies that apply strict safeguards around how children interact with AI. Such policies have recently been gaining appreciation and, more importantly, traction.

The European Union is moving closer to passing legislation that will be the world’s most far-reaching attempt to address the risks of AI. The new European Union Artificial Intelligence Act categorizes AI-enabled technologies based on the risk they pose to the health, safety and human rights of users. By its very nature, ed tech is categorized as high risk, subject to the highest standards for bias, security and other factors.

But education leaders can’t wait for policies to be drawn up and legislation enacted. They need to set their own guardrails for using AI-enabled ed tech. This starts with the requirement that ed tech companies answer critical questions about the capabilities and limitations of their AI-enabled tools, such as:

• What’s the racial and socioeconomic makeup of the dataset your AI model is based on?
• How do you continuously test and improve your model and algorithms to mitigate bias?
• Can teachers review and override the data your product generates?

District leaders should only adopt technologies that clearly have the right safeguards in place. The nonprofit EdTech Equity Project’s procurement guide for district leaders is a great place to start — offering a rubric for assessing new AI-powered ed tech solutions.

And ed tech companies must demonstrate that their AI is accurate and without bias before it is used by young students in a classroom. In this case, by making sure that, when assessing a child for literacy skills, for example, the voice-enabled tools recognize the child’s skill challenges and strengths with as much if not more truth as a teacher sitting with the child. This means frequently testing and evaluating models to ensure they are accessible to and inclusive of a range of student demographics and perform consistently for each. It also means training product managers and marketers to educate teachers about how the AI works, what data is collected and how to apply new insights to student performance.

Independent assessment of bias is becoming recognized as a critical new standard for ed tech companies that use AI. To address this need, organizations like Digital Promise offer certifications to assess AI-powered tools and validate that they are bias-free.

Related: How college educators are using AI in the classroom

So, what’s the endgame of all this work by companies and district leaders? A whole new generation of AI-powered education tools that remove fallible and subjective human judgment when teaching and assessing kids of all backgrounds for reading and language skills.

Doing this work will ensure that educators have access to tools that support their teaching and that meet each child where they’re at in their individual learning journey. Such tools could level the playing field for all children and deliver on the promise of equity in education.

As AI and laws governing it come to fruition, we need to acknowledge just how much we still don’t know about the future of this technology.

One thing is crystal clear, however: Now is the time to be smart about the development of AI, and in particular the AI-powered learning tools used by children.

Patricia Scanlon currently serves as Ireland’s first AI ambassador and is the founder and executive chair of SoapBox Labs, a voice AI company specializing in children’s voices. She has worked in the field for more than 20 years, including at Bell Labs and IBM.

This story about regulating AI was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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In March, the Minneapolis Public Schools district was the target of a large ransomware attack that resulted in thousands of confidential documents — student mental health records, sexual assault incidents, suspensions and truancy reports, child abuse allegations, special education plans — dumped online.

Last year, a similar data breach of the Los Angeles school district led to thousands of students’ psychological records uploaded to the dark web. In 2020, Baltimore County Public Schools was hit with a cyberattack that disrupted the district’s remote learning programs, froze its operations and cost the school system nearly $10 million. On Sept. 1, Pennsylvania’s Chambersburg Area School District was the latest school district to be hit with a cyberattack.

Cyberattacks have become a growing threat to school districts across the country in recent years, with cybercrime gangs viewing school systems as soft targets because of their lack of cybersecurity infrastructure. While many school districts are starting to take steps to secure that infrastructure, there’s still a long way to go, according to experts.

“Students normally shouldn’t have to worry about their privacy and their safety when they’re going around the internet in a school-approved manner,” said Jake Chanenson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of a study released earlier this year on the privacy and security challenges facing K-12 education. But because schools don’t have enough staff with the expertise to properly vet safety risks associated with educational technology, he said, the increased use of that tech is putting students at risk.

School districts that have been hit say they are taking new safety precautions. After a phishing attack in 2019, the Atlanta Public Schools district hired a private firm to conduct security assessments of its networks to find blind spots and weaknesses, according to Olufemi “Femi” Aina, the district’s executive director of information technology. The district has also backed up sensitive school data offsite, invested in insurance that covers cybersecurity liability and added security procedures like multi-factor authentication on school devices, he said. In addition, the district is providing cybersecurity education to employees and students. School faculty and staff participate in mock phishing drills and are sent to cybersecurity training. Students are being taught to set up multifactor authentication and choose complicated passwords.

“If you can prevent your employees or make them more aware, so that they do not click on those harmful emails, or respond to those types of messages, it can be just as effective, if not more, than a lot of different systems that we have,” Aina said.

Days or weeks of missed school and lost instructional time for students can result when sensitive student or employee information, such as social security numbers, student health records and disability diagnoses, is compromised due to a ransomware attack or data breach, he said.

Related: ‘Don’t rush to spend on edtech’

The federal government is starting to step in. During a recent Department of Education cybersecurity summit cohosted by first lady Jill Biden, Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, the agency announced several new initiatives and released guidance for school districts on how to tackle cyber threats and what to do if they are hit by an attack.

The education department plans to develop a special council made up of federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments to coordinate policy and communication between government and the education sector to strengthen school district’s cyber defenses, according to Kristina Ishmael, deputy director of the Office of Educational Technology. She called it a “first step” in the department’s strategy to protect schools and districts from cybersecurity threats and help them respond to attacks.

Meanwhile, Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has proposed a pilot cybersecurity program, which would run separately, but in tandem, with the FCC’s E-Rate program, which was created in the early 1990s as a way to provide affordable internet for schools and libraries. The three-year pilot would provide $200 million to schools and libraries eligible for the E-Rate program to use toward hiring cybersecurity experts and beefing up school network security.  

Groups such as the Consortium of School Networking, or CoSN, a K-12 tech education advocacy group, have long been calling on the FCC to update the E-Rate program to include more cybersecurity protections, said CoSN’s CEO Keith Krueger. “We’ve been saying this is a five-alarm fire for the last two years,” he said.

“None of that really solves the problem that only about one in three school districts has a full-time equivalent person dedicated to cybersecurity.”

Keith Krueger, CEO, Consortium of School Networking, or CoSN

Krueger said he doesn’t believe a three-year pilot is needed to determine the demand for this funding; a coalition of education organizations that includes his group is calling for the pilot to be limited to one year and for the FCC to make cybersecurity funding permanent at the pilot’s conclusion. He added that while the federal government’s announcement of resources for school districts is helpful, much more funding to support cybersecurity infrastructure is needed.

“None of that really solves the problem that only about one in three school districts has a full-time equivalent person dedicated to cybersecurity,” he said. While they wait for additional funding, he said school districts need to get creative in their methods for attracting the cybersecurity professionals their districts need, he said. Such approaches could include partnering with local community colleges, vocational or technical schools to provide internships for students in cybersecurity programs.

Marshini Chetty, associate professor at the University of Chicago and one of the lead researchers of the study on privacy and security risks to K-12 education, recommends that school districts develop a cybersecurity plan or checklist that outlines who to call in case of an attack and how to inform students and faculty. Her co-author on the study, PhD candidate Chanenson, said districts should dedicate a professional development day to cybersecurity and best practices for staff as part of back-to-school planning.

Atlanta’s Aina said school districts aren’t usually able to pay top dollar for cybersecurity professionals. Given the growing threats to school systems, Aina said district leaders need to give school technology leaders access to more funding so they can keep protections for the sensitive data in their schools up-to-date.  

“Most people don’t remember cybersecurity until there’s an incident and then it becomes the buzzword,” he said. “But cybersecurity is all about being ready, being proactive and building those layers around your critical assets to keep you safe before the incident happens.”

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The calculator has replaced the slide rule. Latin is rarely offered in high school. Sentence diagramming has disappeared from most English classes.

Academic disciplines continually evolve to reflect the latest culture and technology. Why, then, are recent attempts to tinker with the high school math canon eliciting such a backlash? Students deserve a chance to learn up-to-date topics that reflect how mathematics is being used in many fields and industries.

Case in point: the debate over including data science courses as high school math options. Data science courses teach the use of statistical concepts and computer programming to investigate contemporary problems using real-world data sets.

The courses have been gaining in popularity, particularly with high school math teachers. They say the more relevant content offers a highly engaging entry point to STEM, especially for students who have been turned off by traditional math courses.

Others say that the courses are in fact detours away from STEM.

The high school teachers remain unconvinced. “It’s just been a pleasure to have an absence of hearing, ‘How am I going to use this?’ or ‘Why do I need to learn this?’ ” Lee Spivey, a math teacher from Merced County, told members of the California State Board of Education at their July meeting, before they voted to make California the 17th state to add data science to its curriculum.

“This course transformed my teaching practices and transformed the lives of many students.Special education, English learners and calculus students worked side by side,” Joy Straub, who taught a data science course in Oceanside for six years, told the board. “Students who had a dislike for math suddenly were transformed into math lovers . . . skilled in statistical analysis, computer programming and critical thinking. I saw many students who never would have taken an AP math course take AP Statistics.”

Despite the enthusiasm from teachers, some university STEM professors in California objected. Their vehement criticism focused on the fact that data science courses were proposed in the state’s math framework as alternatives to Algebra II. Faculty from both of the state’s public university systems went on record opposing the idea that students could take data science or statistics courses to meet university eligibility requirements instead of Algebra II. (They seemingly didn’t realize that a 10-year-old policy already permitted students to take data science or statistics in lieu of Algebra II — though that route is rarely utilized, at least among applicants to the University of California.)

Related: COLUMN: How can we improve math education in America? Help us count the ways

Algebra II, which covers topics such as exponential and logarithmic functions, is a typical university admission requirement. Twenty states consider Algebra II a high school graduation requirement, but about half of those allow for exceptions or alternative courses, according to a 2019 report, the most recent available.

Algebra II is traditionally considered a stepping-stone to calculus, which remains the key to the STEM kingdom. Many believe that bypassing the course risks prematurely closing off doors to STEM.

Critics, however, complain that the course is jammed with topics that are hard to justify as essential. How often do we use conic sections or synthetic division? Even content that is more important — take exponential growth and the very concept of a function — is often weighed down by tedious classroom teaching and rote learning.

At the same time, statistical reasoning and data fluency are becoming indispensable in the 21st century, regardless of profession. Digital technologies are changing everything from fitness training to personal investing. But many students are missing out on this essential learning because so many teachers feel ill-equipped to teach these topics, simply run out of time or bow to the perceived preferences of colleges.

“It’s just been a pleasure to have an absence of hearing, ‘How am I going to use this?’ or ‘Why do I need to learn this?’ ”

Lee Spivey, data science math teacher, Merced County

Interestingly, both sides of the debate cite the importance of expanding access to STEM fields. The standoff reflects differing perspectives about how math is learned, including a tension between content coverage and conceptual understanding.

Algebra II defenders emphasize that the topics are foundational for STEM fields.

However, many students who take Algebra II don’t learn much of the content. And even if students gain proficiency in Algebra II procedural skills, it doesn’t necessarily improve their performance in subsequent college math courses. In college, two-thirds of high school calculus students retake calculus or take a prerequisite course.

Proponents of data science courses say not only is data competency essential to everyone’s future (and to STEM fields themselves) but that the greater relevance the courses provide can actually keep students interested and invested in STEM — including in algebra.

Of course, good content and comprehension are both key to math learning. Ultimately, empirical research is needed to validate how well various paths prepare students for college and STEM success.

That is, states must analyze actual longitudinal data on student progress through different sequences to solve this math dilemma. Surely, both data science and algebra will have some role in the future — likely with some archaic Algebra II content dropped, as proposed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Though press coverage — including of California’s recently approved math framework — has emphasized the extremes of the debate, much work happening around the country exists in the more ambiguous middle.

Numerous efforts are underway to update Algebra II. Georgia’s modernized Algebra II course, for instance, incorporates data science concepts. The University of Texas’ Charles A. Dana Center also provides a model for such a course.

Related: TEACHER VOICE: Calculus is a roadblock for too many students; let’s teach statistics instead

Other efforts focus on ensuring that data science courses teach some algebraic concepts. CourseKata’s founders promote using data science courses to teach some basics of Algebra II. So does Bootstrap, a curriculum development project based at Brown University.

Even in California, where friction over how to fit data science into the mathematical canon has been especially public, most students who take the courses also take Algebra II. So do at least 99.8 percent of applicants to the UC system — which may rise to 100 percent, if some faculty have their way in blocking statistics and data science courses from replacing Algebra II.

Such a decision might preserve coverage of traditional math content. But it would dodge the question of how to ensure that the next generation of students has the statistical and data fluency the 21st century demands. The California teachers are right: We can’t defend teaching techniques like synthetic division when students finish high school unable to use data to understand the world around them.

Pamela Burdman is executive director of Just Equations, a California-based policy institute focused on the role of mathematics in education equity.

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