I want to hope that my local school district is the only district that has landed on this bad idea, but it probably isn't. So we'd better talk about it.
The big focus on a recent meeting was the teacher contract negotiations, so even the newspaper missed one feature of the 2.5 hour meeting until later, when the reporter circled back to the part of the meeting where the board checked out the annual year in review report as well as goals for the current year. Then comes this sentence.
Both presentations were compiled and read by artificial intelligence.
I had also missed this. I am not able to attend meetings on Mondays, so I check out the video record, but I had honestly noped out on this one before the report appeared.
It is spectacularly absurd. The AI opens with "I am so excited to be guiding you through this tonight" in a pleasant female voice. Of course, the AI is not "excited" in any sense of the word, but companies understand that AI is easier to market if you build it to mimic human behavior. The presentation includes lots of imitation human presenter tweaks. Starting a new section-- "Let's get into it" as if the AI and the humans in the room are a "we". On attendance-- "because, let's face it, you can't teach a student who isn't sitting in the classroom."
And there are attempts to imitate an emotional affect as well. On the improvement in attendance-- "the sheer scope of the improvement here is absolutely incredible," says the computer program that is incapable of believing anything. "You've got to see what happened at [one other school]. This is a real game-changer." The AI is really mimicking an engaged human presenter who has an actual presence or investment in the district. Introducing another section-- "I want you to just take a second and absorb this." The AI is of course incapable of wanting anything, and if I were a board member I would bristle at the notion of doing what a program "wants" me to do.
The AI also mimics human tone of voice with lots of heartfelt emphasis on various portions, and salting it with little touches like "kind of" and extra modifiers.
The strategic goals for 2026-27 were also presented by AI, but for whatever reason, that AI was a male voice that says, among other things, "As your administrative leadership team, we know it is our absolute duty..." and I am wondering which position on the team the AI is filling. It also closes with "I want to leave you with this..." even though there is no "I' and it does not "want." But generally this AI does not have its human mimicry turned quite so far as the first. Still, why is it here at all?
Why? Why? Why? Why is this report not being presented by the administration? I emailed the board members and superintendent and received no response (and to be fair, they've got their hands full with a couple of other issues we won't get into here).
You can argue that my objections are petty and nit-picky, that there's nothing wrong with using some automation to spice up what would be a boring parade of data. Why not have the reports read out in a personable and engaging manner? And afterwards district leaders can post the AI presentation straight to the website (which they have). Sure, you could do all of that with live humans, but if you can use AI to polish it up and save some trouble, why wouldn't you? What's the big deal?
Well, it's a big deal to me to know that the school district is being run by humans. Maybe I am just getting worked up over cosmetics, but I have some serious objections to this use of AI.
First, the AI doesn't get interrupted by questions for clarification. For example-- One of the goals that the district "achieved" was to improve the school climate as measured by referrals handled by the office. Those numbers went down, which can mean one of two things--1) the actual incidents of misbehavior decreased or 2) the reports of such incidents decreased. Place your bets on which is more likely. It's a point that ought to be discussed, but there is no interrupting the AI. There were a couple of questions after the presentation, but nothing got into the meat of the presentation.
AI, like any canned presentation, offers no opportunity for discussion, question, or dialogue.
Second, it puts some distance between the administration and at least one really questionable choice. After making noise about the drops in math scores, the AI gets to the "solution."
But listen, the district isn't just sitting still with this data. Looking ahead to the upcoming 2026-2027 school year, they are rolling out a revised schedule that includes a double period block of math instruction for all students in grades six through eight.
This, extrudes the AI, is "a bold move to tackle the data." It is not. It is an old idea that was widely tried earlier in this century and which failed. Not only did it fail, but the AI fails to discuss what portion of the students' education will be cut in order to give them double math (nor does it mention any hiring of additional math teachers to handle the doubled load). We've seen this movie before-- students lose history, science, arts, music, study halls, other enrichment opportunities for an initiative that barely moves the needle if at all. In fact, this exact idea was attempted in this very same district years ago. It did way more harm than good.
But you will notice that nobody in administration has to own this bad idea. "The district" in the form of an unspecified "they" is rolling this out. No administrator stood up to make a case for this.
AI is like the ultimate passive voice. "This thing just happened!"
Third, this is a lousy example to set for students. One of the major challenges of classroom teachers right now is convincing young humans that it's a bad idea to use AI as a shortcut for getting their work done. And here are the leaders of the school district, using AI as a shortcut for getting their work done (and to any teachers who are also doing it, you knock it off, too). This is not AI being used to extend or augment human capabilities; it's just AI used to outsource the work that humans are perfectly capable of doing. How would you explain to a student that what the administration did was somehow different from having AI write your science or English paper?
I don't imagine for a second that my district is unique; I expect that some AI company has identified school administration as a market for this sort of cognitive outsourcing. It's easy to let it go because it can seem like a small thing, but if a school district is going to prioritize human beings and human relationships, then that priority should be expressed throughout the district's actions. At the very least, if you are going to use AI, use it transparently and honesty and don't cloak it with mimicry that let's it suggest human attributes that it absolutely does not have. So I'm going to go ahead and shake my aged fist at this particular cloud and encourage my district (and yours) to do better.
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