Friday News Roundup

It’s usually a slow news week returning from the holidays, but I found a few stories you might be interested in.

Quarantines, Not School Closures, Led to Devastating Losses in Math and Reading (The 74)

According to a report in The 74 this week,

“The recent dismal results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress introduced a new learning-loss puzzle. It was assumed that states with more remote instruction would have lower academic scores than those with more in-person classes during the pandemic. But states that had more days of in-class learning also saw declines. The likely reason is due to the hidden disruptions to student learning caused by COVID quarantines.”

“The consensus expectation was that the states with the longest school closures would fare far worse in student outcomes than those where schools were reopened for most of the school year. But students in Florida, for example, where school was in person 97% of the 2021-22 school year, experienced the same 5-point decline in fourth grade math scores as California, where students were in person only 7% of the year. Reading scores showed similar results.”

“Describing schools as mostly remote or in-person masked a deeper level of learning disruption as COVID cases kept students at home instead of in class. Quarantine guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention required an entire class of students to be sent home for as long as two weeks if they had close contact with a child who tested positive. The result was massive learning disruptions that occurred throughout the school year, even in states where schools were officially reopened.”

In 2023, do we really want to invest in an educational system where its productivity can only be assured when students show up in-person to learn?

I don’t think so.

New York City Blocks ChatGPT at Schools. Should Other District Follow? (EdWeek)

This week EdWeek reported that,

“Districts around the country may be tempted to follow New York City public schools’ lead in restricting student access to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence-powered tool that can mimic human writing with eye-popping efficiency.”

“But they would be making a huge mistake, some experts say.”

“’I understand the knee-jerk reaction’ on the part of the nation’s largest schools district, which this week blocked the app on school devices and networks, said Andreas Oranje, the vice president of Assessment and Learning Technology Research and Development at the Educational Testing Service.”

“The platform ‘is a new technology that was not part of the standards that they’re trying to meet,’ he said. ‘But it’s a bad idea because ChatGPT is a fact of life. And we want to prepare students for life.’”

Read my January 4^th post. Schools are going to lose their market share big time if they continue to attempt to prevent the 21^st century from coming into their classrooms. There are school districts that are still banning cell phones for crying out loud.

Go figure.

Education Is About to Radically Change: AI For the Masses (Getting Smart)

Nate McClennen and Rachelle Dene Poth just wrote an excellent article for Getting Smart’s online newsletter. In the article, McClennen and Poth list the potential and the challenges associated with AI. You’ll have to read the whole article to get the details, but here is their list covering both sides:

Positive:

Personalization

Access

Purpose

Assessment

Support and guidance

Learning design

Coaching

Virtual assistance

Adaptive

Challenges:

Bias and accuracy

Literacy

Data privacy

Isolation

Ownership

McClennen and Poth conclude by writing,

“Education leaders need to consider these possible futures now. There is no doubt that K-12 and high ed learners will be using these tools immediately. It is not a question of preventing “AI plagiarism (if such a thing could exist), but a question of how to modify teaching [and learning] to take advantage of these new tools.”

I don’t think anyone inside the NYC Department of Education read McClennen and Poth’s article.

Have a good weekend. Til Monday. SVB