Friday News Roundup

Today marks the beginning of A Better Path to Learning’s third year of daily commentary focused on providing our young learners with a better system of learning moving forward. Here we go!

And, of course, since today is Friday – here is your News Roundup.

More Teachers Are Using AI-Detection Tools. Here’s Why That Might Be a Problem (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek online reported last week that,

“As ChatGPT and similar technologies have gained prominence in middle and high school classrooms, so, too, have AI-detection tools. The majority of teachers have used an AI-detection program to assess whether a student’s work was completed with the assistance of generative AI, according to a new survey of educators by the Center for Democracy and Technology. And students are increasingly getting disciplined for using generative AI.”

Let the games begin. I can see it now. Teachers using learning time to investigate, judge, and punish their students for using a technology that only become more popular moving into the future.

Instead, maybe the traditional system, and all adult learning leaders, should spend more time with their young learners establishing protocols about how AI can be used as a support with their learning?

Texas Will Use Computers to Grade Written Answers on This Year’s STAAR Tests (The Texas Tribune)

So I guess AI can’t be used by students, but it can be used by the State of Texas to help them grade the STAAR test – the state-wide high-stakes battery of tests given to Texas public school students.

The Texas Tribune online reported earlier this week that,

“The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an ‘automated scoring engine’ for open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness for reading, writing, science and social studies. The technology, which uses natural language processing, a building block of artificial intelligence chatbots such as GPT-4, will save the state agency about $15 million to 20 million per year that it would otherwise have spent on hiring human scorers through a third-party contractor.”

With COVID Funds Ending, How Can Schools Keep Their Best Programs Going? (The 74)

The 74 online reported earlier this month that,

“Over the last four years, an unprecedented $190 billion in federal COVID recovery funds has allowed state and local education officials to try a dizzying array of strategies to meet students’ and educators’ needs. Now, with the deadline for spending the last of that money looming, school systems face tough decisions about which efforts merit continued investment.”

No they don’t. The only tough decision schools districts face is to spend money on those programs that are working for kids and stop spending money on programs and activities that don’t matter when it comes to making kids smarter and stronger.

Sounds simple? But of course it’s not, because most traditional school districts: A) don’t really know what is working and what is not when it comes to learning, and B) don’t have the decision-making discipline, and the political courage, to approve dollars for what is working and “vote no” for spending money that doesn’t impact young learners in a positive way.

Stop Saying ‘These Kids Don’t Care About School’ (EducationWeek)

Last week, Laurie Putnam, superintendent of St. Cloud public schools in Minnesota, wrote an interesting opinion piece for EducationWeek online. Putnam writes,

“’A Crisis of School Absences,’ said a recent New York Times headline. ‘White House Urges Schools to Address Absenteeism Amid Troubling Data’ proclaimed a Washington Post headline. A quick Google search reveals scores of articles that detail the epidemic of chronic absenteeism from our schools.”

“These articles consider the causes and solutions to this troubling trend, suggesting we meet this challenge with remedies that range from the technical, such as incentivizing attendance, to the adaptive, building relationships and making learning more relevant.”

“Yet, when I’m in classrooms, hallways, or in community conversations, I often hear a pervasive and disturbing comment, mostly absent from the media coverage of absenteeism. Perhaps you, too, have heard it? It does something like this: ‘These kids just don’t care.’”

What a crock! In my 35 years in and around public schools, I can honestly say that the kids I met that “didn’t care” were less than 50, and I came into contact with thousands of young learners as a teacher, coach, principal, region superintendent, and educational non-profit leader.

Caring, on the part of young learners, requires leadership, relationship-building, goal-setting, support and celebration on the part of the adult learning leader charged with making those young learners smarter and stronger in their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development abilities.

Indianapolis High School Carves Time Away from Class for Internships for All (The 74)

It’s amazing to me that we are still challenged with merging school world with the real world. So, because we have difficulty mixing school time with the real world, stories like what Indianapolis’s Victory College Prep is doing with student internships continues to make the news.

As reported by The 74 online this week,

“Victory College Prep senior Harlie Sylvia has dreamed of being a veterinarian, so she was ecstatic when her internship through the Indianapolis high school placed her at a local pet hospital.”

“Spending at least four hours every week at the pet hospital, Sylvia’s internship is an ideal example of how the charter school’s mandatory award-winning Firehawks Internship and Real-World Experience (FIRE) program can work.”

Why can’t this happen in more schools? The fact that the traditional system struggles connecting youth with real work experiences is confounding to me.

School Extends Hours, Offers 7 AM to 7 PM Childcare (The New York Times)

This week, The New York Times reported that,

“A Brooklyn charter schools is experimenting with a new way to help families by expanding the school day. Students can arrive at 7 a.m. and leave any time before 7 p.m. For free.”

This is great news, but why are we still celebrating a place for learning being open 12 hours? I could go back 50 years and find stories of schools that figured out a way to stay open longer to benefit their kids and their families. But we’ve never been able to scale this type of idea so that all schools and all communities benefit. Why not?

That’s it for this issue of Friday News Roundup. Have a great weekend. Til Monday. SVB