Recently, my 8-year-old son received a birthday card from his grandmother. He opened the card, looked at it and said, “I can’t read cursive yet.”

The problem, he argues, is that school’s feedback system is broken. Grading things like writing assignments is such a time-consuming, arduous task for teachers — especially those who want to offer constructive criticism — that students often don’t get the attention they need. 

“It needs to be instantaneous,” Hedman said. “You need to have that feedback now, not three weeks later.”

A Colorado-based researcher who studies how users interface with technology, Hedman said the same technology that powers plagiarism enablers like ChatGPT now has the potential to make thinking and writing come alive. He has proposed a solution that uses AI to offer immediate suggestions for students as they write.

Working with a small group of teachers, he has developed a free tool called that attaches to students’ Google Docs accounts. As they develop a piece of writing, students can simply flip a switch and ask the app to help organize their thoughts, assist with marshaling evidence, fix grammar and hone a thesis statement.

It’s one of several emerging as designers like Hedman push to flip a bleak script around AI and its negative effects on student motivation. Instead of banning AI or turning a blind eye to students as they outsource writing and critical thinking, he and others say, we should be using it to help students improve and learn more.

When it comes to writing in particular, teachers struggle with how to help students develop skills, Hedman said. Most often, students get good grades for simply turning in a serviceable piece of prose, with little regard for how they developed the ideas. And teachers often have little time to help them through this process. Pressed for time and bored — or even mystified — by assignments, students naturally turn to AI to produce a satisfactory product. 

In order to refocus on the writing process, Hedman invoked the well-known Apple Computer tagline, saying, “We have to think pedagogically different.”

‘Less like red ink’

As its name suggests, Level Up encourages students by lightly gamifying their skill development, rewarding them with a new “level” of challenge each time they improve their writing. Its main distinction lies in offering something students seldom get in school: instant questions and suggestions that respond to their writing in real time. Instead of focusing on the prize at the end — a completed paper — the tool tackles granular tasks such as shortening too-long sentences, clarifying unclear arguments and strengthening passages that employ the passive voice. 

Hedman likens it to — only without the quick, ready-made answers. Instead of allowing users to simply right-click on underlined words or passages to instantly correct them, as the popular app and similar ones do, Level Up challenges students to improve their writing at the sentence level.

Students can ask for several types of feedback: help with an introduction, an argument, a paper’s overall tone, its grammar, or the way it uses evidence to make a point. The opportunity to choose what to work on, Hedman said, makes the feedback feel “less like red ink, less accusatory” to students. And getting immediate feedback that’s not tied to a grade invites them to write more experimentally. 

Developed over the course of several months while Hedman tutored students at a local Girls and Boys Club, Level Up emerged as he pondered the many dilemmas that pop up as digital technologies burrow deeper into children’s lives. “You can’t get students to read anymore,” he said. “You can’t get students to write.” To make matters worse, tools like ChatGPT allow students to “push a single button and it’s going to write.” That allows them to outsource critical thinking at a time when it’s more important than ever.

While improving their writing is key to helping students, he said, it’s not his ultimate objective: “My goal was to understand what they cared about and what they needed” to learn better and enjoy learning more broadly. 

Hedman previously worked with elementary and middle schools to develop a free app called that helps struggling readers learn to think critically about stories. The app offers short mystery and adventure stories and invites users to shape the narrative. 

“What I discovered was, first off, students love critical thinking,” he said. “A struggling reader wants to critically think about a text they barely understand. Our brains are wired to give us a dopamine hit. We really like solving problems or getting feedback or solving the mystery. This is human nature. We like to be challenged, and we like to kind of get over that hump and solve the problem.”

Getting past ‘AI abstinence’

Level Up grew out of four years of research using “emotion sensors” he developed while earning a PhD at MIT’s renowned . He has since worked at several education providers, from the school design startup , Lego and the children’s digital game developer to McGraw Hill.

He helped develop early for Curriculum Associates and noticed that for a lot of students, school “was one of the most broken emotional experiences I’ve ever seen.” Most notably, it features a problematic mismatch between students’ willingness to learn and schools’ inability to engage them. As a result, they lose focus and eventually stop caring about school.

Handing them the keys to powerful AI tools won’t help them develop learning habits, he said, but neither will depriving them of these, as many schools now do. He calls the practice “AI abstinence” and said his recent survey of about 200 students shows that many — especially high schoolers — are using AI heavily to sound smarter in writing and hit required word counts. Students now routinely let AI write their essays, he said, then go back and paraphrase sentences to make them sound more natural. 

“They talk about this process casually, like running spell check,” he , noting that many students have already figured out that AI detection tools fail when humans simply paraphrase their borrowed text. “It’s human writing, technically, but not human thought,” he said.

One student told him, “Pretty much all of my friends use AI every time,” while another likened it to alcoholism, telling Hedman, “I don’t drink, but it’s like testing alcohol. You try it once, then the next day you want more. Soon, it’s just how you do things.”

College writing coach and John Warner, who has written several books on student writing, acknowledged the difficulties of getting students to write, but said that perhaps a better way would be to focus less on their arguments and grammar and more on their ability to explore different kinds of writing, at least earlier in their education.

“We can let young students just ‘do stuff’ with writing and not worry too much about, ‘Is there a thesis?’ They just need to be writing — and they just need to be experiencing writing and reading and expressing themselves, looking at the world, seeing what they think, seeing what they feel, seeing what they mean.”

Warner said we should actually think differently about whether teachers are grading writing effectively. “I’m a skeptic about ‘real time feedback,’” he said, noting that teachers can help students on occasion by waiting until they ask for help. “Sometimes the struggle is the point.” 

Students — especially young students — need encouragement, not instructions. “The feedback would be, ‘Great. Do it again.’ The idea that we need to inculcate these very specific skills as early as possible, I don’t think there’s any evidence for it.”

While banning AI altogether might seem logical, Hedman said, it’s ridiculous in a world saturated with AI. Instead, he proposes that students need teachers to help them understand the endeavor. 

“If we put guardrails and [say], ‘You actually have to reflect on your paper — and you will get graded on this reflection,’ it changes the students’ mindset from ‘My job is to turn in a nice paper’ to ‘My job is to reflect and think about my paper and make edits.’”

The distinction might seem small, he said. “But every student I interviewed said they would prefer it that way.” 

Receiving a grade on the work that goes into an improved essay, rather than simply the end product, is much more motivating, he said. It has actually spawned an emerging field called that is only growing as AI tools improve.

“You put energy and time and reflection into this paper and you should have that be in your grade, not just that you turned in a nice-looking paper” Hedman said. “Because anyone can turn in a nice looking paper with ChatGPT now. But can people put in work and reflect and improve their papers? That’s a different skill.”

“She communicates really well, and the kids just loved it so much,” Robinson said. “I don’t think they totally knew what an engineer was, but they understood that they help build things.”

Such exposure can help schools overcome gender stereotypes that form not long after children start school, according to a from the American Institutes for Research. 

Based on a review of nearly 100 studies from 33 countries, the analysis shows that by age 6, kids already perceive boys to be better than girls at computer science and engineering. Among girls, such beliefs only grow more entrenched over time.

Without efforts to address those perceptions, girls might turn away from “fast-growing tech fields like artificial intelligence,” said David Miller, lead author and a senior researcher who started the project five years ago. 

Released Monday, the findings, he added, have “downstream implications for thinking about what high school course electives girls might decide to choose, what majors they might go into and then later, the workforce.”

from Code.org, a nonprofit that advocates for computer science in K-12, shows that girls’ participation in computer science drops off as they get older. In the elementary grades, girls comprise about half of those enrolled in a foundational computer science course. But participation falls to 44% in middle school and 33% in high school. Experts see promising increases in women , but Miller recommended even greater efforts to expose young girls to opportunities in computer science and clear up  misconceptions. 

One study cited in the paper found that roughly three-fourths of young children think that engineers work on engines and repair cars. Only a third said that engineers design things. 

Just as kids show an early bias toward boys in specific STEM fields, they also develop stereotypes that favor girls in reading and writing. By age 8, students think girls are more verbally gifted, the study found.

Julie Flapan, who directs the Computer Science Equity Project at the University of California Los Angeles, sees opportunities to encourage boys’ literacy development through their passion for gaming. 

“With technology, there’s so much storytelling that goes on in creating video games. It’s not just passively sitting behind a screen, but actually has a lot of creativity, collaboration, problem-solving,” she said. “When we focus on those elements of computing, it is really engaging for a lot of kids.”

For years, the project has offered training workshops for teachers, and over time, participation among K-5 teachers has increased. About 45% of the teachers who attended workshops last year were elementary teachers.

​​”Teachers play a huge role. School counselors also play a very big role as gatekeepers for who gets put into a computer science class,” Flapan said. Parents often enroll their sons in coding camps or encourage them to join robotics clubs, giving them a leg up over their female peers. “Teachers will see that these boys are really excelling in computer science and say, ‘See, they’re just born to do it.’ Then a girl walks in and thinks ‘Well, that doesn’t look like a space for me.’ ”

Efforts to increase computer science and engineering opportunities for girls at the elementary level, however, often depend on educators who have extra time and interest in the topic, said Robinson, now a doctoral student at the University of Houston who focuses on gender disparities in . At Sanchez Elementary, the high-poverty school where she taught previously, several girls attended an afterschool robotics program organized by a social worker. But it didn’t last long.

“It’s really hard to implement that stuff at the elementary level without a class because so much pressure is pulling you in different directions,” Robinson said.

Some previous studies suggested that in early childhood and the elementary grades, children viewed boys as more math inclined than girls, but Miller’s study showed that children think boys and girls are equally capable of mastering the subject.

The analysis found differences in how children perceive specific science fields. Students thought boys would do better in physics, while females would be stronger in biology. That’s why Miller thinks researchers should focus on the STEM fields where stereotypes are the strongest, rather than looking broadly at kids’ attitudes toward math and science.

“Computer science, engineering and physics … should instead take center stage in future research on children’s gender stereotypes about STEM abilities,” he wrote.

It’s also important to recognize progress, said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, founder of , a national network focused on building the STEM educator workforce.

In 2019-2021, for example, girls made up at least half of the enrollment in Advanced Placement at over 1,100 schools nationwide — up from 818 schools the previous year.  The Code.org report also shows that when girls take the AP computer science exam, they earn a score of 3 or higher at rates similar to boys, 61% to 65% respectively.

And over the past decade, women entering STEM fields grew by 31%, compared to 15% for men, according to the . 

“I want to know that all the deliberate efforts we’re making are adding up,” she said. 

At The 74, we’re celebrating the most memorable coverage about schools and students that we’ve read. Our picks include stories on a range of education topics, from teacher shortages and learning recovery to a notable tribute to a crossing guard who left an indelible impression on the students he guided safely to school each day.

Below, in no particular order, are 16 of the articles we felt were the most impactful in 2024. We hope you take the time to read (and share) these important stories written by talented journalists from across the country.

CT Mirror

By , CT Mirror

We know the shocking truth: The U.S. adult illiteracy rate is high, with 21%, or 43 million adults, unable to understand basic vocabulary, compare and contrast information and paraphrase what’s been read.

Jessika Harkay’s Connecticut Mirror story is a carefully executed autopsy of how one young woman became part of that statistic. This story is a standout to me because it documents how a student like Aleysha Ortiz could be pushed through school and graduate – even though she is barely literate. I like its tight structure and details, such as how she had to go to “school two times in one day,” recording what the teacher said during class; and then going home and listening to the recording again. The cost was high and heartbreaking: “To this day I’ve never been out to a movie theatre with friends, ever,” Ortiz reveals. “I didn’t have time to have fun.” .

ProPublica

By  & , ProPublica

Known as a model for school choice nationally, Arizona’s voucher program is a case study ripe for investigation. ProPublica reporters Eli Hager and Lucas Waldron dug into Maricopa County’s data, finding the vast majority of families attending private schools using public funds were from more affluent ZIP codes. This is despite conservatives touting the program as transformational for all. 

Like many inequities in education, ProPublica’s probe led reporters to housing segregation. Private schools, typically located in wealthier areas, remain out of reach geographically, with some facing two-hour city bus routes or $30 cab rides each way. While the reporting in this story is data-driven, the storytelling stays rooted in empathy for the daily lives and concerns of three families who were eager to use the state’s voucher system to pursue a better education for their children, but ultimately gave up on the idea. Instead, the article points out, many parents are coming together to make their own public schools better. Read the full story .

Block Club Chicago

By , Block Club Chicago

School staffing crisis stories were abundant this year, but Block Club Chicago’s investigative reporter Mina Bloom humanized the consequences of teacher shortages, centering the story on one brave student who took control of her class’s education after the teacher’s long absence. A model of how local stories can bring awareness to national issues, Bloom skillfully weaved in meticulous data and the history of the school. 

After a year of headlines decrying the “disengaged student,” it was heartening to read about students so committed and passionate about learning that they refused to let the school’s shortcomings disrupt their education. I will be thinking often about Carolina Carchi, the 15-year-old who taught her classmates about the properties of liquids and solids and how to balance chemical equations. It’s crucial to celebrate young people like Carolina and amplify their voices to hold systems accountable. .

The New York Times

By  and , The New York Times

When I was in grade school in the Midwest we regularly practiced tornado drills, filing down to the basement to duck and cover. Today, the kids are trained to barricade themselves in the classroom to protect against a different nemesis: school shooters. With common-sense solutions to school shootings seemingly stalled, worried parents are taking matters into their own hands to protect their kids at whatever cost.

This New York Times story by Emily Baumgaertner and Alex Kalman is an eye-opening expose of the solutions and products that parents and school districts are being sold to protect their children. At one education trade show, the reporters saw vendors offering a wide range of bulletproof school items, from pencil pouches, clipboards and three-ring binders to hoodies, desks and whiteboards. Bulletproof backpack inserts were also being marketed with the help of an animated turtle named Tank who struggles to pronounce and encourages the kids to crouch behind their backpack “shells” in a safe spot. As Baumgaertner and Kalman explain, the market is almost as absurd as the problem it seeks to resolve. .

Oregon Live

By , OregonLive

For decades, boys have been shrinking as a percentage of American college students. As Sami Edge reported for The Oregonian and its website OregonLive this summer, the gender gap is especially prominent in rural areas, where even high-achieving males are unlikely to proceed immediately to college after finishing high school. As part of a wide-ranging, , the reporter followed several seniors in comparatively remote districts across Central and Eastern Oregon, artfully uncovering their reasons for holding pat rather than signing up for more years of schooling.

Some of the boys Edge encounters say they and their friends feel financially pressured to defer their plans for college, citing either the high cost of tuition or the need to assume responsibility at family farms. But others — including the main subjects of her story, a high school valedictorian and his close friend — simply seem adrift. Maybe they’ll enroll in an apprenticeship, or else take a job at a gas station; maybe they’ll study music, or move East to live with a long-distance romantic partner. Readers will finish the piece with a better understanding of social trends in parts of Oregon that might otherwise be overlooked, but they also gain a sense of the generational ambivalence toward higher education that has taken hold far beyond the Pacific Northwest. .

The Hechinger Report

By  & , The Hechinger Report

Fazil Khan and Sarah Butrymowicz’s story about the nebulous nature of school suspensions in several states shines a light on a critical form of chronic inequity in American schools. The story notes the uneven application of such harsh discipline and how some administrators, recognizing that students of color are too often targeted, are desperate for better alternatives. 

The Hechinger Report’s deep data dive found 88% of suspensions in Texas in 2023 were marked as a “violation of student code of conduct” with no additional detail. “That’s more than a million suspensions last school year alone,” the authors note. In Mississippi, the similarly vague “noncriminal behavior” slot described hundreds of thousands of suspensions over a five-year period. Students in Indiana, Alabama and Vermont were cast out for equally vague reasons, the reporters found. All this can lead to some long-term consequences: Research has shown suspended students often suffer poor academic performance and higher dropout rates. Highlighting this important story is bittersweet as it marks a posthumous tribute for Khan, who died in a fire earlier this year. You can read.

ProPublica

By  and , ProPublica

As a former charter and public school teacher, stories about private, for-profit schools always catch my skeptical eye. When I saw this piece from ProPublica homed in on one such school that serves particularly vulnerable students in a residential setting, I was intrigued. Shrub Oak International School, which opened in 2018 in Westchester County, New York, enrolls students with autism, including kids who have behavioral challenges and complex medical needs and who other schools have turned away. 

Shrub Oak is one of the most expensive therapeutic boarding schools in America, with tuition as high as $316,400 per year, ProPublica found. Despite lacking any meaningful oversight from the state, the school still receives public money from districts across the country. Beyond the financial component, the lack of regulation has allowed the school to renege on promises to parents and has resulted in several alleged incidents of abuse and neglect. Pulling from court documents, interviews with nearly 30 families and dozens of workers, ProPublica’s Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen present a compelling and gutting investigation about what happens when a school meant to protect and educate students in need falls through the cracks of regulatory oversight and fails the people who need its services most. .

Civil Beat

By , Honolulu Civil Beat

School bus driver shortages remained in 2024, and education reporters did their part to cover the chaos. Stories described students waiting hours for buses that never came and districts recruiting lunchroom staff and office clerks to drive. But Megan Tagami of Hawaii’s Civil Beat broke down the reason why the state education department kept canceling and combining routes at the last minute — its heavy reliance on contracts with private bus companies instead of owning its own fleet and hiring its own drivers. One contractor, in particular, failed to notify the department that it would be unable to fulfill more than 100 of its routes until just weeks before the school year started. 

Tagami showed how transportation costs in Hawaii have skyrocketed — in part because the state’s education department increased the size of its bus contracts to avoid these hassles and reimburses parents for driving their kids to school. The piece offered readers a valuable, local angle on a national problem that is disruptive for families and impacts learning time for students. .

AP

By & , Associated Press

Smokin’ in the boys’ room is a thing of the past — and now it appears vaping is, too. In an article for The Associated Press, Jacqueline Munis and Ella McCarthy reveal the startling degree to which schools nationwide deploy “vape detection” surveillance tools to sniff out students’ electronic cigarette use in school bathrooms. Schools have spent millions of dollars on sensors designed to detect e-cigarette vapor and surveillance cameras that capture the students-turned-suspects on their way out of the facilities. Along with privacy concerns, the censors have led to harsh discipline for students, including in-school suspensions and even felony charges. .

The Lens – NOLA

By , The Lens

by Marta Jewson of the New Orleans nonprofit The Lens is a master class on the value of pushing beyond a news item’s top, four-alarm takeaway to probe for broader potential ramifications. Few other outlets so much as noticed that in September Louisiana joined 16 other states in suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that gender dysphoria — a medical diagnosis sometimes made when a person’s gender identity differs from the gender they were assigned at birth — should not be considered a disability. Jewson’s story not only reported that the lawsuit could dismantle portions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides key protections to people in schools and in employment, housing, public services and many other spheres of society, but at a moment when much “culture war” reporting focuses on adult politics, she made a point to include the voices of students who could be impacted by this lawsuit in multiple ways. Read .

Vox

By , Vox

I’m drawn to stories that examine how historical movements have influenced current events and can challenge readers to learn from the past and apply it to what is happening now. In this story, Vox reporter Nicole Narea excels at this by shining a light on the parallels between today’s youth-led pro-Palestine protests on college campuses and student activism of the past, including the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the 1980s campus movements against apartheid in South Africa. 

The story is not just a mere timeline of student protest coverage. It describes why college campuses remain distinctive environments for fostering critical thinking, personal development and cultural awareness. Narea’s story blends history, politics, activism and the power of student voices to illustrate how college students have long been at the forefront of social change. 

The story also notes how swiftly today’s student movements can be met with police crackdowns, arrests and political pressure, even when they are predominantly peaceful in nature. It’s  a thought-provoking piece that speaks to what today’s students encounter as they fight for their rights and those of others — often facing backlash and personal danger. .

The New York Times

By  & , New York Times

There’s been a good deal of reporting on the effects of the pandemic on older children. Less covered is the impact on the nation’s youngest children — those who were babies, toddlers and preschoolers during the height of the pandemic and who are now school-aged.

In this story, The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller and Sarah Mervosh share findings from interviews with teachers, pediatricians and early childhood experts. The bottom line: Many of these younger children are showing signs of academic and developmental delays. There are also concerns related to a variety of areas, like speech and language development, emotional regulation, social interactions, behavior, attention span, core strength and fine motor skills. Researchers suggested that a number of factors affected young children during the pandemic, including parental stress, less exposure to people, more time on screens and lower preschool attendance.

Despite these trends, some experts said recovery is possible, pointing to resources that can help as well as evidence that the early years of brain development in young children positions them well to “catch up.” .

The Boston Globe

By , The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe’s Mandy McLaren and Neena Hagen collected and reviewed more than 2,600 confidential agreements between Massachusetts school districts and families of students with special needs showing that families who can afford a lawyer are often able to negotiate six-figure placements at specialized schools, while those who can’t afford one watch their kids languish in neighborhood schools.

It’s an amazing investigative effort that lays bare what one mother calls the “tedious and maddening back-and-forth” with a district. She negotiates a secret agreement for annual $40,000 tuition payments at a private school, but no one can know — especially not other parents “still fumbling in the dark” for ways to help their kids. The nondisclosure agreements weaken other families’ ability to find “free and appropriate” settings for their kids, as federal law demands. One expert tells the Globe that such secrecy runs counter to the spirit of the law, which envisioned families being resources for each other. “The way this is set up, it’s made to break you,” says a father who doesn’t have the money to fight his kid’s district. .

ProPublica

By , ProPublica

Enrollment drops. Funding cliff. School closures. These are the buzzwords and edu-cliches that often mask the complex realities behind one of the bigger school shifts in recent memory. In this collaboration between ProPublica and The New Yorker, reporter Alec MacGillis reverses the script, focusing on the effects of closing one school — Walter Cooper Academy, located in a mostly Black neighborhood of Rochester, New York — on one family. This close-up approach humanizes a sense of loss that often gets clouded by the abstractions. “There is a pathos to a closed school that doesn’t apply to a shuttered courthouse or post office,” he writes.

While not pulling punches on the disastrous effects of COVID school lockdowns, which sent many parents to charters or schools in the suburbs, MacGillis keeps his eye on the Black families who research shows are disproportionately affected by such closures. “Every time we think we’re doing something right for our kids,” one parent says, “someone comes in and dictates to us that our choices are not valid.”

Houston Landing

By , Houston Landing

When a Houston middle school made a remarkable turnaround in just one year, Houston Landing’s Asher Lehrer-Small wanted to know what was happening there. He spent two full days at Forest Brook Middle school, observing 16 classes, conducting two dozen interviews and joining staff meetings. 

What he found was a school that embraced the priorities of the district’s new superintendent, Michael Miles: stricter disciplinary practices, more rigorous instruction and increased emphasis on test scores. But he also found teachers taking the time to build relationships with students and to bring their own personalities into their lessons.

“Last year, when we started this process, scholars went home tired,” Principal Alicia Lewis told him. “The parents call me. ‘Ms. Lewis,’ they say, ‘it’s too much work.’ It’s not. It’s not too much work. They need it. And look at what happened. They grew.” The story by Lehrer-Small, a veteran of The 74, demonstrates the power of getting out from behind the computer and experiencing what is actually happening in the classroom. .

The New York Times

By , The New York Times

Many of the education stories we read have a big frame, focused on topics like science of reading that affect millions of students but are often abstract.

Joe Sexton’s article for The New York Times highlights the importance of students’ human interactions at school. He focuses on crossing guard Richard Henderson, who greeted children by name at a New York City school and became a beloved member of the community. When he was shot to death on a subway, the school community came together to support his family, setting up memorials outside of the school and establishing a GoFundMe site that raised $378,000. The right policies are obviously crucial, but this article is a good reminder that schools are made up of people. And the best schools have really good people. .

But she’ll readily tell you, “There’s just not a lot of stuff that’s worth funding.”

Knight is president and executive director of the Siegel Family Endowment, created by computer scientist David Siegel, a co-founder of the embattled, $60 billion quantitative trading firm . A former Google and Two Sigma employee herself, Knight sees her role as helping to bring evidence-backed tools to market — tools “that we can learn something from.” 

That has led her to underwrite small, often experimental undertakings such as , which works with students and teachers to promote , focusing on student needs and inputs. For instance, if students want to improve the quality of school lunches, instead of asking nutritionists or school staff to design menus, a school would turn to kids to study the problem and suggest solutions. 

She also supports , an innovative high school network in Pennsylvania, and the , a nonprofit that promotes instruction paced by students, relying on mastery rather than seat time.

Knight has espoused an approach that she calls “inquiry-driven philanthropy,” searching for schools and startups doing important work — and treating grantmaking “as almost field experimentation” alongside more traditional research she funds. “Everything has an orientation toward, ‘What can we learn from this, success or failure, to give back to the field?’”

She has also said educators and policymakers are missing something in the conversation about classroom technology, reducing it to an “all or nothing” question. “We either have to say ‘No tech’ or ‘Very low tech — lock away the phones, keep the kids disconnected, ban ChatGPT, etc.,’ or it’s ‘We’re all in. Every kid gets an iPad. They’re going to learn on technology all day.’ ”

Accordingly, she has many thoughts on AI, the current panic about phones in schools, and how she separates good ed tech from bad.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The 74: You’ve said your goal is to fund “deeply unsexy things” in ed tech to invest in. As someone who gets email pitches every morning about deeply sexy things that I’m very skeptical about, that was a breath of fresh air. What are “deeply unsexy things?” Why is that important?

Katy Knight: Philanthropy can be very much like the private markets and everything else, consumed by . We are just as fallible and just as susceptible to chasing the Next Big Idea, the next sexy thing. And I think that’s fine in some respects. Philanthropy should be risk capital, which means sometimes there’s going to be a sexy thing that will impact the social sector — and we should fund it.

But more often than not, change is happening on the back end. It’s not always something new, and it’s not always using the latest and greatest technology. Sometimes we’re talking about the reality of the digital divide in a place where people want to be talking about generative AI, and that’s not capturing attention. So it’s even more important that we, as a philanthropy with the bully pulpit, are thinking about what are the layers of the bureaucracy that we can tackle to achieve systems change? Even though they’re unsexy from a news perspective or a razzle-dazzle perspective, I think they are actually impactful and interesting.

Let’s talk about some of the things you’re funding, starting with , the non-profit that offers free AI-powered writing, reading comprehension and language skills lessons. What’s your thinking there?

Quill is sexy, in that they’ve got this front-facing technology. Everyone wants to talk about consumer-facing tools. What’s less sexy, I think, is that we’re not talking about how it’s the latest ChatGPT model. This is about years and years of actual teacher feedback. It’s about training something really specific. It’s relatively niche. And those are the kind of AI applications that I think actually have the highest potential: Applying a powerful technology to something niche should have outsized impacts. That kind of thing makes sense to me. I think there’s a lot of opportunities for us to think about, “O.K., if we weren’t just chasing the best, coolest image-generating technology, what might we be doing to actually serve student need and teacher need? It starts from asking questions about what matters, what the actual challenges are, and then you get to something that’s useful — even if it’s not as shiny as some of the other ed tech startup things that are coming across your inbox.

You’re also funding Quill and others to develop a “Responsible AI Playbook.” Say more about that.

Even though the social sector is smaller than the private markets in terms of investment in new ed tech tools, if we have even a small chorus of people thinking about responsible AI and pushing back against this overarching narrative that we just have to let it run amok, that’s net beneficial to the field.

Talk about the small chorus. Who are the other singers? 

The big one is the . The other network we’ve been involved with is the . (based in Zurich, Switzerland) helped found this group of funders, developers and researchers globally who are now thinking together about responsible development, specifically through the lens of “How do we create real-world environments for developers to test their tools and hear feedback from teachers and young people more directly,” rather than just building things that sound like they’ll capture a lot of market share.

Can you say more about the trialing network?

We are funding some of the U.S. work, particularly through our partners at and . Leanlab has been crucial because what they do really at their core is very much aligned with this vision of having real live environments where there’s some co-creation of these tools. We’re funding that work through them. They’ve had two global meetings that I participated in. 

Leanlab Executive Director Katie Boody Adorno has built a very cool, small, nimble organization that’s focused particularly on the notion of the co-design of ed tech tools. They work with startups that are really genuine about wanting to design for impact, not just for investors. And they create relationships with schools to have teachers be paid for their participation and to have teachers actually be testers and provide feedback directly to the designers at these startups. I think it’s just a very cool model for almost an accelerator for impact, rather than an accelerator for marketing.

Do you have thoughts on phone-free schools?

It’s a simple solution to a complex problem. On the one hand, in a vacuum, I might say “Absolutely, we need to be more distraction-free.” And much like when I was in elementary school and they were taking our away, we’ve got to put the phones away. On the other hand, I understand the complex issues of school safety, of child care arrangements in a world where parents have to work. Thinking about what students are in school for — and what we want them to be doing, and how we want them to be learning, and whether or not we want them to feel so attached to these devices — is a really important conversation. But we can’t divorce it from reality: We live in a really uncertain and sometimes dangerous world, and I understand the perspective of parents who might want to be able to reach their kids during the day in the event of an emergency and other things. 

When I was at the last spring, somebody I was with said, “Take a good look around: Half of these guys will be gone by next year.” On the one hand, that seems like a very cynical thing to say. It also seems entirely right. Is it a good thing that companies come and go, that you’re always dealing with somebody who’s got a different vision? Is that a healthy thing for education?

In any private market solution, some cycling of companies and iteration is not a bad thing. I think there’s a mismatch between how the tech startup venture world works and how education products need to work. In the VC-backed startup world, we’re funding a bunch of things with the intention that one or two of them will have 100x, 1,000x returns, and a lot of them will go bust. Those companies are incentivized and encouraged to capture as much market share as possible to achieve that investment return. Whether they are actually impactful to students or not is almost irrelevant in that initial drive to capture market share.

That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be competition and a diverse set of tools that educators can dig into. But if they’re getting served up a shiny new presentation for a new tool that they’re being told they absolutely need every month, that sort of churn is incredibly disruptive. 

How do you separate good ed tech from bad? 

When I hear a startup say that their total addressable market is all 80 million students in the country, I know it’s unlikely that product is worthwhile because there are so few ed tech products — there are so few products in general — that can actually serve every single student in the country. So unless you’ve got a more limited perspective on what the market is, I don’t think you’ve actually aligned what you’re building with the reality of what is needed.

I was heartened to read in journalist Audrey Watters’ last month that she’s returning to writing about ed tech. She wrote that she’s ready to “dutifully remind you that the future of human and machine learning as envisioned by Silicon Valley’s libertarian elite is a pretty shitty one.” Thoughts?

I love that! I mean, look: Not to zoom out too much, but I think as a society we’ve grown somewhat accustomed to being test subjects for tech companies across the board because everything is free. And they say, “Oh, if it’s free, then you’re the product.” And we are. “We’re releasing a new version of this tool. Your email client is going to change tomorrow.” Do you have any say in it? Nope. We’re very used to living in a world where we’re told what to do by tech platform companies and they will manage just how they see fit.

That doesn’t work for education. That doesn’t work when you have no grounding in learning science, pedagogy, or even just being in a classroom. And so I think that is not just an education problem. It impacts the education sector specifically, but I do think it’s a broader societal concern. Our interaction with technology is not one where we have enough agency.

I’ve been working on these questions for years together with a group of colleagues since long before the advent of ChatGPT. After working with hundreds of data scientists from around the globe, we have found that the answer is clear: Artificial intelligence is now as good as a human at evaluating a standard five-paragraph essay and giving feedback on its logic and persuasion.

But our work also revealed that AI alone is not enough, and that perhaps some of the best uses of this technology in writing are helping teachers, not giving students a shortcut in drafting essays. 

Since 2019, our team of experts from , Georgia State University and Vanderbilt University has been working on this issue, overseeing competitions that challenged data scientists to build models that could in pieces of writing and then of these elements in thousands of student essays. 

The did just as well as humans, achieving an . That’s comparable to the human readers who annotated the data. In short, these AI models can identify and evaluate the lead, position statement, supporting claims and evidence as well as a human. They also were able to evaluate how well a student organized an essay and developed arguments.

This technological advance is important because becoming a good writer requires a lot of practice and some expert coaching. It’s not unlike learning to play the piano or to shoot a jump shot. Young writers need to put in the work in order to improve.

However, research shows that too many students do not get the needed to master this most important skill. National Assessment of Educational Progress surveys of students have revealed that only 25% spend more than of their school day writing, the recommended by the Institute of Education Sciences’s What Works Clearinghouse.

One big reason why teachers assign so little writing is that grading and coaching are labor-intensive. Even if a teacher spends just 10 minutes reviewing a two-page writing assignment, it would still take nearly 21 hours to grade them all, assuming the teacher sees 125 students over the course of a week. And that’s just one relatively minor assignment.

This is where new writing tools and technologies like AI can make a huge difference. In some research, these tools have been shown to reduce the amount of time teachers spend on grading f. Other studies suggest they can raise student outcomes state averages.

These findings demonstrate that there are real upsides to bringing artificial intelligence into the classroom. 

AI’s biggest potential when it comes to the writing classroom is in helping educators better identify areas where students struggle. Practically speaking, that means AI could help a teacher identify common mistakes made by students across all classes, which indicate a weakness in instruction or the curriculum. Such information is also helpful when identifying students in need of a specific intervention or remediation.

The algorithm could also be used to push students who are close to mastering a concept by giving them feedback, for example, on their argumentation and prodding them to go deeper or to think more about their thinking — an effective learning strategy called .

Still, as exciting as this is, even the best AI-powered writing tools cannot meet all the complex needs of students. Technology, no matter how precise and fine-tuned, will never be as effective as an engaged teacher at motivating students or mitigating a classroom’s social dynamics. That’s why I believe that all classroom-level AI tools need to be developed and introduced in close partnership with teachers, from start to finish.

For example, our project included focus groups with more than 70 teachers. We learned that they found the AI tools exhibited bias toward students with non-standard English dialects, especially those from marginalized backgrounds. The teachers wanted developers to mitigate that bias and ensure tools were culturally sensitive so students would see their experiences reflected in the AI results. When developers hear from educators early in the development phase, their products are better able to give teachers what they want and students what they need: targeted, relevant writing support.

Isn’t that what most parents want for their children as well? Personalized assistance from teachers who strive to make learning both personal and stimulating? When done right, AI can help educators deliver on that ideal.

The is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

The COVID-19 pandemic had a stark negative impact on students’ math scores, . Math achievement growth over the three-year period from spring 2019 through spring 2022 was substantially lower – approximately 7 national percentiles – than among comparable students the three years prior.

There were even larger decreases among students who are Black or Latino, low income or who attended the for at least part of the 2020-2021 academic year.

Effects on scores for English language arts, which include reading and writing, were small and generally not statistically significant.

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To arrive at these findings, we looked at individual test scores and other data from Michigan.

First we looked at how math and English language arts test scores on Michigan’s annual statewide grew between 2019 and 2022 for a group of students in third grade through fifth grade in spring 2019.

We compared these students’ test score growth with growth achieved by similar students who were in those same grades three years earlier, before the pandemic began. This provides us with a broad view of the impact of the pandemic on school learning as measured through test scores.

We also looked at scores from a series of benchmark tests taken between fall 2020 and spring 2022 to measure how achievement growth changed within each school year .

While other studies also show how the , our research looks at how achievement was affected over the course of the pandemic rather than just the end result. And the picture is pretty clear: Using a set of exams given at the beginning and end of each school year, we found a large drop in achievement between fall 2020 and spring 2021.

While student achievement began to improve in spring 2021, that recovery has been too slow to enable students to reach pre-pandemic expectations for test scores.

And, just as Black, Latino and low-income students suffered the largest drops in test scores during the pandemic, their math recovery has also slightly lagged behind white students and students who were more affluent.

Why it matters

This study adds to the research on how the pandemic appears to have exacerbated racial and economic achievement gaps. These gaps are important because lower achievement among disadvantaged groups could lead to and, in turn, .

What still isn’t known

Research is starting to show how quickly students are recovering and whether students are catching up at a rate fast enough to overcome pandemic learning disruptions. Some interventions, such as , are in place to attempt to speed up the recovery, but we do not yet know how effective they are.

We also don’t know for sure why there were disproportionate learning delays in math relative to English language arts. One possibility is that families found it easier to supplement reading instruction at home compared to math.

What’s next

Our next study looks at how the pandemic affected how students were identified for special education services. We are assessing how the inability to have in-person contact between teachers, school professionals and students made it and who might benefit from special education. Delays in access to these services could have substantially affected their academic, developmental and behavioral progress.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

In a new survey released Tuesday by , a Massachusetts-based think tank focused on public engagement, respondents ranked preparation for college or university nearly at the bottom of their priorities for schools: 47th out of 57 overall.

As recently as 2019, prepping for college ranked No. 10 nationwide, just below learning “from exposure to different ideas and beliefs.” That priority also dropped a bit, to No. 27.

Instead, the findings show, Americans now want something very different from K-12 education: a concentrated focus on “practical, tangible skills” such as managing one’s personal finances, preparing meals and making appointments. Such outcomes now rank as Americans’ No. 1 educational priority.

Top 10 Purpose of Education Rankings

“I think the takeaway is: The American public wants ‘different,’ not just ‘better’ from education,” said Todd Rose, a former Harvard University scholar and Populace’s CEO and co-founder. “It’s pretty clear that there’s a different set of outcomes that they are expecting.”

While college prep should be an option, he said, the data show that “it certainly can’t be the point” of K-12 education going forward. 

Part of that shift comes as Americans realize the diminishing economic value of both a high school diploma and a college degree, Rose said.

A college degree, he said, has always been viewed as a key path to a better, more high-paying career. “It’s not clear that that value is there from college anymore. So then when you pile on the outrageous cost … and the debt you’re incurring, it’s just not true. The value proposition isn’t there anymore.”

So it’s natural for the public to look to K-12 schools for other, more practical priorities, he said.

To be fair, this particular set of skills, with its real-world focus, has sat atop the Populace scale since 2019, along with aspirations that students learn to think critically, “demonstrate character,” and do basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

But the precipitous fall of college prep is significant — and widespread. Actually, respondents with college degrees were nearly as likely as high school graduates or even dropouts to give college prep a low priority score: It ranked 48th for college graduates, vs. 49th for high school graduates and dropouts. The figure was slightly higher — 39th for those with graduate degrees.

To Rose, that finding suggests a “broader zeitgeist shift” about college, one coming even from its graduates, who believe that in its current state, “This thing is untenable. It’s just too expensive.”

The survey of 1,010 adults was conducted Sept. 12-30. Pollsters also surveyed 1,087 parents separately. Researchers asked participants to imagine rebuilding our K-12 education system “entirely from scratch based on the purpose of education as you define it.” Then it set out pairs of priorities that participants ranked.

The data on college preparation suggest that the drop is driven largely by attitudes about higher education among one large group: White respondents, who placed it 46th overall in 2022. By contrast, Black and Hispanic respondents both placed it near the middle of the pack, 22nd out of 57 priorities. Asian respondents placed it relatively high at 9th place.

Even before the pandemic, attitudes about college-going were beginning to fray, research suggests. In 2019, the found that only half of American adults believed colleges and universities “are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.” Nearly 4 in 10, or 38%, said colleges were having a negative impact, up from 26% in 2012.

Rising college costs are, of course, a big factor: At public four-year colleges in 2020, average tuition and fees were than in 2010, according to the U.S. Education Department. 

The rise in negative views, Pew said, arose “almost entirely” from Republicans and independents who lean Republican, with 59% saying colleges have a negative effect on the nation.

Overall, undergraduate between 2009 and 2020, according to the department, from 17.5 million students to 15.9 million. But it’s expected , to 17.1 million students by 2030.

Rose said even the oft-invoked culture wars over “indoctrination” of college students may actually be a function of higher education’s larger failures. “If college was still delivering on the value proposition, of the kind of careers that make for your little slice of the American dream, I don’t know that anyone cares” about indoctrination, he said.

More Rankings of Note

As for priorities in the Populace survey broken down by race, the results reveal a few interesting details: White respondents’ top priority was for schools to teach “practical, tangible skills” — managing finances, preparing meals and the like. In that sense, they basically track with mainstream priorities.

By contrast, Black respondents’ No. 1 priority was thinking critically, while for Hispanic respondents it was allowing students to advance in school “if they meet minimum grade requirements.”

Asian respondents’ top priority: Giving all students “the option to choose the courses they want to study based on interests and aspirations.” That indicator actually fell in importance overall, from No. 2 in 2019 to No. 9 in 2022.

Another big change since 2019: Americans now ­­largely distrust standardized tests, prioritizing how a student ranks against others on such exams even lower than college prep: 49th out of 57 priorities. They’re much more likely to prioritize teacher-administered exams, projects or “performance in real-world applications,” according to the survey.

And they have a new-found appreciation for mastery learning: The idea that “Students advance once they have demonstrated mastery of a subject” jumped from 30th out of 57 priorities in 2019 to 7th in 2022.

Part of that is doubtless due to the forced homeschooling that millions of families found themselves taking part in during the spring of 2020, Rose said. That changed families’ priorities about the purpose of schooling, almost overnight. 

“The pandemic affected our experience with education,” he said. “It put kids back in the home, with parents who watched their kids learn online, if at all. And like most public shocks to systems, it tends to lead to a rethinking: ‘What is it that matters to us?’”

For these families, the experience taught them, “It’s not simply, ‘How do we get kids better test scores and get them into college?’” Going forward, Rose said, “That is not going to be good enough.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation and Stand Together Trust provide financial support to Populace and The 74.

O.K., you’ve probably figured out by now that ChatGPT wrote that self-congratulatory opening. But it raises a question: If AI can produce a journalistic lede on command, what mischief could it unleash in high school English?

Actually, the chatbot, by the San Francisco-based R&D company Open AI, is not intended to make high school English teachers obsolete. Instead, it is designed to assist teachers in their work and help them to provide better instruction and support to their students.

O.K., ChatGPT wrote most of that too. But you see the problem here, right?

English teachers, whose job is to get young students to read and think deeply and write clearly, are this winter coming up against a formidable, free-to-use foe that can do it all: With just a short prompt, it , , , song lyrics, short stories, , , even outlines and analyses of other writings. 

One user asked it to explaining that “Santa isn’t real and we make up stories out of love.” In five trim paragraphs, it broke the bad news from Santa himself and told the boy, “I want you to know that the love and care that your parents have for you is real. They have created special memories and traditions for you out of love and a desire to make your childhood special.”

One TikToker noted recently that users can upload a podcast, lecture, or YouTube video transcript and ask ChatGPT to take complete notes.

ChatGPT Taking Notes From YouTube

Many educators are alarmed. One high school computer science teacher last week, “I am having an existential crisis.” Many of those who have played with the tool over the past few weeks fear it could tempt millions of students to outsource their assignments and basically give up on learning to listen, think, read, or write.

Others, however, see potential in the new tool. Upon ChatGPT’s release, The 74 queried high school teachers and other educators, as well as thinkers in the tech and AI fields, to help us make sense of this development.

Here are seven ideas, only one of which was written by ChatGPT itself:

1. By its own admission, it messes up.

When we asked ChatGPT, “What’s the most important thing teachers need to know about you?” it offered that it’s “not a tool for teaching or providing educational content, and should not be used as a substitute for a teacher or educational resource.” It also admitted that it’s “not perfect and may generate responses that are inappropriate or incorrect. It is important to use ChatGPT with caution and to always fact-check any information it provides.”

2. It’s going to force teachers to rethink their practice — whether they like it or not. 

Josh Thompson, a former Virginia high school English teacher working on these issues for the National Council of Teachers of English, said it’s naïve to think that students won’t find ChatGPT very, very soon, and start using it for assignments. “Students have probably already seen that it’s out there,” he said. “So we kind of have to just think, ‘O.K., well, how is this going to affect us?’”

In a word, Thompson said, it’s going to upend conventional wisdom about what’s important in the classroom, putting more emphasis on the writing process than the product. Teachers will need to refocus, perhaps even using ChatGPT to help students draft and revise. Students “might turn in this robotic draft, and then we have a conference about it and we talk,” he said.

The tool will force a painful conversation, Thompson and others said, about the utility of teaching the standard five-paragraph essay, which he joked “should be thrown out the window anyway.” While it’s a good template for developing ideas, it’s really just a starting point. Even now, Thompson tells students to think of each of the paragraphs not as complete writing, but as the starting point for sections of a larger essay that only they can write.

3. It’s going to refocus teachers on helping students find their authentic voice.

In that sense, said Sawsan Jaber, a longtime English teacher at East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Ill., this may be a positive development. “I really think that a key to education in general is we’re missing authenticity.”

Technology like ChatGPT may force teachers to focus less on standard forms and more on student voice and identity. It may also force students to think more deeply about the audience for their writing, which an AI likely will never be able to do effectively.

“I think education in general just needs a facelift,” she said, one that helps teachers focus more closely on students’ needs. Actually, Jaber said, the benefits of a free tool like ChatGPT might most readily benefit students like hers from low-income households in areas like Franklin Park, near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “The world is changing, and instead of fighting it, we have to ask ourselves: ‘Are the skills that we’ve historically taught kids the skills that they still need in order to be successful in the current context? And I’m not sure that they are.”

Jaber noted that universities are asking students to do more project-based and “unconventional” work that requires imagination. “So why are we so stuck on getting kids to write the five-paragraph essay and worrying if they’re using an AI generator or something else to really come up with it?”

4. It could upend more than just classroom practice, calling into question everything from Advanced Placement assignments to college essays.

Shelley Rodrigo, senior director of the Writing Program at the University of Arizona, said the need for writing instruction won’t go away. But what may soon disappear is the “simplistic display of knowledge” schools have valued for decades.

“If it’s, ‘Compare and contrast these two novels,’ O.K., that’s a really generic assignment that AI can pull stuff from the Internet really easily,” she said. But if an assignment asks students to bring their life experience to the discussion of a novel, students can’t rely on AI for help.

“If you don’t want generic answers,” she said, “don’t ask generic questions.”

In looking at coverage of the kinds of writing uploaded from ChatGPT, Rodrigo, also present-elect of NCTE, said it’s easy to see a pattern that others have commented on: Most of it looks like something that would score well on an AP exam. “Part of me is like, ‘O.K., so that potentially is a sign that that system is broken.’”

5. Students: Your teachers may already be able to spot AI-assisted writing.

While one of the advantages of relying on ChatGPT may be that it’s not technically plagiarism or even the product of an essay mill, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% foolproof.

Eric Wang, a statistician and vice president of AI at Turnitin.com, the plagiarism-detection firm, noted that engineers there can already detect writing created by large-language “fill-in-the-next-word” processes, which is what most AI models use.

How? It tends to follow predictable patterns. For one thing, it uses fewer sophisticated words than humans do: “Words that are less frequent, maybe a little more esoteric — like the word ‘esoteric,’” he said. “Our use of rare words is more common.”

AI applications tend to use more high-probability words in expected places and “favor those more probable words,” Wang said. “So we can detect it.”

Kids: Your untraceable essay may in fact be untraceable — but it’s not undetectable. 

6. Like most technological breakthroughs, ChatGPT should be understood, not limited or banned — but that takes commitment.

L.M. Sacasas, a writer who publishes, a newsletter on technology and culture, likened the response to ChatGPT to the early days of Wikipedia: While many teachers saw that research tool as radioactive, a few tried to help students understand “what it did well, what its limitations were, what might be some good ways of using Wikipedia in their research.”

In 2022, most educators — as well as most students — now see that Wikipedia has its place. A well-constructed page not only helps orient a reader; it’s also “kind of a launching pad to other sources,” Sacasas said. “So you know both what it can do for you and what it can’t. And you treat it accordingly.” 

Sacasas hopes teachers use the same logic with ChatGPT.

More broadly, he said, teachers must do a better job helping students see how what they’re learning has value. So far, “I think we haven’t done a very good job of that, so that it’s easier for students to just take the shortcut” and ask software to fill in rather meaningless blanks.

If even competent students are simply going through the motions, he said, “that will encourage students to make the worst use of these tools. And so the real project for us, I’m convinced, is just to instill a sense of the value of learning, the value of engaging texts deeply, the value of aesthetic pleasure that cannot be instrumentalized. That’s very hard work.”

7. Underestimate it at your peril.

Open AI’s Sam Altman earlier this month tried to lower expectations, that the tool “is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.”

Ask ChatGPT to write a , for example, and … well, it’s not very good or very Dylanesque at the moment. The chorus:

Baltimore, Baltimore

My home away from home

The people are friendly

And the crab cakes are to die for.

Altman added, “It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now.” 

The tool’s capabilities in many ways may not be very sophisticated now, said , an English teacher in northern California. “But we’re fooling ourselves if we think something like ChatGPT isn’t only going to get better.”

Carr asked the tool to write a short story about “kids who ride flying narwhals” and got a rudimentary “Golden Books” sort of tale. But then he got an idea: Could it produce an outline of such a story using Joseph Campbell’s “” template?

It could and it did, producing “a pretty darn good outline” that used all of the storytelling elements typically present in popular fiction and screenplays.

He also cut-and-pasted several of his students’ essay drafts into the tool and asked it to grade each one based on a rubric he provided.

Revolutionizing the English classroom with AI—how can we use technology to enhance student learning and engagement?

“I tell you what: It’s not bad,” he said. The tool even isolated each essay’s thesis statement.

Carr, who frequently posts TikToks about tech, admitted that ChatGPT is scary for many teachers, but that they should play with it and consider how it forces them to think more deeply about their work. “If we don’t talk about it, if we don’t begin the conversation, it’s going to happen anyways and we just won’t get to be part of the conversation,” he said. “We just have to be forward thinking and not fear change.”

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too sanguine. Asked to write a haiku about is own potential for mayhem, ChatGPT didn’t mince words:

Artificial intelligence

Powerful and dangerous

Beware, for I am here