The Department of Education is concerned that artificial intelligence systems could be used to monitor teachers once the systems are introduced in the classroom and warned in a new report that allowing this to happen would make teachers’ jobs “almost impossible ” would make.
The department released a report this week on “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning,” which also argued that AI should never be used to replace human teachers.
The report aims to assess the prospects of extending AI to the classroom. While it says AI could make teaching more efficient and help tailor lesson plans to individual students, it warned that AI could also expose teachers to increased scrutiny once deployed.
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President Biden’s Department of Education, led by Secretary Miguel Cardona, released a report saying AI in the classroom should not put teachers at risk of being overseen. (Photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“If we enable a voice assistant in the kitchen, it can help us with simple household tasks, such as setting a kitchen timer,” the report said. “And yet the same voice assistant can hear things that we wanted to keep private. These kinds of dilemmas will arise in classrooms and for teachers.”
The report envisions the possibility of AI being used in live classroom environments to capture data that helps teachers do their jobs, for example recommending certain resources based on the topics being taught, but that puts teachers at additional risk with him.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“The same data can also be used to monitor the teacher, and that monitoring can have implications for the teacher,” it said. “Achieving reliable AI that improves teachers’ work will be nearly impossible if teachers are given more oversight.”
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Cardona’s report said AI systems that go too far and monitor teachers would make teachers’ jobs “almost impossible”. (Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)
The department concluded that when considering AI for classroom use, “adequate” protection from teacher oversight should be sought. Other questions to ask are whether AI eases the burden of education, whether teachers have control over AI tools, and how AI can be used to “improve equivalence, reduce bias, and increase cultural awareness.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Biden administration’s push for AI systems that avoid teacher oversight could reignite political battles over how much authority teachers have over students and what rights parents have to know what is being taught. Last week, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona tweeted that “teachers know what’s best for their kids” and “we should trust teachers,” sparking complaints from prominent Republicans that parents should have substantive input into school curricula.
The administration has also come under attack from Republicans and parent groups after the Justice Department released a memo in 2021 urging officials to investigate threats of violence against local school administrators and teachers. That memo came out after the National School Boards Association urged the administration to consider these threats a form of “domestic terrorism.”
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Bidem Justice Department has been accused of siding with teachers over parents. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The group later apologized for using that term, but Republicans have since accused the Biden administration of siding with teachers and working against parents who seek information about what their children are being taught and don’t always get answers.
The Ministry of Education report also stressed several times that AI should never be a substitute for human teachers.
“Some teachers are concerned that they might be replaced – on the contrary, the department firmly rejects the idea that AI could replace teachers,” it said. “At no point are we suggesting that AI can replace a teacher, guardian or education leader as the guardian of their students’ learning.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The report advised that as AI becomes a part of the classroom, policy makers should work towards “always center educators (ACE)”.
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“Practically speaking, practicing ‘ACE in AI’ means taking a humanistic view of teaching at its heart,” it said. “ACE is leading the department to confidently answer ‘no’ to the question ‘will AI replace teachers?'”
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