How AI Will Truly Transform Schools

Earlier this year, Jewish day school leaders across North America, alongside their colleagues in other educational systems, found themselves needing to react to the sudden emergence of an accessible AI tool—which, for an education world still feeling the long-tail effects of the pandemic, had all the appearances of another major hurdle to overcome.

The initial reaction to ChatGPT in many schools was to blacklist it, and though this remains the policy in some places, my colleagues and I at Future Design School—who have been working with school leaders across North America on strategies to embed AI—are starting to see a promising shift on two important fronts. First, forward-thinking school leaders are recognizing that yes, AI does change everything, but they’re using this moment of transformation to reexamine the very essence of education. As a result, teaching and learning itself is adapting to and adopting AI—and rightly so, since the rapid evolution of machine learning is disrupting every employment and economic sector, and making it clear that many of the skills today’s students are developing in schools are dangerously out of date.

While this revolution is well on its way, it’s the second shift that is particularly exciting. Though still in its very early stages, some school leaders are now implementing AI and machine learning tools to automate back-office tasks and, more importantly, enable personalized and adaptive learning opportunities for their students. To that end, as part of Stronger Together, Prizmah’s pilot initiative to drive collaboration across Boston-area Jewish day schools, 330 educators from 10 schools gathered in August for their first-ever community-wide professional development day.

They chose the topic of AI in Jewish education because it was a timely topic that could engage teachers of all grades and subject areas. The program, both in terms of registration and level of engagement, was an overwhelming success, says Stronger Together Director Aimee Close. “We heard from several participants that as a result of this professional development program, they now look at artificial intelligence completely differently,” she says. ”They came in seeing it as a threat, and now see it as a useful tool that they want to continue to learn to harness for their teaching.”

With that in mind, here are some of the innovations we’re seeing (and championing) in education today, which together represent the deepest and most meaningful transformative impact of AI in our schools.

Holistic Data Analysis and Trend Identification

School systems collect massive amounts of data, from assessment results and attendance records to graduation pathway streams and click rates on shared resources. Sometimes, individual streams of data are put to good use, in the service of student success and teacher empowerment. But all of this information is highly siloed, and as a result, it is rarely analyzed holistically to identify important trends. For example, individual student and cohort engagement across Hebrew and general studies classes often operate in separate realms within our schools, with the result that the same kids appear very differently.

In addition, our schools often work without the technology resources they need in order to identify and take action on trends that data could reveal. But AI tools (combined with robust, zero-trust privacy frameworks) present a golden opportunity to provide the fulsome support our students and teachers deserve. AI can perform the initial analysis work on huge sets of data and flag predetermined trends for school leaders to act upon.

For example, AI could automatically identify the need in a school for a parent engagement and communication initiative, based on analysis of click-through data in the parent portal of a school’s learning management system. Additionally, individual teachers (or entire schools) can import comments and other formative feedback into an AI engine, and engineer a prompt that provides overall or segmented sentiment analysis—think report card comments generated by pulling together every comment a teacher has provided on a student’s work throughout the school year.

Personalized and Adaptive Learning

Personalized learning is an established education trend, but its rollout is often hampered by that one resource that all teachers want but few (if any) have to spare: time. Here again, AI tools present an exciting potential solution. For example, one US school that we are working with is developing an AI system that allows students and their parents to explore potential opportunities and pathways based on what their assignment submissions and diagnostic responses reveal about their passions, interests, aptitudes and skills. Meanwhile, Google Classroom and other leading learning management platforms are deploying AI tools that instantly adapt teaching materials into personalized, interactive student assignments, with data collection through ongoing, formative feedback opportunities baked right in.

Even more exciting, this school is working to align the recommendations the system generates to state standards and identified workforce needs in their region. It’s important to note that a tool like this does not replace the need for teacher feedback and guidance—far from it. The tool provides the roadmap; it’s up to the teacher and student (with support from parents/guardians, guidance counselors and other members of the student’s support network) to turn these personalized insights into results.

Automating Thankless Tasks

There are few sectors that retain as many manual and analog processes as education (with apologies to law clerks and hospital administrators). The front office of a school is a bastion of thankless, repetitive tasks that are ripe for automation. The technological investment cost is negligible; what’s most essential is the fostering of the growth mindset necessary to see the benefit of this transformation.

Adaptation can be a tough pill to swallow, but when it comes to using AI to digitize burdensome administrative tasks, the results speak for themselves. I’ve seen schools using AI to triage parent emails, generate permission forms, disentangle course-scheduling mishegas and even send triggered reminders to students and staff. For example, an AI engine can see that a student has not turned in any work in the past two weeks and her parents have not opened the last two emails home; it will send a note to the teacher that a phone call may be warranted. What’s more, change begets change; as more front offices adopt AI, the tipping point gets closer and closer.

We are at the very beginning of unpacking the potential of AI and machine learning to transform education, and not a moment too soon. Job providers are calling out for graduates equipped with the skills to navigate an increasingly complex world, and society itself is transforming at the speed of light. As schools race to adapt and respond, they need to use every available tool in their toolkit. It’s time for school leaders to take the courageous path when it comes to deploying emerging technologies—in classrooms, and beyond.

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AI and Tech

Fall 2023