When you hear the words “AI” and “school” in the same sentence, you might think, “Hold on, isn’t that how kids these days cheat?” But not so, say some of the nation’s hardest-working educators, who are now using new AI “ed tech” tools to help reform the long-struggling public education system.
“AI and adaptive software have completely changed the face of the classroom, the atmosphere and the culture of our school. The engagement of our students has been incredible,” Pease Elementary Principal Micah Allott said in a video call from her office in Odessa, Texas.
Since taking over as principal in 2021, Allott is one of thousands of school principals across the country who have gone all in on “blended learning,” with teachers now using tablets equipped with programs such as Age of Learning’s My Math Academy and My Reading Academy to provide technology-assisted, personalized instruction for each student.
“Everything has really changed. Experiencing the campus now compared to three years ago is truly magical,” Allott explained.
“This (My Math Academy) helps us understand where each child is at and how they can learn most effectively,” adds Peace Preschool teacher Shadiana Saenz. “These kids haven’t necessarily grown up in an environment where they always get what they need.”
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Three years ago, students were just beginning to return to classrooms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Allott was still relatively new as principal of the kindergarten through second grade school, which serves about 550 students. And she faced even more challenges.
Odessa sits on the border of the American Midwest, home to some of the world’s largest oil fields and the football team that inspired the novel, film, and TV series Friday Night Lights.
The region has also seen highs with oil booms and winning streaks, and lows with recession and losses. 2021 has been a low year.
A spate of oil industry bankruptcies and the impact of the pandemic on an already economically challenged community have forced Allott to fight to ensure her largely Hispanic, economically disadvantaged students aren’t left further behind.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA), which oversees Texas public schools, gave Peace an “F” grade based on student grades and test scores. Ironically, poor grades could make it harder for schools to get badly needed funding and support.
At a time when Pease, and similar public schools and communities across the country, were struggling, educators needed a way to kill two birds with one stone — and a new AI technology tool could do just that.
What are the benefits of AI in the classroom?
“There is no classroom where all students learn in exactly the same way or at the same level,” Diana Hughes, vice president of product innovation and AI at Age of Learning, said in a video call. “What we see in the more than 600,000 classrooms we serve is that kids are disjointed, and very few students are where they should be at the start of class.”
Hughes says there are a few reasons for this, which he says the company has been working to solve since it began developing its flagship platform, ABCmouse, more than 10 years ago.
“From extensive research, what really works is to assess each kid individually to find out what they know, what they don’t know, and if they’re ready to learn,” she says. “Then go back and reteach them anything they didn’t understand, and then move on. You don’t move on until every kid in the class has it mastered. And then you do that all day, every day, for the rest of their education. And that’s a crazy amount to ask of one teacher for an entire class of 30 kids.”
Hughes says this is where AI can change their future.
“We introduce a new concept, let them experience it, and then we have a game designed to assess their comprehension,” Hughes explains. “So while they’re playing the game, we get a lot of data on whether they understood[what was taught]. And then if we feel like they didn’t understand, because they got the answer wrong, for example, we can give them additional feedback.”
What makes this approach different from “standard” classroom learning is that it only moves on to the next topic or idea when a student is ready. “It’s like a loop of teaching, assessing, helping if necessary, and then choosing if they’re ready or not,” Hughes says. “It’s very different from the ‘one size fits all’ approach of the traditional model. This way, other students don’t get left behind, and older students don’t get left behind.”
The results speak for themselves: Age of Learning has a proven track record of success in some of the country’s highest-risk, lowest-performing schools, including Jefferson County in Tallahassee, Florida. After 15 years of “failure,” students who were often five years behind grade level improved assessment scores after just 12 hours of AI-assisted learning.
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At an entirely different school, Austin’s $40,000-a-year private Alpha High School, many students use app-based “AI tutors” to score an average of 1,545 on the SAT (out of 1,600), compared with the national average of 1,030.
“AI is the great equalizer,” Mackenzie Price, co-founder of 2hr Learning and Alpha School, told me over the phone. “AI is infinitely patient. It doesn’t matter how long it takes to master a concept, which is not possible in a traditional classroom. It doesn’t matter if the student is black, white, or brown. It doesn’t matter if the student is rich or poor. It doesn’t matter if the kid is in the 10th percentile or the 99th percentile. AI can raise the bar of what’s possible.”
In the “Alpha School,” students will spend two hours in the morning focused on AI-enhanced personalized instruction, with instructors acting as “supportive guides and counselors” rather than “traditional teachers,” Price said. Students will spend the rest of the school day developing life skills, arts, sports and even entrepreneurship.
“It makes learning so much more fun,” said Peyton Price, 18, a senior at Alpha High School and the daughter of Mackenzie Price. One example Peyton shared was when she recently used AI to replace the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s song “Blank Slate” to help her study for the AP U.S. Government final exam.
“Nice to meet you. Let me introduce you to AP Gov. Where do I start? The Declaration of Independence set the stage for a new chapter in American democracy. Natural rights, sovereignty, and the social contract are certainly principles that guide our actions.”
She’s also using her mom’s latest tech tool, a new “TikTok for studying” called TeachTap, in which AI-generated versions of historical figures like Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, and hundreds of others talk to students and interact with them as they learn. TeachTap is free to start, but will cost $20 for “discounted course access” or $250 for “unlimited AP test prep.”
“A lot of adults and educators are saying, ‘TikTok is bad,’ or ‘social media is harmful,'” Payton explains, “but what’s worked for our generation is people asking, ‘What do you find funny? What do you enjoy?’ and then figuring out how to make a version of that that’s useful for their education.”
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Mackenzie Price added: “Our work is about taking all the potential negative effects of screen time and turning it into learning. We’re using the power of AI for good.”
Can AI help all children in public schools?
Back in Odessa, Trip Galloway, an 8-year-old second-grader, told a similar story. Trip is an advanced student at Pease Elementary School. “He’s in second grade and he can already read and write at a ninth-grade level,” his mother, Savannah, told me by phone. “He’s a fast learner, so he would get bored in school and lose focus. Once he started using AI, he improved his grades, he was able to focus better and reach his full potential.”
“This is important because the app gives you information when you need it, and it gives you things that teachers wouldn’t normally tell you,” Tripp said. “Most of my friends are in lower grades than me, and before it wasn’t fun at all, but now it’s fun.”
When I asked Tripp what it would be like if classrooms went back to the way they were, he groaned and replied, “AI would make lessons faster and more fun, and less boring. It’s a lot better than doing worksheets all day and having a teacher teach you all day.”
That’s hard news for veteran teachers like Carlton Conn-Oquendo, who has taught a variety of grades and subjects at Chicago’s Hawthorne Scholastic Academy for nearly 42 years and knows firsthand that no matter how much AI tools help students and teachers, they will never be able to replace the most important parts of her job.
“Technology is a great tool, but it can’t replace human connection,” she said over the phone. “Most of us still remember that one teacher who really spoke to us and made an impact on us. You can augment that as much as you want with technology, but having that connection really makes a difference to kids.”
Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer technology columnist and on-air correspondent. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. She can be reached at JJ@Techish.com.