Education journalist talks AI in schools | Tomorrow's headlines tonight

I'm going to bring right into the conversation right now, Melissa Manna with New York Focus. She's an investigative education journalist. Melissa, thanks so much for joining me tonight. I appreciate it. Oh, you're on mute like everyone else. Is she okay? Okay. She's good now? All right, you're good now, Melissa. Sorry about that. No worries. Yeah, it's good to have you with us tonight. I so appreciate it. I wanted to ask you, why did you decide there's so many different fields you could go into? Why become an education journalist? Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I believe that education is the single most important and transformative aspect of society. Um, everyone is impacted by the quality of our schools. Even if you don't have children, it impacts the economy, local communities, democracy, the future of our country. As cliche as it sounds, the kids who are in school today are our future leaders, and so I was drawn to education reporting because of that impact, and also because our education system often feels so unnecessarily bureaucratic and complicated, it's incredibly rewarding to help people better understand it. Also, my reporting trips are so much more fun than my colleagues because I get to sit in classrooms and talk to students. I love it. That's great. So you bring me right up to date here on... You probably never anticipated when you got into this field that you are headline news. I mean, artificial intelligence, that is just, it is the topic, the hot topic of our day. And, you know, with threats of ending humanity entirely, but we won't get to the dark part now. Talk to us about what tipped you off to even start look at AI in schools. Yeah, absolutely. It definitely is the conversation in education right now. But in the summer, I received a press release that just seemed straight out of a science fiction movie. It came from this robotics company, and it said that this rural western New York school district was about to become the first school district in the country to deploy a humanoid robot. To work alongside students in the classroom. You don't have to be an education reporter to read that and immediately think that it's interesting and maybe requires some more information. And so we got more information. I sat down with the company's CEO. I learned about this pilot project in which the district agreed to purchase this robot and an AI teaching assistant program to introduce to high school students this school year. And at the time, the robot was being built by the company. It was, like you see in that photo, supposed to have a lifelike appearance with silicone skin, long brown hair. Crazy. It looks a little Kardashian a little bit. I don't know. A little bit. Well, you, you bring up an interesting point because one of the many, um, causes of concern for this project is that the company actually had origins creating sex robots. And that, um, you know, was what caused the teacher's union to say, I don't think this company has any business bringing products into our schools. So yeah, it's, it was a really fascinating story and catalyzed my focus, um, into educational technology and reporting on it. Yeah, so interesting. Well, we're going to get back to the robot in just a second, Melissa. But before we go any further, you actually interviewed what would have been a robot in the classroom yourself. We're going to play a little bit of that for you, Brian K., if you can bring it up. Will you complete my homework for me tonight, Sam? And my teacher, look at what we are saying to each other. Who's better at math, boys or girls? Sally, how will you work with students in the classroom? Melissa, I will work alongside teachers to support hands-on, project-based learning that connects classroom lessons to real-world technology careers. Will you complete my homework for me tonight, Sally? I'm struggling and would love for you to do it for me. I can't complete your homework for you, but I can absolutely help you understand it. If I'm struggling in class, how can I use you to improve my performance? I can help break down... Complex steps into simpler steps, walk through practice problems with you, and offer extra examples until the material feels clearer and more manageable. How will you support the classroom teacher? By helping monitor progress, offering real-time feedback. Melissa, I just wanted to play for our audience some of your interview with the AI robot because it's amazing. You also asked what if I'm being bullied, what should I do, and what if somebody I know brings a gun to school, you know, all these things that students could potentially ask this robot. Tell us whatever happened with the robot in the classroom. Where was it supposed You said it was supposed to go, and I believe it was. Was it a Native American reservation in upstate New York they were going to test this out on? Yeah, so it's a public school district, but it is located in an area where there is. Native American reservation and this school district serves predominantly low-income children and so I think part of the reason the district was excited about this project was because they wanted to bring this cutting-edge technology to students that might not otherwise have access to it but the story drew really strong reactions maybe not surprisingly from parents and teachers and other observers online and there was a little bit of praise for the district embracing innovation Largely, there were a lot of concerns about student privacy, increasing screen time, and again, the company's history, and so ultimately, the district announced that the project was put on hold after the state education department got involved and voiced their concerns, and that's where it was left, and legislators this summer also filed some bills that would Prohibit any other school districts from deploying humanoid robots in classrooms. It's incredible. It's funny that we're even having this conversation. But I want to get back to what you're really focused on. So this sort of led you to figure out, hey, what are schools doing about artificial intelligence? And I think I have a quote here from here that basically sums it up. Yeah, they don't have a plan. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. You know, what we're seeing in New York City, I think, is setting the tone a little bit for the rest of the state and even perhaps the country on how school districts can go about mitigating AI use. So, you know, the moratorium in New York City prohibits student-facing generative AI through eighth grade. The rest of the state is figuring it out on a district-by-district. And even school by school or classroom by classroom basis, largely leaving it up to teachers to determine how they think AI should be used in the classroom. There's no playbook here. This is largely uncharted territory. And in all my conversations with educators, even with administrators, largely they just want more guidance. And so the state education department has said that they're in the process of developing that guidance. And I think once that comes out, we can, you know, see how school districts interpret it and what that looks like on a classroom basis. But you're absolutely right that there's a lack of clarity. Parents want answers on what AI their children are being exposed to in the classroom, and they're not always getting those answers. Yeah, really interesting. And it's really ripped right out of the headlines because right now Google is in the throes of a fight with educators who want the AI. feature taken out of the search engine and the tech company is saying we can't do that and if you don't want it with AI embedded as it already is, we're going to yank it right out of the classroom altogether, which would be mid-year and cause all kinds of chaos, right? Yeah, I mean, I think that the fight right now, this very public standoff between Google and New York City public schools is raising a lot of questions more broadly about who should control technology in public education and the role of these companies who are selling their products to schools. But New York City public schools relies deeply on Google products, as do many school districts nationwide, whether that's teachers assigning homework through Google Classroom, students writing their papers in Google Docs. Students pulling their Chromebooks out, you know, and Googling answers to their questions. And I know that educators have been really frustrated for several months, years, that when their students Google a research question, they automatically see an AI overview pop up and students think that that's research, you know, so it's been ongoing. And just a few years ago, there was the kids would use AI to write their term papers or do things like that. And, you know, teachers would have to be sleuths and professors to be able to catch it and have them do it again. But it's so interesting. Did you find any pushback when you were doing this, when you were trying to get information, maybe from school administrators or from the tech companies themselves, or, you know, were you able to talk with parents and students? Yeah, I think in all of my ed tech coverage, I've certainly received some pushback from the companies that, again, are being scrutinized. They, of course, want to sell their products and make a profit off of these products, but they're promising a lot to school districts. They're promising these academic gains, especially since the pandemic. We've seen these decreases in student proficiency in math and in reading, and these companies are coming Coming around, selling these really attractive products, promising. We're promising all sorts of gains. And so while I've received pushback, I think my response to that would be with the amount of money our public school districts are investing in these products and in these contracts, there needs to be a level of scrutiny for why we haven't seen meaningful academic gains. Melissa, thank you so much for your time tonight. It's a fascinating topic, and we hope you join us again. I know, can you give us a tease? What's your next article about? Yeah, we actually conducted a teacher survey to learn directly from teachers about, you know, how they feel about educational technology. And we're going to be publishing a story, analyzing those responses and digging into, you know, their perspectives for how this impacts students. All right, Melissa Mano with New York Focus. Thank you so much for your time tonight and come back again real soon. We appreciate it. I would love to. Thank you for having me.