When ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence software, was first popularized in December 2022, schools scrambled to crack down on its use by students, worried that the essay-writing tool would wipe out genuine work.
But two years later, the conversation in schools has drastically changed. In some places, outright rejection of AI has turned into an embrace of its abilities.
School districts in Sacramento, rather than moving to block AI, are now exploring how to implement it in classrooms for both student and teacher use, investing in contracts with AI startups and training educators and families.
Whereas before districts raced to prevent students from using AI to cheat or complete assignments, many have said it is now inevitable that it will become integrated with education, and that there may be even more opportunities for teachers than for students.
In some schools, the teachers rely on AI just as much as the students.
One District and School Offer an Example (or a Warning)
One district, San Juan Unified, is choosing to embrace the rising popularity of AI, albeit slowly.
Select classes in the district, which serves 40,000 students in the Sacramento region, are piloting the use of AI program MagicSchool. The platform, which the district is testing for free, was offered to all teachers for their own use.
But certain teachers at 15 district schools are actually trying out the application with their students, district spokesperson Raj Rai said.
The student version designs personalized lessons and claims to help build AI literacy.
A previous pilot with Guardrailz, an AI software that creates custom research bots, was ended.
“These tools were selected because they have the most supports for students while also offering the best security, privacy and safety features,” the district said in a statement. “Both tools have features that help students understand concepts, get additional practice to improve skills and get support in a variety of other ways, including language supports and accessibility features.”
Notably, the district refers to the platforms as “tools,” rather than full-on digital programs.
The thinking is that getting ahead of the issue is better than racing to implement bans on certain programs and websites.
Last year, the Rio Americano High history department assigned students to use ChatGPT to generate a sample outline for their Junior Research Projects, a large historical essay every student completes with the goal of preparing for college-level research.
And a Rio Americano English teacher is testing the use of ChatGPT for writing feedback with students this year.
In San Juan Unified, ChatGPT is now accessible on district-sanctioned student Chromebooks.
Some schools are welcoming AI more than others. According to Rio Americano principal Cliff Kelly, only one or two unnamed classes at the school are participating in the pilot, and results are not yet available.
“Rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, San Juan Unified is working really hard and really intentionally to support staff with how to use it but also to support them in their work,” said Nicole Naditz, a program specialist for instructional technology.
Naditz has been informing families about the district’s ongoing AI efforts and working to train teachers in how to use it.
Teachers Turn to AI
MagicSchool, the San Juan-tested software and main AI platform nationwide, says it can save teachers up to 10 hours of work per week.
One English teacher showed the backend of MagicSchool to a Sacramento School Beat reporter, although she does not regularly use the program.
The website opens to a dashboard of dozens of features available to teachers, both generative and feedback-oriented. Ranked by most popular: the image generator, presentation generator, text rewriter, lesson plan generator, quiz maker, worksheet generator, report card comments and text leveler.
For its four million teacher users, MagicSchool can also create rubrics, write individualized education plans and 504s, respond to parent emails, give essay feedback and generate classroom management techniques – among a wide-ranging list of capabilities.
The website even warns teachers to “make sure to add your final touch, review for bias and accuracy, and contextualize appropriately” when using it.
Google Classroom has also integrated AI into its teacher platform with lesson plan generation.
Although many teachers did not want to be interviewed about their AI use, it has become clear that educators are turning to AI just as students are.
In several interviews with the Sacramento School Beat, teachers who asked to remain anonymous both decried student AI use and/or admitted to personally using it.
However, one harshly criticized colleagues who are using AI to help with their daily workload.
In an extensive interview, a world language teacher at Rio Americano said she has begun to gradually increase her use of AI.
Her main use for MagicSchool is the parent email feature, which crafts diplomatic responses to families based on the points you plug into the generator. It’s a helpful feature because “parent emails are not my forte,” she said.
The program also saves her time when writing letters of recommendation and generating slideshows. (A Bay Area English teacher who granted Sacramento School Beat access to MagicSchool said her vice principal has encouraged teachers to use AI for recommendation letters.)
The Rio Americano world language teacher has not yet experimented with using AI to help with grading – warning that “we have to be very careful” with that feature – but said that being asked about it in the interview would inspire her to give it a try.
MagicSchool can provide feedback on essays, which her students write once per unit. There are other platforms that can grade spoken presentations, another main component of her classes.
It’s an “interesting idea,” she said, but she added that she felt more comfortable using non-student-facing features like the email generator.
Some teachers and students have expressed support for AI grading because it has the potential to be more objective.
There is also a significant difference between generative and assistive AI. Generative AI creates content from scratch, like essays or lesson plans; assistive AI is designed only to provide information.
Ultimately, “it saves a lot of time” with tedious tasks like parent emails, the Rio Americano world language teacher said. She was careful to only refer to AI as a “tool,” and condemned student use of AI as “ridiculous.”
But AI should “not be doing our jobs or their jobs” in the classroom itself, she said. She pointed out that there are a lot of smaller things it can do, but that there is no reason to generate new lessons with AI because her curriculum has already been developed.
Using AI might be a more appealing option to younger teachers who do not have their lessons already made or who are overwhelmed with the job.
Naditz sees the main benefit of AI for teachers being the reduced workload for tedious or time-consuming tasks.
“Because it can generate ideas (and) lengthy texts way faster than humans can, it saves a lot of time, even though the people using it have to look again, look it over and make sure it’s OK,” she said. “Even if it’s only 80% right, it saves so much time, (because) now the person only has to correct 20% instead of having to have done all of the work to begin with.”
The AI issue is also close to home in higher education. This fall, Sacramento State University opened its new National Institute of Artificial Intelligence in Society, headed by Chief AI Officer and College of Education faculty member Alexander Sidorkin.
The institute is offering a class to high school and college students on how to leverage AI for appropriate uses.
For the final project in the “College and Career with AI” course, students created their own chatbots for various purposes – everything from a physics assistant to a family communication tool.
A balanced introduction to AI in education will include both direct instruction to students on how best to use it and support for teachers on reimagining their teaching methods and materials, Sidorkin said.
“The biggest challenge in implementing AI is that instructors need to revise their curriculum, revise most assignments and assessments, refocus on higher-order thinking, and de-emphasize procedural midrange skills,” he said. “It is a lot of work, and a large mental shift. So I think it is going to take a while.”
A study by the University of Reading in England found that 94% of college students’ AI-generated writing goes undetected by professors. And the world language teacher at Rio Americano said it was highly likely her students have used AI unnoticed.
Resisting the Revolution
According to Education Week, about 40% of teachers have used AI, but it is unclear the breakdown of uses (for example, to generate student-facing lessons vs. to grade papers).
A Common Sense Media report found student ChatGPT use at 50%. Last month, the New York Times published a report of student and teacher opinions on AI in education, with the main consensus being that AI is here to stay and that schools should learn to embrace it.
But not everyone is on board with the AI revolution in education. One Rio Americano math classroom prominently displays an Albert Einstein quote above the whiteboard: “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
The teacher in that beginning math class said she was worried that robots and artificial intelligence might be used to mitigate teacher shortages.
A different veteran math teacher at Rio Americano has completely rejected AI use and even taught his students how to seek out math resources that do not use AI, as artificial intelligence math can sometimes be inaccurate.
Students have also said that teacher AI use is not fair since most teachers prohibit students from using it, and that it has the potential to replace teachers’ work.
“I just feel like a teacher should be qualified enough to not need it,” sid Katelyn Caudill, a junior at Rio Ameriano. “It doesn’t feel like they are doing their jobs,”
Caudill, an art student, has been advocating against the infusion of AI into arts education.
And other districts, like Sacramento City Unified, have taken more hardline approaches to AI. SCUSD has a full ban in place on student AI use.
“All SCUSD students need to prove themselves that they can do successful work as a result of their own efforts,” district spokesperson Alexander Goldberg said. “Students are instructed in research and study skills appropriate to each subject, so that they may feel confident that if they prepare, they can succeed without cheating or plagiarizing their work.”
The district declined to answer questions about teacher AI use.
But it’s clear AI isn’t going anywhere.
“I wish,” another world language teacher even said, “I had AI as a student.”