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Education AI

Arizona's Getting an Online Charter School Taught Entirely By AI (techcrunch.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the AI-all-the-things dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The newest online-only school greenlighted (PDF) by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: The academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools -- independently operated but publicly funded -- typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy's application, which proposes an "AI-driven adaptive learning technology" that "condenses academic instruction into a two-hour window," is a first for the model. (Unbound's founders have been running a similar program at a "high-end private school" in Texas, which appears to be in-person.)

Unbound's approach leans on edtech platforms like IXL and Khan Academy, and students engage with "interactive, AI-powered platforms that continuously adjust to their individual learning pace and style." There will be humans, just fewer of them, and maybe not actual accredited teachers: It will adopt a "human-in-the-loop" approach with "skilled guides" monitoring progress who can provide "targeted interventions" and coaching for each student. Academic instruction is whittled down to just two hours. The remainder of the students' day will include "life-skills workshops" covering areas such as critical thinking, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and entrepreneurship. The online-only school targets students from fourth to eighth grades.

Arizona's Getting an Online Charter School Taught Entirely By AI More | Reply

Arizona's Getting an Online Charter School Taught Entirely By AI

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  • What is the end result for someone taught by AI if they don't have any classroom contact with peers?

  • I thought Charter had changed their name to Spectrum.

  • Our education system continues to devolve (Score:3)

    by darth_borehd ( 644166 ) on Friday December 20, 2024 @05:15PM (#65029369)

    Our education system continues to devolve into a dystopian nightmare. It's going to get worse in the next few years before it ever gets better. :(

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      President Elon has steadily been winning the propaganda wars on Xitter with Grok. Do you think anyone can compete with his holy narcissism?

      Own it, America. You voted to become North Korea.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        President Elon has steadily been winning the propaganda wars on Xitter with Grok. Do you think anyone can compete with his holy narcissism?

        Own it, America. You voted to become North Korea.

        Ouch! Truth hurts.

    • k-12 student loans coming in the next X years

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Ah, but it is getting more profitable, and that is the only metric that matters.

    • Well here's the thing: an over-educated population is just as economically problematic as an under-educated one.

      No need to draw your weapons, I am not saying that education is bad. But the economy doesn't moralize. There are only so many jobs available for educated people, and when there are way more educated people than education-requiring jobs, it causes serious problems. Salaries crash. People refuse to take jobs that they now think are beneath them, even though the need for those jobs is now very hi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

        Insightful comment.

        This is our "lesser evil," I suppose.

        Personally, I preferred it when the myth of meritocracy was at least believable. It'll be impossible to believe when a gifted child is too poor to receive a proper education. Isn't this precisely what we've been trying, as a society, to rectify and avoid for hundreds of years?

  • This sounds like a scam (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 20, 2024 @05:16PM (#65029371)
    No parent in their right mind and few in there wrong minds would subject their kid to this.

    There appears to be very little oversight over how public money is spent on private schooling in Arizona at the moment. It's so bad that they have a huge budget deficit. This is very much by design. From what I can tell the previous Republican governor Left this as a time bomb for the incoming Democrat governor.

    Right now 95% of the public money going to private schools is going to wealthy students who were already going to private schools. It's basically just free money and a subsidy to the richest people in the state.

    Eventually the hole in the budget combined with how obviously corrupt it is will catch up and the voters will shut it down but in the meantime it looks like several billion dollars is going to get handed to a bunch of rich people. And a bunch of public schools are going to get closed down for lack of funding.

    • Re:This sounds like a scam (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday December 20, 2024 @06:05PM (#65029503)

      What's what most of the active home schooling lobbyists want. This push by lobbyists was NEVER about better education, instead it's about subsidizing expensive private schools and dismantling accessible public schools. You think the politicians and lobbyists care about the kids? If the poor kids lose out then that's their fault for being poor.

      • Originally the reason for the private Christian schools was it was a workaround for desegregation. Years and years ago the supreme Court ruled that even the private schools couldn't deny admission on the basis of race. So you end up with people who want to homescold their kids or send them to these itty bitty charter schools to get them away from the wrong sort of kids..

        It's not as pervasive as it used to be but it's still there especially if you go further enough down south. I think what happens with
    • This is a succinct and accurate depiction of K-12 in Arizona today. There are charter schools, which are free to attend and open to the public*, but operated privately and at a profit despite being taxpayer funded. And there are private schools, where students pay tuition. Recently AZ Lege allowed significant taxpayer funding for students to attend private schools, and as OP notes this is almost exclusively going to rich kids already attending fancy schools, not the stated purpose of helping poor kids att
  • ...it works, regardless of what moral outrage or indignation it provokes in traditionalists. However, this, like many such schemes before, will most likely not produce the intended learning outcomes. This stuff goes around & comes around every few years & every time they say, "Ah but this time, it's different!"

    The main concern I have is for the children who'll be let down by this highly risky & premature experiment, with curricula, methodologies, & classroom management based on what evide

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

      [...] based on what evidence?

      Evidence based decision making is passé.

      • Re:If it works... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Friday December 20, 2024 @06:39PM (#65029585)

        Decisions are never based on evidence. Evidence and reason can inform a decision, but it isn't the basis for it. Decisions are based on the values that give weight to any evidence available. They are fundamentally irrational acts of faith. Which is why presented with the same evidence people will make different decisions. Its also the danger of the whole AI idea which assumes a logical machine can replace human judgment. Or should.

        AI isn't going to train people to make judgements based on their own values. Instead AI will fill them up with the "right" answers to its limited ability and they will never learn to make a decision of their own, entirely dependent on AI instead. A true dystopia.

        • The point is that before we experiment on children's futures with a new method of teaching or "curriculum delivery system" (I mean that pejoratively), we should gather some reasonable quality evidence to see if it actually works well enough to replace what we already have. What they're proposing to do wouldn't make it past a research ethics board, for good reasons, which is why they're bypassing the scientific method.

          Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, some other journalist will look into what happ

          • China's literacy program worked. The Communists took a country that was basically illiterate and created almost universal literacy within a decade. I don't think education is an intellectual challenge that requires any genius. There are probably a lot of methods that will work. But experience does matter. Having a single static method that ignores the actual human beings in the classroom is probably going to fail a lot of them.

            The fundamental flaw of the AI phenomena is that is ignores the importance of h

            • I see you missed the reference to the Nicaraguan literacy project. It was the most successful literacy campaign in recorded history. It's been the subject of studies since the 1970s, much to the chagrin of Washington, which backed the toppled Somoza regime that kept 95% of the population illiterate to please US agri-corporations.

              Anyway, the claim that "relationships" are necessary for learning (assuming teacher-student relationships) is a vague, banal, & unfounded claim, with plenty of counter-eviden

              • Anyway, the claim that "relationships" are necessary for learning (assuming teacher-student relationships) is a vague, banal, & unfounded claim, with plenty of counter-evidence. It would be nice if it were true but it just isn't.

                I don't know how you test that. What two people don't have a relationship? There is nothing vague, banal or unfounded about it. The claim that it doesn't matter is frankly ridiculous. to wit:

                it cannot reason *why* the student has done what they've done, i.e. the underlying understanding that has informed the student's response.

                How exactly would any teacher do that without a relationship with the student?

                • I don't know how you test that. What two people don't have a relationship? There is nothing vague, banal or unfounded about it. The claim that it doesn't matter is frankly ridiculous. to wit:

                  That's precisely the banal & vague part of it. Firstly, "relationship" is a vague, slippery term (& educational "gurus" & "pundits" thrive on that kind of language), & secondly, wherever researchers have actually give a strong definition about what they mean by "relationship," they've failed to disprove the null hypothesis. Due to publication bias, I suspect that the number of failed studies are substantially more.

                  Re: A teacher being able to skilfully diagnose the underlying reasons for a

                  • secondly, wherever researchers have actually give a strong definition about what they mean by "relationship," they've failed to disprove the null hypothesis.

                    I don't argue with people's beliefs. Its a waste of time.

    • If it works... (Score:2) ...it works

      Right, but we can already suspect it won't work, even removing AI from the equation. The curriculum they propose has 2 hours of academic studies. The rest include things some would call bullshit (such as "goal setting"). Not that it's bad to teach entrepreneurship, but I can't find the value of teaching entrepreneurship to kids without fundamentals. In two hours a day you won't teach them abstract reasoning (mathematics), history of your country, some idea of the world, and a modicum of arts. You end up wit

      • Yes, it does regurgitate many of the debunked EduMyth buzzwords of the past few decades. Next, we'll hear that the put learners into cohorts according to their learning styles! [face palm]

  • ... critical thinking, creative problem-solving, financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, and entrepreneurship.

    The government is paying a lot of money for this education, and the private school can choose the best students, so attendees should be getting an above-average education: An education that will make them leaders. The problem is, the lack of a vetted syllabus and examination process means there is no path to the stated objective, and in-truth, this is government helping corporations capture another economic sector.

  • Yet another reason to end capitalism. Look at the stupid shit we all know it's going to come up with
  • Pizza served with glue topping.
  • It would be good for people to start understanding how these things work.

  • When you met someone in America, you used to be able to assume that they shared a similar background as you, of having talked and interacted and, honestly, learned how to deal with actual living people. You knew this person, as an adult, had been exposed to the concept of differing ideas enough times that they, as an adult, can interact with other people without throwing a tantrum. Those days are vanishing. How do you know now that this person doesn't live 99% of their life online? Believing very niche thin

  • This sounds like a wonderful social experiment! Or should I say, "antisocial experiment"? The problem is not with the lack of being locked in with other disease vectors. The problem is with the notion of being taught by "AI", which is a mindless idiot that has no concept of reality. You'd be better off trying to learn calculus by pressing random buttons on your calculator.

    It's hilarious that some of you are arguing for in-person schooling as providing your only source of meeting other humans, and that you m

  • All in a simulated horror story.

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