No, Secretary McMahon, Feeding Students AI Lessons Isn’t the Answer

By Matthew Patrick

Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent praise for premium-tuition, artificial intelligence-driven Alpha Schools overlooks a key element for successful schools that’s missing from Alpha’s classrooms: skilled, human educators.

Alpha Schools use human “guides” — not “teachers,” as the secretary calls them — and the students spend two hours every day in front of screens with minimal adult interaction. Feeding students AI-powered information and hoping they retain it is not the answer for this new era. Students need meaningful interactions with human beings, especially skilled and knowledgeable educators, to experience rigorous, effective and meaningful learning.

This is especially important in career and technical education classrooms like mine in Pittsburgh Public Schools, where students receive training for emergency response certifications. As a CTE program instructor, I can attest that students need qualified teachers who are physically present and actively engaged in their learning.

Many CTE programs require students to develop hands-on skills that cannot be effectively taught through a computer alone. For example, AI may be able to explain what a knot is and describe its purpose, but it cannot physically demonstrate the proper technique, observe a student’s attempt, identify where a mistake was made, and provide immediate, individualized guidance. A teacher can recognize when a student has missed a critical step and adjust instruction in real time, giving students the meaningful feedback they need to learn.

While computers can provide automated responses, they cannot always respond to the unique needs of every learner. Teachers can recognize confusion, frustration and misunderstanding. They can change their approach, provide another example, make a real-world connection or explain a concept in an entirely different way.

I know my students, and I could tell they were confused by an article they read on managing traffic incidents. So I shifted gears, simulating a traffic accident for them with lab chairs so they could see how emergency responders position their vehicles (orange cones, in this case) for better protection, traffic flow and lighting on the scene. Suddenly, they understood. The light went on. That aha moment happened because a teacher was present, recognized a need and made an immediate instructional decision.

I believe we must carefully consider what may be lost when technology begins to replace meaningful human interaction between educators and students in the classroom.

That is why I support the AFT’s “devices-down” vision to boost teaching and active learning in the AI era.

Teachers make countless decisions throughout the day to meet the academic and individual needs of their students. Every student learns differently and may require a different approach to understand the same concept. AI can generate content, but teachers must still review and evaluate that content to ensure it is accurate, appropriate and meaningful.

In her recent CNN interview, McMahon celebrated how Alpha School students have their subjects “fed” to them via computers. This doesn’t sound like a winning formula for active learning.

We must also consider how much information students are actually retaining and whether they can apply what they have learned in real-life situations. AI can deliver content, but educators teach students.

Technology should enhance education, not replace the educators who make meaningful learning possible. AI has a place in our classrooms, but that place should be as a resource in the hands of qualified teachers — not as a substitute for them.

Our students deserve more than information delivered through a screen. They deserve knowledgeable, compassionate and skilled teachers who can guide, challenge and inspire them.

Matthew Patrick is a teacher in Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Emergency Response Technology program and a member of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers.