Matt Brady considers how AI threatens the element of trust in schools.
A school or an entire district is an absurdly trust-dependent institution. We trust that students are putting forth the effort and have attempted the work themselves. Students trust that teachers read their work and that any feedback comes from careful reading and analysis.
Parents trust that teachers know their children and that any communication is personal, based on observation, experience, and actual knowledge of the child. Administrators and leadership rely on us to use our professional judgment. Teachers trust leadership to work toward what is best for students and to mean what they say.
The organization depends on everyone else being open and honest. That’s trust.
That doesn’t make schools different or special. It’s just how they run.
I know teachers are reading this who are rolling their eyes. No, it has never been perfect. But trust was still the foundation. You expected that the human being standing in front of you or communicating with you had actually taken part in the interaction.
AI breaks that assumption.
We have spent, and continue to spend, huge amounts of time discussing the quality of AI-generated work. Is it good enough? Is it a genuine synthesis of human and machine thinking?
We haven’t spent nearly enough time asking what happens when nobody knows who did the work, or what that uncertainty does to an endeavor built on trust.
And yes, I know, people violated that trust long before AI. Students cheated. Teachers phoned things in. Administrators sent canned messages and broke beginning-of-the-year promises. But now, with almost every piece of work or communication, there is a reasonable possibility that the person on the other end didn’t actually do it.
Yeah, that’s new.