Longtime Shawnee Mission math teacher Jill Johnson can tell when a student uses artificial intelligence to do their homework.

“They’d (students) take a picture of a math problem and put it into an app that would tell them how to do it,” Johnson said, adding that she noticed it more prior to a statewide cellphone ban that took effect this year. “I could tell they were doing it (using AI) because the way they would show their work was not the typical way that we had practiced. …

“There’s certain little steps the way we write it (math problems),” Johnson, a teacher at Indian Hills Middle School, continued. “AI will write it very differently.”

No generative AI is available on district-issued devices, Superintendent Michael Schumacher said at a July school board meeting. However, students have still found ways to use the technology in their work.

The district otherwise doesn’t have a student-use policy for AI technology — yet.

The Shawnee Mission School District formed a work group earlier this fall to make a recommended policy for student AI use within the school setting. The group met twice in September, twice more in October and plans to meet mid-November when the state board of education, which is also considering how to address AI policies, finalizes its own policy.

Neither the district nor the work group has officially indicated the direction of Shawnee Mission’s AI policy, and the group’s meetings have not been open to the public. It remains unclear whether the group might recommend an outright ban the technology in the classroom or if it will encourage AI use in some fashion. 

Still, if and when the state board’s policy is approved, SMSD would have to address both employee- and student-use, by grade or grade groupings.

In the four meetings since the group was formed, Chief Communications Officer Jake Potter told the Post that they’ve:

• learned about the district’s technology safety and security measures, along with state and federal requirements,
• reviewed the district’s developmental guide for intentional and purposeful technology use,
• heard presentations and insights from a representative of the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning, a Lawrence-based organization that helps educational institutions better integrate technology into learning,
• and monitored Kansas State Board of Education presentations and discussions related to instructional technology.

SMSD’s AI policy work group is made up of 32 people, mostly parents, but also a few students, certified staff, classified staff, an administrator and two district-level employees, including Potter. 

Members were selected randomly, Potter said, to ensure a representation of parents, staff and students across the five high school feeder patterns.

Parent concern

Some parents, including non-work group member Laura Langdon, are keeping a close eye on what happens with the work group and the resulting policy.

“I would like the district and AI Work Group to keep in mind that before they allow AI in classrooms,” Langdon said, “they have an obligation to use and provide independent research showing that AI is beneficial to developing critical thinking skills.

“Currently, the only research done on children’s cognition shows that AI prevents development of critical thinking,” she added. “When there is an international groundswell of concern over the unknown nature of AI and the likelihood of cognitive offloading before students even develop skills, why would we proceed without evidence that AI improves student learning? It’s like giving cigarettes to children and saying, ‘Try these; they help some adults focus, so we think they’ll probably help you all learn.’”

An education researcher, unaffiliated with Shawnee Mission, agreed that when used improperly, AI impairs learning.

“Not surprisingly, when AI does the thinking, student learning suffers,” Principal Research Scientist Jessica Mercer Young with Chicago-based Education Development Center told the Post in an email last month.

What does the research show?

Mercer Young also said that when used in a controlled environment, the technology can be a tool. Research, however, is limited.

“While the research base on AI is expanding quickly, strong causal evidence for how AI impacts students and educators is extremely limited as AI is changing faster than researchers can study it,” Mercer Young said. “Most of the research also focuses on older students — high school or college-age — so we don’t know as much about how AI impacts students at earlier grades. But from what we do know so far, AI that is mediated by a teacher or tutor can support student outcomes.”

Evidence-based studies have shown positive trends in student learning when AI tools are used alongside a teacher, Mercer Young said. However, without someone by the students’ side to use AI tools, the studies have shown mixed results when it came to improving student outcomes.

“This largely depended on how the AI tool was designed,” Mercer Young said, “whether it had built in guardrails — AI is told not to make anything up, has safety rules, and design features aligned to a content area — or was programmed to use a Socratic method and not just give students the answer to their question.”

She continued, warning that AI tools not intentionally designed for learning have hindered student outcomes.

“Finally, there is a big caution: research shows that students using general-purpose AI tools and chatbots — e.g., ones not purposefully designed for learning such as ChatGPT, Claude — were found to weaken learning and hinder student outcomes,” Mercer Young said. “The research also shows that students know this.”

What’s happening at the state level?

At the same time as Shawnee Mission is working out its AI policy, the Kansas Department of Education is considering its own policy regarding instructional technology, including AI.

Potter said SMSD is waiting for the state to approve that policy before finalizing its own.

While the state’s draft policy doesn’t tell districts how AI should be used, it does dictate that districts must address both educator and student use of AI.

The state board of education received the draft policy, starting on page 91, at its Oct. 13 meeting. The policy will likely be considered during the board’s next meeting in November.