Wake plans teacher training in generative AI, district-wide policy for use by fall

The Wake County Public School System plans to train teachers on generative artificial intelligence later this year, as it rolls out a policy on the technology by August, pending a school board vote.

Tension has continued to grow over generative AI's impact on learning, and how and whether schools are policing appropriate generative AI use. The technology has inevitably found a place in some schoolwork, and education leaders are still grappling with how to teach students about generative AI but also keep students intellectually honest.

The school board has been mulling a policy for more than a year but has gone several months without discussing it. Now, district leaders are hoping for an approved policy by the start of the next school year.

Some members of the school board's policy committee said Tuesday they want more concrete guidance in the policy than as currently drafted, showing how generative AI is expected to be used ethically and how differences in how generative AI can be used for different grade levels.

Some said they wanted more student insight on the technology and one raised concerns about whether the district was encouraging generative AI use before they understood broader societal implications of its use in academic settings.

"I understand this could be a fabulous tool for our teachers, but for our children... you have to learn to do the math first before the calculator," Board Member Cheryl Caulfield said.

Superintendent Robert Taylor said the challenge with new technologies that they become required tools in industry and ubiquitous in society before people know how they'll change things.

"What you speak to is the inherent problem with the exponential change with technology, but more specifically what we see with AI," Taylor told Caulfield. "The quest is always to be proactive and think about how we teach kids to use productively and effectively."

Still, Caulfield worried that teachers have recently made progress overcoming the problem of cellphones in the classroom but now have to contend with artificial intelligence being used to complete schoolwork.

The school board hasn't discussed the topic since October, and it's in the minority of school boards in North Carolina without an artificial intelligence policy.

Most school boards use the same two stock paragraphs recommended to them by the North Carolina School Boards Association. They outline that employees and students will be trained on generative AI, what it does, its limits and how to use it effectively and ethically. The language also says district officials will adopt guidelines for its use, though those guidelines aren't contained in policy.

Those internal guidelines are the bread-and-butter of school district's approaches to generative AI but aren't published publicly.

Wake is attempting a more detailed policy that largely outlines commitments to the same things: generative AI literacy for staff and students, safeguards for use and training. It considers its "guiding principles" to be ethics, student access, student success and well-being, and maintaining humans at the center of learning.

The draft policy, which must be approved by the school board, doesn't include specifics on how the district's approach to AI would be carried out, including what safeguards would be, when AI use would be considered appropriate or inappropriate, or how inappropriate AI use would be detected.

The policies of other school boards in central North Carolina are similarly vague.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has specifically avoided a policy because they believe generative AI is developing too rapidly for a formal policy, which requires extensive review and board discussion approval to update.

But some in Wake have suggested at least formalizing some things to improve consistency teacher-to-teacher or school-to-school.

Student Eleanor De Coster Canina started a petition last month calling for the school board to have a policy on generative AI that addressed proper and improper means of detecting generative AI use. She said a teacher gave her a zero after running her essay through an AI detector --- an AI-powered software that attempts to discern AI writing from human writing.

DPI discourages the use of those detectors to issue a grade because they have high false positive and high false negative results.

In response to De Costa Canina's concerns, the district told WRAL News earlier this month that "teachers must be able to accurately assess student work in order to understand progress and adjust instruction when needed. At the same time, we have an obligation to ensure that student work is evaluated fairly and consistently."

While the district's internal guidance discourages the use of AI detectors to form grades, that's not publicly known information, because it's only spelled out internally, Board Member Chris Heagarty said, noting he only saw a reference to the internal guidance Tuesday.

If a student brought a concern about an AI detector being used to grade their work, they would have no public-facing policy to reference in their concern, Heagarty said. He asked district officials to send a link to the guidance to school board members so they can see it as the policy process moves along.

Heagarty also suggested the board could move forward with a generative AI policy similar to what was presented Tuesday and add to it later, distinguishing different policies for students and staff. It looks like a lot of that work has already been done in developing internal guidance, Heagarty said.

WRAL News has requested Wake's internal guidance. It has not received that guidance, but the district provided a list of approved AI tools to be used in schools.

It shows that students and staff are allowed to use Adobe Express, Canva and Google Gemini. Only students 13 years old and older are allowed to use Gemini.

Adobe Express and Canva are design tools for graphics, PDFs and other documents. Gemini is a chat-based AI tool that can be used to help with research, writing and summarizing.

Staff, but not students, are permitted to use Notebook LM, MagicSchool and Khanmigo Teacher.

NotebookLM generates insights from records and data. MagicSchool can be used to create lesson plans and generate assignments targeted to certain students' needs, among other things. Khanmigo Teacher also generates lesson plans based on its KhanAcademy tutoring tool.