Recently, 60 Minutes showcased Sal Khan, known for the popular Khan Academy, describing Sal Khan’s Khanmigo, a new AI-powered program promising to revolutionize teaching by giving students an online personal tutor. Here’s Khan’s TED talk, “How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education,”

Khanmigo’s format, feedback, and human-like online conversation and interactions are clever and innovative. However, there is uneasiness about AI in schools. Here are some reasons why.

Mastery Learning and School Change

Khan promotes mastery learning, where students progress self-paced online, as described in his 2012 book The One World School House: Education Reimagined. He also makes schools look stagnant (AI will save education), reinforcing the unjustified corporate reform notion that public schools fail. 

He has said:

The old classroom model simply doesn’t fit our changing needs (p. 1).

This has been the premise concerning public schools on which AI has been built, but it’s both unfair and untrue.

Audrey Watters, who wrote Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, expressed concern that Khan fails to tell the history involving mastery, competency-based, or personalized learning (p.6-15). Watters describes Sidney Pressey, who invented the first teaching machine in the 1920s, and behaviorist B.F. Skinner and the Skinner Machine peddled in the 1950s and 1960s. 

While their contributions to learning are significant, parents often dislike machine learning’s coldness and behavioral control. Remember online learning during the pandemic?

A larger question is how much do we want students tethered to machines?

And as far as schools not changing, Watters writes:

…those who like to repeat this tale of an “industrial model” often insist, as Khan does…that the school system has been “static to the present day.” 

To call the US education system “static” from 1892 onward is woefully inaccurate—offensively so, in fact (p. 5-8). 

Watters describes many progressive changes in public schools over the years. From the Civil Rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education (1954), to the 1975 Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now IDEA), policies like NCLB (2002), AP classes, phonics, STEM, open classrooms, The New Math, and much more (p.5-8). Each is worthy of a discussion alone.

The point is that public schools have undergone tremendous changes, some pushed by corporate reformers that haven’t been good, and teachers have always helped students and families adjust.

Funding and Tech Accountability

Change involving classroom technology has evolved with little accountability. Many online programs replace teacher preparation and classroom instruction, but little evidence shows these programs work. Few consider the consequences.

That’s not always the case in other countries. Finland and Sweden recently returned to using books after realizing that technology failed to help students as expected.

Will AI be different? Given that the current classroom technology has been largely unregulated, how do we trust that AI will be objectively evaluated before investing more dollars?

Market.Us reports:

The Global K-12 Education Technology (EdTech) Market size is expected to be worth around USD 253.9 Billion By 2033, from USD 78.2 Billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 12.5% during the forecast period from 2024 to 2033.

Teacher Impact, Or Not

Teachers have incorporated technology into classrooms for years and will likely embrace AI.

In the 60-minute segment, students answer science questions and work independently with some teacher guidance. Teachers rave about tracking student progress, and AI can help them create lessons.

It seems perfect until one teacher notes that AI helps when working with their 100 students. There’s no discussion of lowering class sizes. It’s like assembly-line learning. Teachers may have more time to work with some children, but don’t all students deserve a teacher’s attention?

There’s also a sense of rush, getting students to learn faster.

Khan states teachers will still be needed, saying:

I’m pretty confident that teaching, any job that has a very human-centric element of it – as long as it adapts reasonably well in this AI world – they’re going to be some of the safest jobs out there.  

Still, the art of teaching and the professional role of teachers would likely change dramatically. This has already occurred with an increased focus on tutors rather than teachers. 

A few days after the 60 Minutes program aired, an Arizona charter school announced it planned to replace its teachers with AI.

For $40,000 in Pennsylvania, another school working to get charter school status promises that children only need AI to learn for two hours daily. 

Corporate Connections

While Khan says he supports teachers, the billionaires with deep pockets, Khan’s funders have not.

Corporate reformers have attacked public schools and teachers, making them appear incompetent. They have also promoted charter schools and vouchers.

They’ve invested in school boards strapped for funds, de-professionalized teachers and education leaders, promoted high-stakes standardized testing and narrowed the school curriculum with Common Core State Standards.

They influenced controversial policymaking, including the No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Every Student Succeeds Act.

Tech-focused instruction has been the dream (see Christensen, Horn, and Johnson’s 2008 Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns).

Data and Privacy Concerns

Questions arise about students’ online privacy. Virginia hired its chief education officer, not an educator, from the Data Quality Campaign!

Khanmigo collects more than academic information. It also has a counseling component with features like detecting students who might hurt themselves. Teachers can access the students’ writings online. Some believe this is helpful, while others may see it as intrusive.

AI might act like an online counselor, but this doesn’t answer why public schools have failed to hire more counselors for student support.

Smaller classes would also help teachers get to know their students. However, there has been little support for reducing class sizes.

While Khan promises that data is secure, data breaches are common, and sometimes, schools have loopholes regarding data privacy and online instruction.

Rich Schools v. Poor Schools

Last, watching Khan on 60 Minutes in what appears to be a well-funded school working on AI, I wondered about the parents’ economic levels. He discusses this often, and his heart may be in the right place; however, given today’s privatization push, will AI be used well in poor schools?

Cyber charter schools already exist for the poor. Peter Greene describes this in Pennsylvania’s cyber charter capital. However, this is Not Something to Celebrate. These schools have poor track records.

We live in an increasingly disconnected world without meaningful, critical human interactions. Democratic public schools are among the best places for students to unite and accept their differences.

While AI and technology have great learning potential, they must be checked. Students still need real teachers, counselors, and small classes where they get to know other students to help them navigate learning experiences.

There are many more questions about AI and how students learn, such as how the computer’s regurgitation of information and creative suggestions will affect a student’s critical thinking, ethical usage, and much more.

In summary, we should slow down and ensure that further technological investments also include the human quality that every student desperately needs in well-functioning schools and life.

References

Khan, S. (2012). The one world school house: Education reimagined. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.

Watters, A. (2021). Teaching machines: The history of personalized learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.