Signal Cleveland
As artificial intelligence (AI) is popping up everywhere, including in classrooms across the country, Cleveland’s school district has developed rules to govern how teachers, students and staff should use the new technology.
The board of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) passed an AI policy, which applies to all district staff and students, with a unanimous vote at its June 23 meeting. Ohio set a July 1 deadline for all districts to approve policies around artificial intelligence.
Ahead of the July deadline, the state drafted a sample AI policy for school districts. CMSD’s policy is closely modeled on that draft policy, with entire sections matching the state’s language.
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The policy tackles the risks posed by the technology such as academic integrity, data protection and unethical uses of AI. On the flip side, it emphasizes the need for students and staff to learn how to use artificial intelligence and other new technologies and encourages responsible integration of AI into the classroom.
A commitment to “AI literacy” is a key part of the policy passed by the CMSD board. It was closely modeled on a sample policy created by the Ohio Department of Education. The goal is for students to understand how to safely and responsibly use AI by integrating it into curriculum and professional learning opportunities.
The policy puts restrictions on how AI can be used at the district. It states that the technology should not replace human work and should instead be used as a “tool to support learning and teaching, not a substitute for student effort or the role of the educator.” It also describes what uses of AI — like for academic dishonesty or cyber bullying — are considered unethical and prohibited.
Protecting the data of students and staff is also a key part of the AI policy passed by the board, which requires the tools used by district staff and students to be approved by the CMSD’s IT department. The district blocks the use of AI tools that haven’t been approved on its WiFi network.
The policy acknowledges that guidance will likely need to change as AI is a rapidly evolving technology. It establishes a working group of staff, faculty and students along with representatives from local higher education institutions and local businesses. The group will explore uses for the technology and provide guidance and feedback to the district.
Amara Owens, a rising 10th grader at the Cleveland School of the Arts, has noticed that many of her peers use the technology — sometimes for academic purposes but oftentimes in ways that have nothing to do with school work.
“If I can put them into categories: I would say there’s like AI as a friend, there’s the artistic AI, where you can generate like AI art or music, and then there’s AI study buddy, which can do your homework for you, oh and then there’s definitely AI slop too,” she said.
Over the last two years, Chris Serio, an English teacher at Garrett Morgan High School, has also seen an explosion of students using AI to do their assignments. At a recent professional development session, it became clear the issue wasn’t just confined to his subject or his school.
“We saw that every single subject, one of the things that we all independently complained about was AI and a need for a regulation of [it] or a tool to track it,” he said. But he was critical of the policy passed by the board because in his view it didn’t address the deficits many of his students already have when it comes to media and technology literacy.
Academic research has shown that regularly using AI to replace thinking and struggling through assignments can undercut children’s cognitive development.
“If we’re going to use AI, they should have to prove some sort of competency test or assessment,” Serio said. “I’m using AI to further my research, because that’s what we should be doing it for, and instead it’s being used for summaries and basic comprehension and things that the kids should already know and can’t do.”
Serio also pointed out that some of the ways CMSD already integrates AI into the classroom aren’t always the most useful for teachers. For example, Savvas, the English curriculum used at the high school level, has an AI tool that’s intended to provide feedback on rough drafts of a student’s writing.
In theory, it’s a good idea, Serio said, but in practice the system is buggy and regularly flags student writing as plagiarism even when he knows the student hasn’t copy-and-pasted anything because he helped them write the assignment.
Owens, for her part, is very critical of using AI at all because of its environmental impacts and potential to cause social and emotional harm. But she knows it’s likely that students will need to know how to use the technology when they enter the workforce.
She thinks—if students have to use AI—CMSD could avoid some of the risks of the technology by developing its own tool for students to learn on. That AI could be outfitted with guardrails against harm, and it could push students to think creatively instead of acting like a yes-man the way many popular AI chatbots do.
Victor Lee, a researcher at Stanford who studies the use of AI in K-12 education, told Signal Cleveland it is good that Ohio is encouraging districts to adopt AI policies.
Recent surveys show that, nationally, only around a quarter of school districts have policies governing the use of the technology. It’s an issue because teachers, students and staff are likely already using AI at school and at work.
Lee told Signal Cleveland the sample policy developed by the state, which CMSD’s policy is closely based on, hits some of the key issues raised by AI such as ethical use of the technology, privacy and procurement practices. He also said it’s positive that Cleveland’s policy isn’t solely focused on academic integrity but addressed other aspects of AI.
But he would like to see more specificity around what the policy means by “AI literacy” and how it should look different for students versus teachers and staff. Owens, like Lee, picked up on the lack of specificity. She was very curious about what CMSD’s guidance means for her and other students in their day to day learning.
“Are they going to be implementing AI into the classrooms or are they just saying if a teacher wants to use it they can?” she asked.
From Lee’s perspective, the worries Owens holds about diminishing creativity and her peers who regularly talk to AI chatbots as though they’re friends or therapists could be addressed as a part of an AI literacy curriculum.
While it’s positive to see districts like Cleveland developing AI policies, Lee emphasized that policy documents alone aren’t enough to ensure students graduate with an understanding AI and how to use it responsibly and effectively. For students to gain those skills, educators need to receive the necessary support and professional development to teach them, he said.
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I seek to cover the ways local schools are or aren’t serving Cleveland students and their families. I’m originally from Chicago and am eager to learn — and break down — the complexities of the K-12 education system in Cleveland, using the questions and information needs of community members as my guides along the way.
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