Yet another expensive high-tech school opening in NYC - now with the promise of AI learning

Wow. A branch of the Alpha school is opening up as K-8 private school in downtown NYC at 180 Maiden Lane in the fall in which students will be taught academic subjects for only two  hours per day via an AI platform at a cost of $65K; what a bargain! 

More on this teacher-less chain of schools, founded by a MacKenzie Price, a Texas businesswoman with no previous experience in education, who claims that her model will  "ensure mastery of the material 2-5x faster than traditional method".  Peter Greene reported on this woman and her chain of schools when she applied to open up a cyber online charter school, called Unbound Academic Institute Charter School, in Pennsylvania. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Education wisely rejected the school, explaining that "the school received no letters of support, was not insured in any capacity, and pointed to issues relating to how the school’s address in Lancaster, a coworking space, lacked certain facility requirements."

The rejection letter also pointed out that "The artificial intelligence instructional model being proposed by this school is untested and fails to demonstrate how the tools, methods and providers would ensure alignment to Pennsylvania academic standards,” an understatement if I've ever heard one.

As Fred Aebli, a professor at Penn State pointed out, "at the end of it all, teaching is by far one of the most human things that we do, especially in K through 12. They’re (kids are) not just learning reading, writing and arithmetic, they’re learning people skills, and life skills.”  

Perhaps that's why the proposed daily schedule for the private school in NYC includes an afternoon session devoted to teach "Limitless life skills", such as riding a bike.

But haven't we heard this story before?  Remember the Altschools, just a few years ago?  The much hyped, high-tech, for-profit private school chain opened with four schools in the Bay Area and in NYC, starting in 2013, and yet closed their doors just a few years later,  after losing as much as $174 million in venture capital funds from Mark Zuckerberg & other tech mavens.  

Or Summit Learning , another multi- million dollar effort by Zuckerberg, that put kids on computers for much of the school day, with inadequate materials and little human teaching.   

After a number of exposes, in the NY Times, the NY Post and elsewhere,  showing a huge amount of student and parent discontent with the program, its founder, Diane Taverner, left Summit for other ventures, and the organization renamed itself "Gradient Learning,"   

In its recent materials, its operators claim that their program is based on "Whole Student teaching," whatever that means,  and that "we've been diligently listening to your feedback and working closely with educators to identify areas to enrich."  How many schools have adopted and stuck with the program, versus the countless number that have abandoned it,  is unclear.

With the rise of AI, however, we should expect the number of schools and programs claiming great results using this technology will only grow.  How much of that will be based on grift and hype, and how much on actual learning will be critical for all of us who care about the future of education to study and carefully dissect.  One thing for sure, the Alpha School won't be a shining exemplar of AI's potential.

Sign up now to hear about the threat to Student Privacy from the city's irresponsible disclosure of student data including via Teenspace

Please join us to learn about the threats to student privacy from breaches and DOE carelessly sharing personal information with ed tech, AI, charter schools, and other unscrupulous third parties, at this briefing on Wed. October  23 at 7 PM EST; you can register here. Co-sponsored with AQE, Class Size Matters and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

One of the troubling issues we will be talking about is Teenspace.  On Sept. 10, along with NYCLU and AI for Families, NYCLU, PCSP and AI for Families wrote the Mayor, the DOE Chancellor, and the Commissioner of  Health about our deep concerns about the way in which the Privacy Policy of the online mental health company Teenspace discloses the personal information of students to unnamed third parties for marketing purposes in a manner that would be illegal if the contract was signed by the DOE rather than the Dept. of Health. 

The Teenspace parent company, Talkspace, is being paid $26 million over three years by the city to provide free counseling to students, and Mayor Adams, the Department of Health and the DOE have all been aggressively encouraging NYC students to sign up for these services, with no mention of how their personal data could be used for predatory marketing which could further undermine their mental health.   More on this here.

On Sept. 23,  Dept. of Health responded to our letter, arguing that they did not have to abide by the state student privacy law since they were not an education agency, but assuring us that their contract was no less  protective.  On Oct. 8,  we received the Talkspace contract via a Freedom of Information Law request.

The contract did not dispel our concerns.  Since we sent our initial letter, we had discovered that when a NYC student visits the Teenspace website on their phone, their personally identifiable information is shared with 15 ad trackers and 34 cookies, as well as Facebook, Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft among others, which we saw from using the Blacklight  privacy audit tool. These findings were later confirmed by a security company that does privacy analyses.  These findings are particularly concerning, given how the city is suing many of these companies for undermining children's mental health and designing their algorithms to be addictive for the purposes of targeted advertising .

Our follow-up letter to the Dept. of Health is below, copied to other city officials.  Please join us at our Privacy Forum to hear more about this issue and other ways student data is being breached and purposely disclosed in ways that undermine student privacy.

DOE's irresponsibility in employing AI products regardless of whether they protect student privacy

A week ago, the NY Post featured an article about a new AI program call Yourai sold by a company called LINC, or The Learning Innovation Catalyst, that the DOE is piloting in some Brooklyn schools.  The product is supposed to help teachers develop their lesson plans.  On Twitter last week, I pointed out the idiocy of the DOE administrator who claimed this would help teachers "think creatively."

What? “Teachers can enter students’ needs and the standards they want into the app and a lesson plan will be generated, Ross explained..She called it a “game changer” that will give teachers more time to “think creatively”. Ridiculous! https://t.co/aOFbQh3qp6

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 16, 2024

I went on to point out that two of the three testimonials on the website from NYC teachers appeared to be fake, as I couldn't find their names in a list of DOE employees.

No evidence that 2 of 3 NYC people quoted with testimonials on Yourwai website were employed by DOE through 2023 after checking payroll records on SeethroughNY. There are NyC teachers named Michael Davis, but no admins w/ below names. If anyone knows differently pl let me know! pic.twitter.com/xkVI7YkqhY

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 17, 2024

Today, the NY Post followed up with another article, pointing out that there were apparently eight fake testimonials from NYC teachers on the website, and that after being asked about this, the company said their names "were anonymized for compliance purposes," and have now been taken down..

Apparently, the co-CEO of the company, Jason Green, is a close pal of the Chancellor, and he and his family vacationed with the Chancellor's family on Martha Vineyard last summer.  The article added that LINC has received $4.3 million from DOE since 2018 for "professional development and curriculum," including $2.3 million so far  this school year.

What they did not mention is that, aside from the likely shoddiness of the product and the fake hype surrounding it, there are real concerns about these sorts of products including the risk to student privacy, as I pointed out on twitter.  

AI products are  well known for gobbling up huge amounts of personal student data, and then using it to improve their products and create new ones.  Yet this is specifically prohibited by the regulations of NY State's student privacy law, Ed Law § 2-d.

These regulations clearly state that "Third-party contractors shall not sell personally identifiable information nor use or disclose it for any marketing or commercial purpose" and that "Commercial or Marketing Purpose means the sale of student data; or its use or disclosure for purposes of receiving remuneration, whether directly or indirectly; the use of student data for advertising purposes, or to develop, improve or market products or services to students [emphasis added]."

I also pointed out that any district vendor or other third party with access to personal student data by law is supposed to have a specific privacy addendum to its contract.  This addendum is supposed to be posted on the DOE website here, but none can be found for LINC or YourAi.  Sadly, DOE continues to flout the law when it  comes to protecting student data and the transparency required by Ed Law § 2-d, as we have noted in the past.

On twitter, I highlighted specific weaknesses in LINC's online privacy policy, including that they allow other companies to track user behavior, including “3rd parties that deliver content or offers” meaning marketing.

Correction: I finally found privacy policy on company website saying they comply with 2D but unclear how as provide no details & says they allow other companies to track user behavior including “3rd parties that deliver content or offers” ie marketing. https://t.co/a8jr52LLcR

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) March 17, 2024

I also noted that the Privacy Policy said that the company reserved the right to change it at any time for any reason without prior notification to users by changing wording online.  This violates FERPA, because then, districts are not in control of how student data may be used or disclosed.

 

After noting these red flags on twitter, the co-CEO Jason Green DMed me:

We are a minority company that has been partnering with NYCPS for years. Our mission is to help teachers better support learners. I am also recently married and a dog-lover. Would you be open to learning more about us? I would love to better understand your perspective as well.

I said sure, and then asked to see his contract with DOE, to ensure that it contained the required data privacy and security protections.   I didn't hear back until yesterday, when he said he was "working with his team" to get the contract, but assured me that they don't "directly" collect or use student data.  

When I asked what "directly" means, he said they don't collect student data at all.

Then, later that day, on Friday March 22, I went back to look at the company's Privacy Policy and noticed it had been updated that very day:

Low and behold, there was a bunch of new sections added, including that the company indeed "may have access to student data" or "teacher or principal data" as defined under Ed Law § 2-d: 

They had revised the section that previously said the company may change the Privacy Policy without prior notice.  It now says  "We will send advance notice of any upcoming changes to our Privacy Policy via e-mail."  The section about allowing other companies to use user data for marketing purposes was taken out, but this passage that replaced it is not much more reassuring:

Also, Third Party Companies may want access to Personal Data that we collect from our customers. As a result, we may disclose your Personal Data to a Third Party Company; however, we will not disclose your Personal Data to any Third Party Company for the Third Party Company’s own direct marketing purposes. The privacy policies of these Third-Party Companies may apply to the use and disclosure of your Personal Data that we collect and disclose to such Third-Party Companies. Because we do not control the privacy practices of our Third-Party Companies, you should read and understand their privacy policies.

So what does it say in the actual, DOE contract with LINC, that  legally binds their use and protection of student data?  Sue Edelman of the NY Post FOILed the contract from the NYC Comptroller and sent it to me on Friday.

To make a long story short, the only LINC contract the Comptroller's office had was this one from 2020, which never mentions Ed Law § 2-d, though law was passed in 2014, and doesn't contain its required provisions.  

Instead, the contract glosses over the entire issue of student privacy, and says instead that it complies with Chancellor’s Regulations A-820 "governing access to and the disclosure of information contained in student records." Yet Chancellor's Regulations A-820 has not not been updated since 2009. 

In his blog today, Peter Greene has one of his excellent take downs of the whole notion of AI producing better lesson plans than actual living teachers.  He includes this   quote from Cory Doctorow:

We’re nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we’re well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.

But beyond the lamentable mechanization and degradation of education that is being promoted by NYC and other districts nationwide, in the name of mindless innovation, the DOE apparent lack of interest in protecting student privacy and following the law remains appalling.