Bad AI Policy Is Worse Than No Policy at All. How to Build One That Works.

Kevin Hogan: Okay. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Tech and Learning Conversations. I'm, um, Kevin Hogan and I'm glad you found us. Today's episode is one that doesn't nearly get enough attention when it comes to what else? AI and that is policy. Not the flashy product demos, not the classroom transformation stories, not the unglamorous essential work of actually writing the rules that govern how I should be used in schools. So my guest today, Sasha Lux Morgan. She's a policy analyst at a platform called School AI and she works directly with districts across the country trying to help them, um, get this boring but necessary aspect done. We talk about the difference between acceptable use and responsible use, what a policy actually has to say to mean something, and why she thinks bad policy is more dangerous than no policy at all. So, without any further ado, here's Sasha. Okay, Sasha, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking your time and kind of gathering your insights onto, uh, it's this acronym that we call a. Ah. Now do we need to spell it out? Artificial Intelligence?

Sasha Lux Morgan: I think we can get away without spelling it out.

Kevin Hogan: I think everybody kind of has a general idea about it, especially in education.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Right.

Kevin Hogan: I mean, it's really something. I have been covering the space for 20 plus years. And just as far as topics go, I mean, this is kind of an all enveloping one. Sometimes I wake up in the morning, I'm like, do we really need to talk about it again? And by the time I finished my coffee, yeah, we do. Uh, and then there's so many different aspects of it. One, um, that I think kind of gets overlooked, as a lot of things do when you look at administrative sort of issues and district leadership issues. Is the, um, I won't say it's dreaded. Um, let's just say policy talk. Right. Trying to take these innovations, trying to bring them to scale and trying to make them work for educators in the classroom without stepping on their toes, uh, but at the same time making sure that things are happening in a reasonable way. Um, and this is a topic that we could go on for hours. We'll keep it to 15 minutes. Maybe we'll just kind of jump off. I know the latest statistic says about two thirds of, uh, districts and states, uh, around the country, uh, have some sort of policy. Where do you see the state of play when it comes to actually having active, real policies that districts can kind of chew on every day?

Sasha Lux Morgan: Yeah. So I am very fortunate that I get to meet with a lot of different schools and Districts all over the country and hear about what they're doing in terms of policy. And the range of what people are doing is, is really remarkable. We've got schools that have everything locked down. They're not using AI at all. They're not allowing their teachers to use it. They're not teaching their students how to use it efficiently and effectively and ethically. Um, and then we've got schools where it's like, and districts where they're like, well, let it rip. Everything goes. Um, and so to see this range has been really interesting. Uh, um, so I think I, I'm, I'm a policy nerd through and through. Um, so I think it's so important that, that districts and states get these policies in place. And I think by last count it's about 34 states have statewide policy or statewide guidance in place that districts can lean on and everybody else is kind of out on their own.

Kevin Hogan: M m. So where, where do they start? I guess, I mean, we, we'll talk about those districts who are kind of wild west. I mean, maybe they have their own philosophies on things and um, I don't know. Good luck. Uh, but so for other district leaders who might be out there and it is kind of wild west, but they want to start to bring something together that could at least be a stepping stone to what would be a legit, legitimate, uh, sort of policy strategy. Any suggestions on first steps there?

Sasha Lux Morgan: I always try to ground conversations that I have with districts in really three main areas. So the first would be how are your students and teachers actually using it right now? Do you have a sense of that? And that's the starting point that you have to lead from, because systems only move as fast as the humans in them. Um, next is an all encompassing focus on student privacy, student data protection, um, teacher data privacy, controlling for personally identifiable, personally identifiable information. Uh, going into systems that are maybe not secure and completely locking that down. Um, I think that has to be really at the forefront of any good AI guidance or AI policy. And then the third thing is really thinking about academic integrity and how, um, we know students are using it. There have been studies, students at just about every grade level have figured things out. Um, and we want them to be using it, but we want them to be using it in a way that doesn't lead to cognitive offloading that keeps them in the driver's seat of their own education, learning and engaging.

Kevin Hogan: And it's a fine line, right?

Sasha Lux Morgan: It's totally a fine line.

Kevin Hogan: And we're still trying to Kind of figure it out. It's kind of the whole social media debate from 10 or 15 years ago too. It's just like how do you properly use these things inside the classroom?

Sasha Lux Morgan: And what do you, what do you, what do you, what data do you put into social media? How much do you really want, you know, these companies knowing about you? And it's the same thing, just updated for the current technology.

Kevin Hogan: Yeah. And semantics seem to be a really important part of it. So talk a little bit about even the difference between what we used to call an acceptable use policy, say when it came to devices.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Mhm.

Kevin Hogan: The phrase that I keep hearing more and more, which I kind of like, which is a responsible use policy. So something that's not prohibitive but is more, just kind of more of guidance.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Exactly. And I think that is so important. So I'm really glad you brought that up. Um, acceptable use policies are just a list of do nots and responsible use policies really gets at the heart of what we want our students to be learning. And we can model in these policies good uses and ethical uses for AI. So it can be really clear to students that like no, we don't want you plugging your prompt for your final essay into a large language model and getting out an answer. What we do want is we want you working with the tool, learning how to prompt effectively, learning how to still do your own reading, your own writing, your own math. Um, and one of the reasons that I work at school AI is our tool doesn't let them cheat in that way. It encourages them to actually be doing the work, to be asking the questions, to be engaging, um, and to do it in a way that the teachers really get a good sense of what students are doing.

Kevin Hogan: And I will say, I mean the more conversations I have about this, the more I don't think the feet have been took the for AI vendors and the edtech industry have uh, taken on enough responsibility for making these things work and encouraging those policies and getting those things in. In terms of making the tools. Can you talk a little bit about school AI and like how those tools are created to give actually the teacher less work or have them have to implement the tools themselves?

Sasha Lux Morgan: Yeah. So our tools, you know, I'm going to talk about two things here. Our tools are incredibly user friendly. Um, we have mission control which is the, the sort of back end of the teacher experience that allows you to see how all of your students are engaging with, with, with AI in the school AI platform you have 100% visibility into their conversations. You get really advanced analytics out of where your students are, are, are hitting the mark or are missing the mark in terms of your lesson planning. You know, there, there's that old adage that if, if every student in the class fails the test, maybe it's the teacher, not the students. Um, and so this gives you really good visibility into, into that understanding and how they're doing. Um, I actually, I use it for some of my own personal learnings. I've set up some, some school AI spaces just for me. And then to get those insights in on the back end is always really interesting to be like, oh yeah, I'm not understanding that. Well, yeah. Um, and then the other thing that we do at school AI that I think is really different to how a lot of other ed tech companies operate is we actually have an offering that's free, um, for our partners and for schools that are not our partners, just anywhere, um, that don't have an AI policy or maybe they have an AI policy or guidance that isn't working for them. Um, and a member of our policy team will sit down, we'll meet with them, um, and we'll, we'll hear all about their pain points, about where things are succeeding, where they want things to go. Um, and then we'll actually write up a draft policy or edit their draft policy for them, um, and then come back, give it to them and they can take it, um, run with it however they want, edit it, take it to their legal counsel, whatever they need to do. Um, and it's just a service that we offer because you know, bad policy is worse than no policy. And we really want to see districts succeeding.

Kevin Hogan: Yeah. Does, um, the size of a district make a difference in the type of policy that is created? Can you talk about scale a little bit? I mean the um, small 1200 student district in Jersey versus New, uh, York City Public Schools, which is uh, 20 miles away. Maybe a different sort of tactic needed.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Absolutely. So I will say the smallest districts I have met with, and I'm not going to name names, but they are a K8 district, uh, in a school in a state in the mid Atlantic and they have 108 students, uh, across the whole district. M. But they didn't have an AI policy. And so we sat down and I worked up one with them. And it's actually one of the my. Not that you're supposed to have favorites, but it is one of my favorites that I've written. Um, but because it's K through 8, not K through 12, they have different needs because it's only 108 students versus, you know, a New York City public schools. And they're going, they're going through their own AI journey right now. Um, very much so. Um, but there's different levels of review that needs to happen in the, the large districts. Um, there's a lot more staff capacity to do things like set up committees and, and distribute the workload. Whereas often in a small district it is either just the superintendent or just the tech director for the whole district. And they are entirely the entire AI responsibility falls just on their shoulders. Um, which is obviously a huge load. And so anything we can do to lighten that load, we're really happy to do. Um, but yeah, scale matters. A lot of the fundamentals are the same. So how you want students to be using AI, what kind of information is acceptable to put into an AI system? Um, um, do you need to have a data privacy agreement in place that's going to be the same no matter how big your district is, but the actual implementation will vary based on scale.

Kevin Hogan: So speaking of policies, um, the other major policy creation, some may call it a controversy, some may just call it a challenge, um, is the uh, device prohibition policies that have been popping up. Uh, mobile phones, but also any sort of technology device inside the classroom, which is kind of an age old one. I mean we Tech and learning has been writing about whether or not there should be computers in the classroom since, you know, before Twitter. So can you talk a little bit? Any suggestions or insights for districts out there? I mean I even remember it was, I think it was two years ago where Los Angeles announced their new AI app. Ah, to encourage all their students to use the AI app. Yep, week they made an announcement that students were not allowed to use the devices. So I don't know how you use AI without having a guidance there. Give us some, you know, give us

Sasha Lux Morgan: some wisdom, some feelings on that. Yeah, um, I think one of the things that's really, that people are really starting to recognize is that there, there's a, there's a happy medium in terms of screen time in the classroom. Um, personally I've got no issues with a bell to bell cell phone prohibition. Um, they can be so distracting to students and they can lead to so many problems. I know there was that study that just came out that said that sometimes disciplinary incidents go up in the first a little bit after cell phones get banned. Um, that's neither here nor there. You can quibble with the methodologies of that study all you want. Um, but in terms of decreasing screen time in general, in the classroom, it's not about the amount of time that students are spending looking at a screen or on the school AI platform. It's about the quality of the interaction. If you can get done in five or ten min, like a really impressive bell ringer activity or a really good exit ticket, um, and your students are engaging and learning and you have that real time visibility of where they are. I, um, mean to me honestly, like that's, that's fabulous that they can then spend the rest of the time engaging in what they really, really want them to do in schools, which is engaging with their teachers, engaging with each other and being active participants in the classroom.

Kevin Hogan: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Um, in terms of going forward. So here we are in the present. As we said, each of these districts have a different kind of level of acceptance or, um, comfortable comfort level with AI. Any of these districts, I would suspect all understand that their policy is always going to lag behind the technology. Because as soon as you update that policy, there's some other aspect of AI that you need to contend with or ask with, or a new tool or an app. But as you look going forward over the course of the next two or three years, uh, any suggestions for district leaders on how to at least stay as close to abreast as they can to the technology? Is there any methods there, um, that you would recommend?

Sasha Lux Morgan: Yes, absolutely. And you are 100% right. Technology, especially AI, is moving so quickly. I mean, if you follow the releases from the, the like frontier developers, um, the new stuff they're coming out with, it feels like every week is really, really remarkable. Um, teachers, sorry, schools and districts need to review their policies at least annually. And I know that nobody, nobody likes to do a policy review. Um, but with the speed at which this technology is developing, it's so important. And so when I write a district's, uh, AI guidance or AI policy, um, I always include a section that says this policy will be reviewed annually by, you know, the start of the school year or the end of the spring semester or whatever the district would prefer. Uh, but I think it's so important to just keep an eye on things, um, where things are going, really engage with professional learning for your teachers and your admin and your staff. Um, because that way they are the experts in the school and they know what's coming, they know what the students are using, they understand how to use the technology and use it well. Um, and then they can be part of your review and your revision process because the more experts you have in your building, the deeper the benches that you can draw on.

Kevin Hogan: Sasha, as I mentioned earlier, I think we could talk about this for quite a while.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Absolutely.

Kevin Hogan: There's so many different aspects of it, but um, really my brain is full just from, from these 15 minutes. I think you've really given our readers, our listeners a lot to think about and some good places to start. And I hope we can continue the conversation as these technologies continue to evolve. So thanks again for your time.

Sasha Lux Morgan: Thank ah you. It's an exciting space to be in for sure.

Kevin Hogan: Thanks again Natasha for a uh, great talk. A few things worth carrying with you from that conversation. First, she mentions her three part framework. Know how your people are actually using AI right now? Lock down student data privacy and tackle academic integrity in a way that builds habits rather than just enforcing rules. That's a workable starting point for any district, regardless of your size. Second, the acceptable use versus responsible use distinction. The first is a list of don'ts. The other is a roadmap for what good practice looks like. So if your current policy reads like a warning label, it might be time for a rewrite. And finally, if you're a district leader sitting on an outdated or non existent AI policy and don't know where to start, check out School AI along with a number of other platforms that are out there. But School AI specifically mentioned their free policy drafting service with no strings attached. I'll leave that link in the show notes and uh, then be ready to review these policies every year. Keep a deep teacher bench and stay close to the technology and we'll see you next week.