By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight. Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.
Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”
Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.
And by “AI” they’ll just have the kids solve captchas for 2 hours.
“Which one of these pictures is Jesus?” with pictures of:
Bacon
Swastika
AR15
Trump
I don’t get the panic. It worked great for 50% of Venture brothers.
Online charter schools are horrifying. There is no expectation that the teacher know or understand the material they are teaching your child. High school is basically working through an online work book by yourself. Teachers use AI to “look up” answers they don’t know yourself.
It’s hell.
I also think this sucks massively, yet the possibility of a well made curriculum focused on one Person dies sound enticing. So much less time wasted on stuff one child has no problems with vs another that’s just stuck at some logical step. Ofc no social interaction is such a big - it almost can’t be fixed.
What the clown car fuck?
The most humane thing about this is there isn’t a teacher getting abused by paying them an insultingly low salary.
Or a student being abused by their teacher. Just a computer.
This seems like a great machine to create republican voters, purposefully undereducated and perpetually frightened - the school to joe rogan pipeline
Arizona State Board for Charter Schools
Imagine the AMAZING individuals that must make up this group.
In its Arizona application, Unbound says its bold claims about how much its students will learn are based on the experiment it’s running on students in Texas, inspired by Elon Musk.
The cancer that had metastasized to all systems
My suspicion is students who understand the situation will try to game the system. Like they do with organic teachers, too.
They already do with online charters. Teachers don’t know the material, they just spam AI generated essays and answers. Teacher work loads are so much that they don’t check the responses.
I work in education. Grading is always a burden, yeah. Homework/activities often need to be designed for the students AND for grading load.
As someone who is extremely hands on and learns basically nothing from lectures, this actually sounds like a decent idea if it is executed well, especially the Khan Academy integration. I’d rather just sit down and read a textbook and do practice problems and be graded on them than be stuck in a lecture for 7 hours only to have to relearn everything anyways because I lose track of what’s being said in like 5 seconds of the lecture starting.
El oh fucking el. Can’t wait to see how AI handles a classroom of rowdy pre-pubescent teens
That’s the neat part: It doesn’t!
How long until the AI starts trying to sext the children, that seems to be a common theme across every article I read about AI and chikdren after its been running for a few months.
I guess kids in Arizona won’t know how many R’s are in strawberry then…
Dude. It’s been over two hours. How many R’s ARE THERE? Dont leave us hanging.
Okay but did you fall?
Yes. But not before cheating. Asked my boss as he was passing by. “How many R’s in ‘strawberry’”, I says to him. He almost answered but caught himself. Then he sort of peered upward, thinking. Then he grinned and said, “nice one, rhsjj.” And then went about his day.
I still don’t know the damned answer.
From what I’ve heard, they were basically allowing anything with a pulse to teach in AZ, so who knows, being taught by an occasionally hallucinating wiki engine might be an improvement over the wife of some national guard dude.
Frees them up for more time cleaning the butcher room floor
Khan Academy was pretty good last time I used it, so I guess it’s better than a no-name AI company.
AI has it’s usecases, but it’s not currently at a place where students can be left alone with an AI. This is dumb.
