Legislation passed in February requires school districts to let the state know how artificial intelligence will be used and regulated in the classroom, but the Tennessee Firefly found those plans are still a work in progress for some districts ahead of next month’s deadline.
According to Senate Bill 1711, which overwhelmingly passed through both houses in the Tennessee General Assembly, Tennessee’s public-school districts and charter schools must submit AI policies to the Tennessee Department of Education in July for the 2024-25 school year. In addition, public universities and colleges will have to submit their own AI guidelines by July of next year.
The legislation comes as K-12 school districts and higher-ed institutions across the country grow more comfortable with AI-driven ed-tech tools used for course content generation, grading and lesson planning, despite many initial concerns about how recent advancements in AI tools like ChatGPT could encourage academic dishonesty and “AI plagiarism” among students.
At Johnson City Schools, Supervisor of Secondary and Instructional Technology David Timbs said teachers are growing more accustomed to AI ed-tech platforms as AI becomes increasingly ubiquitous in education. He said last week that district officials are still working on formulating the system’s AI guidelines to unveil to the public in August but added that they feel confident about the direction of recent policy discussions as more and more educators get a handle on the emerging technology.
“While we are still working on our formal AI policies today, we have already been embracing its use by teachers over the past two years. Our ‘technology teacher leaders’ have been early adopters and several of them have presented on its use in not only their own schools, but across the district. Many of our teachers have attended national conferences and learned how to intentionally approach the use of AI in the classroom,” he told Tennessee Firefly. “We believe our new policy will reflect a proactive, balanced approach. Already several of the instructional platforms we use, most notably Quizizz, rely on AI heavily to assist teachers in taking their instructional strategies to the next level by both enhancing student engagement and saving valuable time.”
Similarly, at Rutherford County Schools, officials are still working out how their AI policies will look moving forward. According to RCS’ Chief Communication Officer James Evans, the district will soon provide additional specifics to the public about how educators there plan to use AI tools, once the school board and policy committee “have had an opportunity to thoroughly review all factors.”
“In July, our policy committee is scheduled to meet to review the new law and establish a policy about the use of AI tools in our schools. The policy committee is made up of various representatives and stakeholders, including teachers, principals, community members, instructional leaders and elected School Board members. The resulting policy then must receive final approval from the elected School Board before being enacted,” he said in an emailed statement. “Once we have the policy in place, we can provide additional information about how AI tools will be used.”
According to a recent report from the education publication K-12 Dive, school districts like Oak Ridge Schools and Milan Special School District have been discussing and debating how to define AI plagiarism, which is among the biggest concerns to take into account when it comes to AI classroom policies. Ensuring equity among students in terms of access to the technology for legitimate uses is another major concern for school districts, especially for districts still working to close the digital divide more generally. In addition, school districts are also taking the technology’s shortcomings, such as embedded biases and “AI hallucinations,” into account as they finalize their AI policies.
Jonathan Criswell, superintendent at the Milan Special School District in Tennessee, told K-12 Dive that a major consideration is how to detect AI plagiarism and hold students accountable for passing an AI’s work as their own.
“Sitting down and having those conversations with parents has been very difficult, because first, a majority of them don’t even know that this exists,” Criswell said in the report.
