ChatGPT is all over the news these days, but when it was first released to the public in November 2022, one of us (Linda) was completely unaware of its existence, while the other (Candice) was already exploring the ways it could be used to creatively brainstorm solutions to complex policy problems in her graduate studies.
It wasn’t until after listening to a podcast on a road trip with her two teenage sons that Linda learned about ChatGPT’s incredible ability to generate creative content, write lines of code and summarize dense literature, and that one of her sons — like 33% of 12- to 17-year-olds nationwide — had already used ChatGPT to help with school assignments.
A recent meeting of the California Collaborative on District Reform focused on the future of K-12 education further pushed our awareness of artificial intelligence in education and the efforts schools are making to prepare students for a new world. Meeting participants walked away with a better understanding of the power and limitations of AI but expressed emerging and persistent concerns around bias and equity, asking questions about how to ensure that such a powerful tool can be accessed by all students. As history tells us, new technologies often widen the gaps between the rich and the poor. More recently, research shows us that 31% of students from low-income households lacked access to technologies needed for remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
So, we asked ourselves how AI can be accessed equitably —and what does that even mean?
As the academic year launches, it’s imperative that school system leaders think about how to make access to AI more equitable and empower both students and educators to navigate these tools with more critical awareness.
A haphazard approach to integrating AI into schools poses potential threats to equity. Failure to ensure access to AI in resource-limited schools potentially widens the digital divide and perpetuates unequal learning opportunities and outcomes for historically underserved students and their communities. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-4 features can only be acquired through a paid premium account, meaning the most advanced AI tools, such as analyzing images and generating graphs, might be restricted to students and communities with greater financial resources. Therefore, implementing a thoughtful, realistic approach to ensuring all students, regardless of resources, can access AI tools that are changing how we learn and work, is necessary to furthering an equity agenda.
Additionally, prioritizing equity goes beyond merely ensuring access; it requires critical awareness to integrate AI into school systems. Redefining access will require comprehensive teacher training to effectively engage with AI and integrate its many capabilities into the school and classroom. A nationwide survey revealed that 72% of K-12 teachers had not received guidance and training on integrating AI into their curriculum. But training teachers to recognize the bias inherent in the tool, learning to fact-check the results AI produces, and incorporating nuanced, human details into its output is a necessity. And more essential is ensuring that teachers in both resource-rich and resource-restricted schools have access to this training.
Understanding how AI tools are built can help shine a light on the bias and systemic issues of equity associated with AI. The 2020 documentary “Coded Bias,” for example, reveals how the quality of AI output depends entirely on the data used to train it. A recent Boston Globe story shared the experience of an Asian MIT student who asked AI to make her headshot more professional, and it gave her lighter skin and blue eyes. Demographics show that 67% of AI specialists are white and 91% are men. If AI tools learn from sources primarily produced by white males, the output generated is likely to reflect the same homogenized knowledge, insights and resulting bias.
With the rapid growth of AI technology, it is likely that AI will become increasingly integrated into schools. Students are already using AI to take notes in lectures, assist with language translation, and help solve math problems. Therefore, focused attention on redefining access is necessary to ensure that students from resource-rich schools are not the only ones with the opportunity to master AI tools that will increasingly be part of their daily lives.
We are at the beginning of a long journey of understanding and navigating the role of AI in all schools, but the conversation must begin with a thoughtful and proactive approach by system leaders to center equity and empower teachers to guide students on a pathway to more powerful learning experiences.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
More than a thousand members of the Fresno Teachers Association rallied in late May and vowed to strike if the union and school district fail to agree to a contract by Sept. 29, 2023.
Credit: Courtesy of Fresno Teachers Association
The state’s third-largest school district, Fresno Unified, and its teachers union have tried since November to agree on a contract that invests in teachers.
The Fresno Teachers Association says its proposals are classroom-centered ideas to improve public education, including bettering teachers’ working environment, adding academic and social-emotional student support and increasing pay and benefits.
FTA President Manuel Bonilla said the school district hasn’t responded in a meaningful way, “really showing they have a lack of vision and honor the status quo.”
Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson disagrees.
“One of the things that’s frequently said is, ‘You have no vision,’” said Nelson, regarding FTA’s claims. “Our vision was to sit down and create a new way of bargaining, where we would work collaboratively on the things that really matter.”
Amid the tug-of-war of negotiations and a looming strike, both sides insist that they want to collaborate but continue to accuse the other side of stalling and impeding progress. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and more than 70,000 students who are still dealing with learning loss from the pandemic will inevitably bear the brunt of the fallout.
While a compromise may be attainable on some issues, others — notably class size caps, lifetime medical benefits after retirement and ways of supporting students outside of class — are still elusive.
Perhaps pay is negotiable
The union argues that to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, Fresno Unified — the Central Valley’s largest employer with a $2.3 billion budget — should set the standard for salary and benefits, starting with raising pay to keep pace with rising inflation and the cost of living.
Bonilla said that the district has been “defunding teachers” for the past decade.
He cited a union analysis showing that, despite increased funding and a rising number of teachers, the district has invested a smaller portion of the overall budget on teacher salaries over the years. Ten years ago, for instance, the district allocated 41% of its budget to teacher salaries compared with 27% in the most recent budget.
The school district’s analysis of salary, inflation and cost-of-living paints a different picture.
District spokesperson Nikki Henry said that the district’s analysis of its salary increases between 2013-14 and 2022-23 shows that all staff have received 32.7% increases. On top of that, teachers received step increases and longevity stipends, amounting to an additional 40%. The salary increases outpace inflation over the same period, which was 30%, according to the district’s analysis.
The district estimates that the 11% raises it’s offering would put the average teacher salary at over six figures. Despite teachers being at different levels of the pay schedule, Fresno Unified said teachers earn an average of $90,650, in pay alone, for 185 work days, based on a $490 average daily rate — a number Bonilla said is inflated.
Based on Fresno Unified’s pay schedule, salary currently ranges from $56,013 for new teachers to about $102,000 for teachers with loads of experience, not including those with professional development.
The district has also agreed to fund medical costs at 100%, Nelson said. But that action stemmed from a health management board vote about the district health care fund, not from negotiations, Bonilla said.
One-hundred-percent district-funded health care happened, in part, Bonilla said, because there was enough money in the district’s health care fund to do so. The health care fund has a surplus of money, estimated at $47 million this school year, according to a June 2023 document shared with EdSource. At this level, FTA argues, the health fund can cover the costs of its proposal to restart lifetime medical benefits for retirees.
No agreement on lifetime benefits
Nelson maintains that restarting lifetime benefits puts the district’s fiscal solvency in jeopardy.
“I’m not going to make any decisions that I think would put the district in long-term fiscal danger,” he said.
Fresno Unified ended the practice in 2005, but 300 or so employees, including Superintendent Nelson, had qualified for lifetime benefits before it ended.
For the hundreds of current employees still eligible for lifetime benefits, Nelson said, estimated future costs total more than $1 billion. And, if lifetime benefits are restored or based on 2020 hire dates as proposed, the future costs will grow by hundreds of millions of dollars.
“It creates a fiscal cliff … a world of unknowns, none of which you can financially plan for,” he said.
Class size average vs. class size cap. Caps can lower class sizes, union says
Though lifetime retiree benefits are the top issue that the district won’t agree to, it’s not the only one.
Ninety-three percent of Fresno Unified’s 1,800 teachers who responded to an August and September 2022 union poll either strongly agreed or agreed that lowering class sizes would improve student learning.
Fresno Unified acknowledges the importance of smaller classes but “draws the line” on capping class size as the union proposed, stating that it forces schools to move students out of a class, or even a school, if a class reaches its cap.
“I can’t rationalize that in any fair way,” Nelson said. Henry added that such stringent measures would split families who attend their neighborhood school.
District wants contract to address student underperformance
Bonilla said that Fresno Unified insists on tying student performance to teacher evaluations, which “unfairly penalizes the teacher” for factors out of their control.
“The teacher could potentially be negatively impacted by that without having the authority to say, ‘We need to change these working conditions,’” Bonilla said about a teacher’s inability to control class size or students’ adverse experiences.
District officials say that using students’ outcomes in teachers’ evaluations is not meant to be punitive but to help educators grow.
Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students did not meet state standards in 2022: 67.76% failed to meet the English language arts standards, and 79.18% didn’t reach the math standards.
The school board is pressuring the district to address students’ underperformance, Nelson said.
“If kids are not thriving in a setting, for whatever reason, we have an obligation to go figure out why — and unapologetically,” Nelson said.
Proposals for student support shouldn’t be in the contract, the district argues
Also on the negotiation table are the union’s ideas for student support, which the district says go beyond teachers’ working conditions and don’t belong in the teacher contract.
Bonilla said most of the ideas came straight from educators, who work with students directly and know the factors outside the classroom that are impacting students’ ability to learn.
With clothing closets at nearly two dozen schools, Henry said, Fresno Unified already practices some of the common-good measures. While the staff at those schools started the ventures themselves, she said, the district will offer $10,000 startup costs for other schools wanting to start the initiative.
Nelson questions some of the other student-support ideas proposed by the union, such as utilizing school parking lots to serve the homeless population. “It’s not our area of expertise,” he said, adding that the district is willing to partner with experts serving that population.
“Is it the school system’s job to fix everything in regards to societal things? Absolutely not,” Bonilla said. Like other districts with 55% or more of students living in poverty, or are English learners, foster youth or homeless, Fresno Unified receives 65% more of its base funding.
In fact, 87% of Fresno Unified students fall into at least one of those categories, so on top of the more than $650 million in basic educational costs, the district gets over $249 million for its targeted students, according to the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan executive summary.
Bonilla said the ideas, such as the parking lot for homeless families to park their cars, are meant to start a conversation with district leaders.
“There are ideas on how we might do it because nobody else is thinking about these things,” he said. “Instead of coming to the table and designing something with us, they’d rather scrutinize the idea and shut down the conversation. Our ideas are not the end all, be all; they are a starting point. And if they have a better idea, let’s do that. But they don’t even want to have a conversation.”
Ideas or not, it’s a part of FTA’s last, best and final offer, Nelson and Henry said.
Nelson said the union has not deviated much from that proposal, even in July and September mediations, which to Nelson is an indicator that the union hasn’t moved toward a shared vision for the school district.
The union shared a similar sentiment about the district, saying that since contract negotiations started in November, Fresno Unified has focused on defending what it currently does in regard to pay and benefits, class size and student support.
Awaiting fact-finding report, which both sides have preconceived notions about
Negotiations have led to a May promise to strike, to both sides declaring impasse in July and to failed mediation attempts in July and during a Sept. 5-7 fact-finding.
“I’m holding out some hope that the fact-finder’s report will get us to a different state,” Nelson said.
In the fact-finding stage, FTA and Fresno Unified made presentations to a neutral third party, who will make a recommendation.
“They don’t come into this process trying to improve school systems,” Bonilla said. “They come into this process trying to settle a contract.”
The fact finder will most likely focus on salary and benefits, Bonilla said, not lowering class size, for example.
“That should be the leadership’s position of working with teachers in order to figure out how to design those systems,” Bonilla said, adding that Nelson will most likely propose adopting the findings, as-is, like he did in 2017 when teachers voted to strike but averted it. The teachers union, Bonilla said, will not write a “blank check” from someone who doesn’t know teachers’ day-to-day reality.
Despite the union attempting to “invalidate” the findings, as Henry described it, district leadership remains confident in the report, which is expected early next week.
If the union and district still don’t agree on a contract 10 days after the fact-finding report, the district must release that report to the public, leaving them with the option to impose a contract and allowing the union to vote to strike.
FTA had already imposed a Sept. 29 deadline for the school district to agree on a contract or face an Oct. 18 strike vote, which teachers may feel is the only route left to take.
Is striking the only option left?
Many teachers, according to Bonilla, do not feel supported and are disappointed by the district’s response — or lack thereof — to what the union considers solution-based methods.
“We went through the avenues that one should go through,” Bonilla said, noting how more than 100 teachers attended eight school board meetings. “We communicated with board members. We communicated with the superintendent.
“We’re here because Superintendent Nelson has failed to give vision (and) direction.”
Nelson’s vision, he said, was to change how bargaining traditionally happened: to be able to sit down and collaborate without a third party mediator having to step in.
Thinking long term, Nelson continues to believe that coming to — and staying at — the bargaining table is the best route for Fresno Unified.
“There’s no scenario — even the scenario by which they take the strike vote and actually strike — where you don’t have to sit down and have a productive discussion,” Nelson said.
If and when that conversation takes place, Bonilla said, the administration must listen to teachers.
“In many ways, we’re fighting for the heart and soul of this school district,” he said. “This model that doesn’t give voice to those actually in the classroom needs to end if we really want to be a school district that meets the needs of our students.”
Students rehearsing a dance routine in an expanded learning program in Fresno
Photo: Jay Dunn/The Partnership for Children & Youth (PCY)
The pandemic shed a bright light on something we already knew: The traditional school day is not enough to serve the whole child. Students in our school systems are struggling academically. From low test scores to low attendance rates, the pandemic recovery has left too many students behind. In response, California made a $4 billion commitment — part of the most significant funding increase in the state’s history — to fund quality expanded learning programs through the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program in an effort to bridge critical gaps in the school day.
To fully support students’ development, we must go beyond test scores and classroom performance. Students need experiences that support their minds, bodies and spirits, too. Programs before and after school, enrichment and summer learning offer safe spaces for students to spend time outside the classroom, where they can connect with trusted adults, catch up on schoolwork, engage with their friends and play in green spaces outdoors. These programs help boost students’ school performance, increase school day attendance and graduation rates and increase family engagement.
The good news is that state leaders are paying attention to the benefits of these types of expanded learning programs across the state. Recently, state policymakers participated in events here in Los Angeles to celebrate Lights On Afterschool — an initiative that calls attention to the importance of after-school programs. They saw firsthand the positive impact that learning outside of regular school hours has on children, not only academically, but mentally, emotionally and physically.
Through quality expanded learning, we see kids transform into their most authentic selves, and when there is a dedicated effort toward inclusion, experiences lead to self-discovery and a commitment to their communities. We believe that expanded learning programs help students understand their deeper place in the world, and the confidence they build here expands into their time in the classroom and in their communities.
Expanded learning goes beyond just the academic benefits, to the social and emotional health of students, necessary building blocks for the development of happy and healthy children. Last year more than 94% of surveyed middle-school participants in local programming said they grew in key areas of social and emotional development, like self-management and positive identity. Additionally, 83% of elementary participants felt a sense of team or group identity, especially important for a generation still reeling from the aftermath of isolation due to the pandemic.
From first graders playing violins in mariachi bands to young athletes learning skills and important life lessons on and off the court and young people finding new confidence after a few nights at a sleepaway camp, demonstrate the immediate and long-term results of confidence, collaboration, cultural pride and agency. When young people are given choice and opportunity to find what “sparks” them, they find a sense of self that gives them a foundation for school and life success.
Expanded learning programs are an essential part of development for so many students across our city — and our state. Our daily interactions with students in these programs prove we are on the right track — but we aren’t done yet. We must continue to fund and support high-quality expanded learning programs to ensure all students across the state have access to these opportunities to set the whole child — and whole communities — up for success.
•••
Julee Baber Brooks is CEO of Woodcraft Rangers, a major expanded learning provider that serves over 20,000 at 120 locations.
Jessica Gunderson is co-CEO of the Partnership for Children and Youth, a nonprofit working to increase access and quality of expanded learning programs in California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the authors. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Heather Cox Richardson is a historian so naturally she recoils at the daily misuse and distortion of history by Trump and his appointees. They don’t know much about history, and they want to distort it for partisan purposes.
In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”
The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.
The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is famous in U.S. history as the site of a surprise attack by 353 Japanese aircraft that destroyed or damaged more than 300 aircraft, three destroyers, and all eight of the U.S. battleships in the harbor. Four of those battleships sank, including the U.S.S. Arizona, which remains at the bottom of the harbor as a memorial to the more than 2,400 people who died in the attack, including the 1,177 who died on the Arizona itself.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II.
Pearl Harbor Day is a landmark in U.S. history. It is observed annually and known by the name President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it: “a date which will live in infamy.”
But that date was not June 7, eighty-four years ago today.
It was December 7, 1941.
The Trump administration claims to be deeply concerned about American history. In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” It complained, as Trump did in his first term, that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
The document ordered the secretary of the interior to reinstate any “monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” It spelled out that the administration wanted only “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
To that end, Trump has called for building 250 statues in a $34 million “National Garden of American Heroes” sculpture garden in order to create an “abiding love of country and lasting patriotism” in time for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On May 31, Michael Schaffer of Politico reported that artists and curators say the plan is “completely unworkable.” U.S. sculptors tend to work in abstraction or modernism, which the call for proposals forbids in favor of realism; moreover, there aren’t enough U.S. foundries to do the work that quickly.
Trump is using false history to make his followers believe they are fighting a war for the soul of America. “[W]e will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” he told a crowd in 2020. “They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he said. Like authoritarians before him, Trump promised to return the country to divinely inspired rules that would create disaster if ignored but if followed would “make America great again.” At a 2020 rally, Trump said: “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control. This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country.”
Trump’s enthusiasm for using history to cement his power has little to do with actual history. History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.
Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.
The hard lessons of history seem to be repeating themselves in the U.S. these days, and with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, some friends and I got to talking about how we could make our real history more accessible.
After a lot of brainstorming and a lot of help—and an incredibly well timed message from a former student who has become a videographer—we have come up with Journey to American Democracy: a series of short videos about American history that we will release on my YouTube channel, Facebook, and Instagram. They will be either short explainers about something in the news or what we are releasing tonight: a set of videos that can be viewed individually or can be watched together to simulate a survey course about an important event or issue in American history.
Journey to American Democracy explores how democracy has always required blood and sweat and inspiration to overcome the efforts of those who would deny equality to their neighbors. It examines how, for more than two centuries, ordinary people have worked to make the principles the founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land.
Those principles establish that we have a right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.
In late April, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, Trump showed Moran that he had had a copy of the Declaration of Independence hung in the Oval Office. The interview had been thorny, and Moran used Trump’s calling attention to the Declaration to ask a softball question. He asked Trump what the document that he had gone out of his way to hang in the Oval Office meant to him.
Trump answered: “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”
The Declaration of Independence is indeed very special to our country. But it is not a declaration of love and unity. It is the radical declaration of Americans that human beings have the right to throw off a king in order to govern themselves. That story is here, in the first video series of Journey to American Democracy called “Ten Steps to Revolution.”
Despite Congress working through a spending deal to maintain federal grant funding for Head Start over the next six months, staff members at Head Start are starting to fear for the program’s future and the potential impacts on the Bay Area’s preschoolers from disadvantaged backgrounds, the East Bay Times reported.
So far, there aren’t any signs that Head Start will face cuts. But Melanee Cottrill, the executive director of Head Start California told the East Bay Times that “the broad, overarching challenge is all the uncertainty.”
“Even in areas as relatively close-knit and compact as the Bay Area, every program is a little different to meet the needs of the community — whatever those are — in the places where they are,” Cottrill told the Times. “Regardless of what kind of organization you are, losing any chunk of your funding would be a challenge.”
Funding approved on March 14 isn’t enough to help Head Start employees keep up with cost of living increases. And earlier this month, a Head Start program run by the Santa Clara County’s Office of Education had to hand out pink slips.
Meanwhile, in February alone, roughly 3,650 children in Contra Costa County received subsidized preschool.
Contra Costa County’s Employment and Human Services Department director, Marla Stuart, told the Times said several actions taken by the federal government — including threats to reject grants that support Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — have already impacted the program.
She also pointed to Project 2025 and claims that Head Start’s federal office is “fraught with scandal and abuse” and should be cut.
“I don’t take the ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ approach,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia at a board meeting, according to the Times. “We’re not going to know until the end, but if we want to advocate to say, ‘here’s the impact of these cuts,’ no one is stopping me from talking about that.”
Several legal experts, according to the Times, have said that grant money for Head Start isn’t in jeopardy, unless the program is specifically cut.
“I’ve got lists of where possible funding impacts can occur, and I think we have a responsibility to talk about that,” Gioia said, according to the Times. “We’re not creating fear, we’re talking about reality.”
