The world is currently in the midst of a new digital revolution. Artificial intelligence is being implemented into every part of our lives. There is no escaping it—not even for America’s public schools.
Within the next few years, many of the nation’s K-12 schools will be integrating AI into their daily operations. This will likely include everything from assisting teachers in creating lesson plans to helping students with research assignments.
We must prepare for and counter the coalition of left-wing activists who intend to use AI as another vehicle to push diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives onto the nation’s youth.
As schools throughout the country have begun to invest in these tools, bad actors are plotting how to maximize this new technology as a superhighway into the minds of children. To no one’s surprise, the National Education Association is leading the charge by providing the nation’s school districts with a policy that places DEI at the forefront of AI in classrooms.
The NEA is notorious for using membership dues from teachers to promote political advocacy, including accusing President Donald Trump of “fascism” and hosting training for teachers on “Advancing LGBTQ+ Justice and Transgender Advocacy.” Now the NEA has introduced a sample school board policy for school districts throughout the country to use as a template that explicitly centers equity and “algorithmic bias.”
The teachers union describes algorithmic bias as “unwanted unfairness in how a computer detects patterns or automates decisions” that is based on “characteristics and identities such as age, class, culture, disability status, ethnicity, gender, location, nationality, political affiliation, race, religious background and practices, and/or sexuality.” The sample policy states that AI tools should “undergo regular audits to identify and mitigate biases.”
In other words, the NEA wants AI tools to be tweaked.
Rather than reaching the most accurate conclusion for a problem, the NEA is calling for AI to come to the most politically correct answer, one imbued with new biases inspired by DEI advocacy. Providing students with anything other than the factually correct answer for any problem is a disservice to them, but the NEA does not care.
Unfortunately, the largest school district in the nation is promoting problematic AI policy as well. New York City Public Schools has guidance on how the district will use AI going forward. In this guidance, the district explains that it is “actively building the capacity to also review for algorithmic bias, equity impact, and instructional effectiveness.”
Left-wing activists are now even creating new groups to assist schools in implementing DEI initiatives into their AI tools for students and teachers.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched a new initiative called the “Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education” (RAISE) to do exactly this. MIT claims that this initiative’s mission is to “rethink and invent a more positive and inclusive future of education and learning in the era of AI.” In an “AI and Ethics” curriculum for K-12 students that is part of RAISE, MIT explains that students will develop “critical thinking around topics like algorithmic bias, optimization, and socio-technical systems.” Lenox Public Schools in Massachusetts is already using this program.
This is not a warning that bad actors may someday attempt to use AI in schools to spread terrible ideologies to students. The fact of the matter is that they already are.
Parents who care about their children’s future and Americans who simply want our nation’s schools to prioritize education now have another reason to be worried.
Last year, President Donald Trump issued an executive order for the federal government to explore and support using AI to further the education of students and supplement training provided to educators. While the president issued the directive with good intentions, bad actors like the NEA and MIT will use the opportunity to embed their corrupt ideology into a greater number of classrooms.
If left-wing activists already have their grip on AI tools before schools implement them, the problem will become institutional and much harder to fix. Concerned Americans must step up now and reach out to their local school leadership and school boards before it is too late.
If your school is in the process of adopting AI, make sure there are no DEI strings attached.
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