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.
🤦♀️
The annoying part is that some time of self paced computerized curriculum is genuinely a good idea that I’ve been supporting for ages. But the whole premise is that this allows the teacher to spend more time in one on one instruction to get students over the hump when they have questions.
It doesn’t work as an excuse to throw out the teacher.
As a former elementary school teacher, I fully agree. IXL is decent for skill reinforcement but falls short when it comes to teaching new content and principles. It turns out most students benefit from learning in a group where another student might not get the content initially and ask clarifying questions and have the teacher repeat, rephrase, and reteach. Or classmates work in pairs or small groups and teach each other, for example. IXL was great for practice and did allow the teacher additional flexibility to work with students who needed more help or a more personalized approach, but I would not want my students to exclusively use it.
Depends if this is an AI designed specifically for education, or just ChatGPT wearing a mortarboard.
