A high schooler writes about AI tools in the classroom

Unfortunately, this kind of story will continue to be a popular one in newspapers and magazines, garnering lots of clicks. It feeds into the "everything is different now" sort of desperate helplessness people seem primed to adopt with respect to AI sometimes.

Obviously the answer to testing and grading is to do it in the classroom. If a computer is required, it can't connect to the internet.

Caught with a cellphone, you fail the test. Caught twice you fail the class.

The non-story beatings will continue until morale and common sense improve.

If substantially changing school device and testing policies is required by new technology, doesn't that mean everything is different now?

As far as I can remember phones were not allowed in class and testing was generally done on paper. College was a lot more lax about this stuff than K-12 was. But colleges could and should proctor their exams more strictly.

No phones in class, at scale and enforced, feels like a last 5 years thing in K-12. And the trend was very much towards increased digital testing, pre-LLM.

This is pivoting back to paper-based, but it's going to be as messy and slow of a transition as the no-mobile-device one was.

Especially given how much money there is in "AI".

And hamfistedly-handed, will likely leave another generation fucked over with regards to basic education (like the predatory social+mobile adoption before regulation did previously).

"No phones" was the rule back in the 2000s, when phones were flip phones or pagers for drug deals. Then helicopter parents demanded to be able to contact their children at any time, including during classes, so phones were allowed. There was the added bonus of "What if there's a shooting? I need to be able to call my kid during a shooting!" Now, phones are not allowed again.

The takeaway is that phones should never have been allowed in school. They distract from school, and kids need to learn to focus on tasks without being distracted.

Right: If parents needed to contact students during class--or vice-versa--there was never[0] any technical barrier to that!

You don't need hundreds of distraction/cheating pocket computers in a giant invisible wireless network for that, a school could easily route the information if the organization chose to do so.

The technology was used as an end-run around an organizational barrier.

There is no organizational barrier. Parent can still call the school and say jimmys dad is in the hospital or whatever.

And, it allows parents and students to completely ignore making plans. Jimmy needs a ride home from football practice? That should be (a) expected and (b) planned for in advance. He should not have to text mom to come and pick him up.

He wants to go home with Tommy instead? Well too bad, that wasn't the plan.