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Three members of the Portland School Board recently expressed skepticism about the early exploration the district has conducted into using artificial intelligence in the classroom.
They voiced those reservations at a May 14 committee meeting where Portland Public Schools officials presented some early sketches of an AI agenda.
The presentation accompanies PPS’s release of an AI guidebook in April, which outlines some key considerations for staff and students before utilizing various AI tools. The guidebook’s intent is to prepare students to navigate the real world with AI, and use it where possible to improve academic performance and “disrupt systemic inequities,” though the district emphasizes its mission is not to replace student-teacher relationships.
The guidebook gives staff guidance on how to enhance their work, specifically with generative AI, by supporting everything from administrative tasks (like drafting emails) to providing help with learning design (think building lesson plans). Students are encouraged to seek their instructor’s guidance for whether AI can be used for a specific assignment, and if it is, whether or not a citation is required. It also outlines the risks of AI usage, especially around privacy.
As The Oregonian and other outlets have reported, the guidebook had a controversial reception. Parents and educators have raised concerns that the software will deprive their students of critical thinking and other analytical skills. Meanwhile, district officials have said it’s crucial that students leave PPS with the skills necessary to succeed outside the classroom.
“There’s two essential questions as we really engage in this work around what AI means for our school, our school district and our students,” Kristin Moon, PPS’s director of teacher professional learning, told board members. “First is a systems question. How might we make sure human expertise thrives in an AI-enabled classroom? And second, for our students, how might we evolve our instruction so that students graduate with the AI literacy required for the modern workforce?”
On the school board, multiple members appeared hesitant over the district’s vision for AI in the classroom, and specifically took issue with a part of the presentation that outlined a profile of an AI-ready graduate. (PPS officials took that chart from the International Society for Technology in Education.) The profile advocates for students to understand how to use AI to help them research, synthesize information, and “increase human collaboration,” among other skills.
Moon began comparing that profile to PPS’s “graduate portrait,” nine broad skills PPS hopes its graduates will have by the time they walk across the stage. Those include critical thinking, effective communication, and empathy skills.
“There’s a lot of crossovers if you look between the two,” she said. “There’s commonality around problem solving, particularly for AI. Using AI as a brainstorming partner to generate new ideas and explore a wide range of possibilities is but one idea of what that could look like.”
School Board members Stephanie Engelsman, Christy Splitt and Virginia La Forte appeared at odds with the use of the AI profile.
La Forte said she did not see a need for students to rely on AI for feedback, or to help them evaluate the strengths of their claims. She added that there’s quite a bit of money to be made off AI learning technology, and cautioned officials to carefully weigh what paths they are exploring.
“[Students] don’t need AI to synthesize information to meet their needs and they certainly don’t need it in my opinion to generate new ideas,” La Forte said. “These are tremendous red flags for me when I see something like this as a guiding document. They need to use their own brains with the support and guidance of their educators.”
Moon said the district is still actively taking feedback on the AI guidebook and that its visions are subject to change, acknowledging some of the skepticism. As of May 14, however, the feedback form had received just 21 responses and the district had engaged another 10 people about it in person.
Engelsman also expressed concern that just a sliver of students had filled out a different AI perception survey—about 930 in relation to the more than 40,000 across the district—and worried feedback the district had collected would not be reflective of its actual populations.
School Board member Rashelle Chase-Miller was the sole board member at the May 14 meeting who appeared unbothered by the AI vision. She said she doesn’t think the district should make decisions out of fear and said her hope is that students can leverage AI as a tool, and not as a replacement for critical thinking skills.
“What I’m interpreting [the AI graduate profile] to mean is by the time our students are 18 and graduating…they know how to ethically, critically, and responsibly use this as a tool,” Chase-Miller said. “There are 13 years of education from the beginning to the end for them to do that in a developmentally appropriate way across the continuum.”
