Curriculum

Men high school graduates were more likely to say they were prepared to make a career choice or to declare a college major after high school compared to woman graduates, according to a post-graduation readiness survey by YouScience, a business that offers students career advice.

The survey also found disproportionate men and women students' high school exposure to different careers. About one-third, or 32%, of women students and 22% of men said they were rarely or never exposed to careers in high school. While 70% of men students knew CTE courses were available, only 50% of women students did. 

Workplace connections for teens can help students better understand the value of their education and can prepare them to make important life decisions, the YouScience report said. 

These survey findings follow the company's report in December that showed three-fourths of high school graduates said they were moderately, slightly or not at all prepared to make college or career decisions after graduation. 

The most recent survey included responses from more than 500 high school graduates from the 2019-22 classes.

"By improving career exposure for everyone and partnering more closely with industry, we have a greater chance of solving workforce issues such as the limited pool of skilled talent," said YouScience Chief Operating Officer Jeri Larsen, in a statement. "Equitable education and exposure for all students is needed now more than ever."

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona highlighted in a speech last week the need to broaden high schoolers’ career and workplace experiences. 

"We have the students for the careers needed to build America," Cardona told an audience in Washington, D.C. "We just have to better align our systems and clear the path for our students." 

In November, the U.S. Education, Labor and Commerce departments announced they were dedicating $5.6 million in Perkins funding to expand work-based learning opportunities for students as part of a joint initiative. The Education Department also issued guidance to local and state school systems on how to use federal COVID-19 emergency funds to expand post-secondary college and career pathways. 

Some activities promoted by the Education Department include increasing access to college dual enrollment programs, strengthening college and career advice to students, and broadening students' experiences with high-quality, work-based learning.

The guidance included examples of districts' investments in these areas:

• Frederick County Public Schools. This Maryland district used Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief money to buy textbooks and course materials for students enrolled in Pathways, a dual enrollment course for English learners provided in partnership with Frederick Community College. 
• Houston Independent School District. In this Texas district, $53.2 million in ESSER money was dedicated to helping students navigate the college admissions process. The district plans to add advisors for college and career readiness and grow partnerships with organizations that assist with students' plan and apply to college and prepare for careers.
• Denver Public Schools. Students in this Colorado district who aspire to be teachers can participate in a summer work-based program while being supervised by master teachers. The students work with a master teacher to provide academic and enrichment activities to middle school students and then receive feedback during a debriefing after each class.
• Council Bluffs Community School District. This Iowa district is spending $990,000 in ESSER funds on its Plus One Pathways program that allows students options for earning a diploma and two trade credentials over the course of 9-12 grades. 

"We must challenge our myopic view that emphasizing the importance of career pathways is about limiting students, or the view that it’s four-year-college or bust," Cardona said in his D.C. speech.

Florida's Polk County Public Schools is hoping to elevate students' academic progress through a tutoring program that allows classroom teachers to schedule personalized and synchronous support for students during class time, said Superintendent Frederick Heid.

The online student tutoring support, which is planned for a spring launch, is also expected to help boost teacher recruitment and retention by giving classroom educators assistance in differentiating instruction to a variety of learners, Heid said.

High-quality tutoring has become a popular and effective strategy in schools to help students recover from pandemic-related learning losses. Researchers have found the most successful programs offer students support during school hours, are conducted in 1-to-1 and small groups settings, and have well-trained and supervised tutors.

The plan in Polk County schools is to implement the program in 42 to 50 elementary schools that have shown the greatest need for academic supports. The service, which is planned for this school year and next, is expected to reach about 40,000 students, said Heid.

The district is using $4.2 million from federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief II funding for the program to run both school years. The majority of the funds will be spent next year since it will only run for part of this school year, Heid said.

The superintendent said the district specifically sought real-time classroom learning assistance targeting the academic skills individual students need help with. Under the program, teachers can schedule online tutors to work synchronously with different students during class on specific skills identified by the classroom teacher. Tutoring will be available in multiple languages.

"So when those students connect, that tutor basically becomes almost like a co-teacher in the classroom," Heid said. "That's the most impressive part of the whole thing, quite frankly.

He said teacher shortages and budget constraints make it difficult to hire regular co-teachers for classrooms at the chosen schools. Heid added that while his teacher vacancy rate, at 105, is below the nearly 300 vacancies this time last year, the district has 5,000 more students than last year. The higher enrollment adds to the demand for more personalized learning for students.

As the district considered contracting with a tutoring service, it got input from the local teachers' union — a vital step in the process, he said.

The district's teachers who will participate in the program will undergo nine to 10 weeks of professional development, which should begin shortly.

Heid, a former middle school principal and bureau chief for school improvement and leader of Florida’s Differentiated Accountability project at the Florida Department of Education, said he and other educators in the district will be watching students' progress closely to determine the return on investment from the tutoring program. District leaders will also be measuring student engagement, attendance, behavior and teacher satisfaction. 

The program comes from Varsity Tutors, a for-profit business of Nerdy Inc., which has partnered with more than 200 school districts since launching its school division last school year. Most of these offerings consist of high-dosage tutoring that is delivered live and face-to-face online. 

Polk is the first district to launch with Varsity's Teacher-Assisted Tutoring program, according to Brian Nelson, Varsity Tutors spokesperson, in an email.

Elsewhere, school systems have also sought tutoring help from outside the school building to supplement instruction and student supports from classroom teachers. 

In Michigan, for example, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is expected this week to request funding for a massive statewide tutoring effort that was first announced last year and estimated at $280 million with other learning supports, according to several news outlets.

New Mexico students in Title I and tribal schools — or about 178,500 students — will have 1-to-1 virtual tutoring help during, before and after school through a $3.3 million contract with Paper Education, Inc., another tutoring company. A separate program, the New Mexico Math Tutoring Corps, in partnership with tutoring firm Saga Education, will offer 524 Algebra I students virtual tutoring services in the state. 

Nationally, schools are projected to use $3 billion in ESSER III, or American Rescue Plan, funding for student tutoring, according to an analysis last year by FutureEd using figures from data services firm Burbio's review of spending plans in 5,004 districts. 

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, in a speech last year, promoted the goal of offering tutoring 30 minutes per day, three times a week, to each student who lost ground during the pandemic. 

The U.S. Department of Education set a goal of recruiting 250,000 tutors, mentors and coaches to work in schools. 

The National Partnership for Student Success expects to issue guidance early this year that would help principals find and partner with providers for student supports, according to an article by Kate Cochran, the nonprofit's managing director, on theNational Association of Secondary School Principals' website.

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By Turnitin

Educators everywhere understand that making mistakes is part of the learning process. Moreover, learning to cope with setbacks is a core component of student success.

Providing the foundation for such academic buoyancy, as stated by Martin LaMonica in his article, "To Help Students Overcome Setbacks, They Need to Develop 'Academic Buoyancy'" at The Conversation, is important. Additionally, academic buoyancy is directly linked to workplace buoyancy. And buoyancy—another word for resilience—is core to not just education or work but to life in general, which means that the development of academic buoyancy affects all aspects of student lives.

LaMonica refers to an article by Martin, Colmar, Davey, and Marsh titled "Longitudinal modelling of academic buoyancy and motivation: Do the 5Cs hold up over time?" which addresses the 5Cs of academic buoyancy: 1) Composure; 2) Confidence; 3) Commitment; 4) Control; and 5) Coordination. The article stresses that addressing these 5Cs helps build academic buoyancy.

Educators help students pivot from setbacks to learning daily. When students make an error on a problem, educators provide feedback and scaffolding so that students can be redirected to new insights. When students struggle with forming thesis sentences, educators are there to help students condense analysis and provide argumental structure.

But how can educators help students when it comes to plagiarism? If plagiarism is a symptom of a student's lack of interest in learning or lack of understanding of academic misconduct, why not promote buoyancy so that students pivot towards learning?

Turnitin Feedback Studio allows students to submit drafts multiple times ahead of the final deadline and access automated grammar feedback and their Similarity Report. This report clearly identifies matches in their work to sources in Turnitin's comprehensive database of internet, student papers, and academic journal content, allowing students to self-correct any issues before the due date.

Let's take a look at the 5Cs as they pertain to cases of academic misconduct and/or plagiarism and examine how unlimited submissions can nurture buoyancy:

1. Composure

Anxiety causes students to make fear-based decisions. But having visibility into student learning and where its students need further support, helps educators mitigate anxiety for students.

Bottom line: Students who know their learning is supported through feedback, multiple drafts, and multiple submissions, are more assured and less anxious. And as a result, less vulnerable to plagiarism.

2. Confidence

Confident students react to feedback in positive ways. A student who believes they're capable of learning will find a way to improve. On the other hand, students who believe themselves incompetent will see feedback as a reinforcement of that self-perception. Students who lack confidence are most likely to plagiarize. When it comes to plagiarism, feedback is a critical component of instilling confidence—whether through providing feedback on citations and attribution in a lower-stakes setting or by providing students with tools to learn how to cite before assessment.

Bottom line: Students who have access to unlimited submissions and thus, lower-stakes learning, have the opportunity to build their confidence, avoid plagiarism, and turn in work that is original.

3. Commitment

Commitment centers around student persistence and the knowledge that learning takes both time and effort.

Bottom line: Unlimited submissions make clear that learning doesn't occur through one draft or one submission, but rather multiple steps, however incremental.

4. Control

Students who feel they have control over their own learning are empowered to face challenges and new concepts. On the other hand, students who feel control is in the hands of an external force may feel victimized. When students have the ability to monitor their growth and have transparency into their own learning, they can improve outcomes.

Bottom line: Unlimited submissions provide students with the ability to learn at their own pace, monitor their own growth, and avoid plagiarism.

6. Coordination

Buoyant students manage deadlines and can break down assignments into smaller tasks. Procrastination is one of the most common situations under which academic misconduct, in the form of plagiarism or contract cheating, can occur. So providing students with scaffolding, with many interim steps, steers students away from misconduct and towards resilience.

Bottom line: Unlimited submissions prevent plagiarism and uphold student coordination by making accessible multiple feedback rounds, helping students to avoid procrastination, and supporting incremental steps towards the completion of original work.

UPDATE: Jan. 25, 2023: The College Board said Tuesday that it will soon release a revised AP African American Studies course framework, incorporating feedback from high schools and colleges gathered during the pilot process. The College Board called this revision process "a standard part of any new AP course" and said "frameworks often change significantly as a result." The framework is now expected to be released as soon as Feb. 1, which would mark the first day of Black History Month. Previously, the College Board had said it would post the updated framework on its website in spring 2024.

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The Florida Department of Education has rejected an Advanced Placement African American Studies course, saying in a recent letter to the College Board that the course is "inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value." 

An 81-page preview of the AP African American Studies course that has not yet been made publicly available by the College Board, but was published by the Florida Standard, shows the course includes information on:

• The origins of the African diaspora. 
• Slavery. 
• Black politics, arts and literature. 
• Civil rights movements and diversity within Black communities, including Black queer studies. 

Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz Jr. cited "critical race theory" among "other obvious violations of Florida law" as reasons for the state department's decision to reject the course. "We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education," Diaz said.

When the state board and legislature passed anti-critical race theory measures for K-12 schools, advocates warned it would limit discussions around past and present race-related experiences of Black Americans. Teachers from Florida confirmed to K-12 Dive that they had limited discussions on African American experiences and history following the measures' implementation. However, the state currently allows an AP course on European History.

Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, said in a statement that the department rejected the AP African American Studies course because it "lacks educational value and historical accuracy." 

A list provided to K-12 Dive by the Florida Department of Education details its concerns the department has with the course, including recommended readings of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis and Bell Hooks, as well as topics like intersectionality and activism, Black queer studies, movements for Black lives, Black feminism in literature, reparations and the 21st century struggles of Black people.

The College Board described the course, which was 10 years in the making, as one that draws "on the wealth of scholarship from college faculty and the deep experience of teachers across the country" and "is designed to offer high school students an evidence-based introduction to African American Studies."

The course, College Board said in a statement, is meant to "explore the vital contributions and experiences of African Americans." 

"As with all AP courses in the humanities, it is not a theory course; students instead immerse themselves in primary sources," College Board added. "The course is designed to encourage students to examine each theme from a variety of perspectives, without ideology, in line with the field’s tradition of debates." 

The AP African American Studies course began piloting in fall 2022 at 60 schools nationwide and will expand next school year, according to the College Board. It is expected to be available to all interested high schools starting in 2024-25.

As part of the course, students will be required to weigh evidence, analyze different viewpoints, and "come to their own conclusions," said the College Board. "AP students are never required to agree with a particular opinion or adopt a particular ideology, but they are expected to analyze different perspectives." 

Florida is one of many Republican states that have passed regulations around discussions and instruction on race and LGBTQ issues. DeSantis has cited parental rights and called some race-related instruction in public schools "state-sanctioned racism." 

The National Parents Union said in a statement it was "outraged" by the rejection of the AP course. "Make no mistake: This is a direct attack on the Black and all BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] communities," the organization said. 

DeSantis and members of the Florida Board of Education have been among policymakers on the frontline of the efforts to regulate curriculum, putting in place restrictions on instruction, consequences for violating those prohibitions, and required training on what can and cannot be taught and discussed in the classroom. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Florida has "banned more books in schools and libraries than almost every other state in the country. She called Florida's decision "incomprehensible" and "concerning" in a briefing on Friday, adding that the state seeks to block the study of Black Americans.

Developing entrepreneurial skills not only gives students options for their futures — it also helps them perfect real-life skills, including problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork and resilience.

Participating in an entrepreneurship education and training program increases the probability students will start a business and derive higher income compared to students who didn’t participate in the program, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

That is especially important for students who experience barriers to participating in the economy, including BIPOC, Native American, low-income and rural youth, according to the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, which launched the Youth Entrepreneurship Fund in 2017. The fund aims to promote racial and economic equity and justice by ensuring these youths are given opportunities and tools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and the skills necessary to succeed in the modern workforce. 

To learn more about what’s working, we spoke with two educators to learn how their programs are encouraging students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.

Saying ‘YEP’ to action-based learning and small, diverse teams

Teaching entrepreneurship should rely on action-based learning, said Audrey Shapiro, cofounder and program director for the Young Entrepreneurs Program, or YEP, for high school students. 

“I feel like this is a general theme in education, but I think it’s especially important for this,” Shapiro said. “So much of entrepreneurship is going for it — it’s one thing to learn about it conceptually, and it’s another thing to do it.”

YEP has chapters at Brown University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University — the latter for middle school students. More than 250 students have graduated to date, and new chapters are launching in January at University of California, Los Angeles, Clark Atlanta University, University of Rhode Island and University of New South Wales in Australia, Shapiro said. 

YEP’s model has proven to be effective, and can easily be replicated by other entrepreneurship-focused programs, she said.

The program’s middle and high school participants meet once a week for two hours for six weeks. Each session’s first hour is an interactive lesson about entrepreneurial skills, such as problem identification, solution ideation, business planning, pitching and more. The sessions are sprinkled with activities that allow students to practice each skill, Shapiro said.

During the second hour, students work to apply those skills to an entrepreneurial endeavor they develop over the course of the program, she said. The program eventually culminates in a “pitch night” where students deliver a pitch about their venture idea.

“We believe that students learn (entrepreneurship) by doing,” Shapiro said.

The majority of YEP participants come from under-resourced schools and communities, Shapiro said. Each session is capped at 20 students, who typically are divided into five teams of four who work together on an entrepreneurial project. 

Each group is as diverse as possible, Shapiro said, and leaders try to ensure students don’t know each other and have complementary interests and skills. YEP also offers a “Day of Entrepreneurship” event open to the community that typically attracts about 60 students, she added.

Prioritize inclusivity

It's imperative to also afford opportunities to students with disabilities, said Laurilie Keay, director of the K-8 Alma Fuerte Public Charter School in Pasadena, California, where entrepreneurship is a key component of the curriculum.

Some 27% of Alma Fuerte’s nearly 150 students are in special education classes, all of them integrated in general education classrooms. 

“We really push to make sure the lessons and the skills are targeted to each individual student as best we can, and it’s been working,” she said. For example, one success story involved a student with a speech impediment who ended up helping to sell student-made soap at a local farmers’ market by announcing “soap for sale” to the market-goers, she said. 

Alma Fuerte intentionally teaches empathy to create an environment that encourages “true acceptance,” so all students have the mindset of helping others whenever possible, Keay said.

Let students come up with their own ideas

YEP encourages students to explore and research problems in their own communities, and come up with sustainable solutions, Shapiro said.  “We like to think of entrepreneurship not as, ‘What’s your million-dollar idea?’ but, ‘What’s the billion-dollar problem you want to solve?’” she said. 

YEP graduates have developed real-life, ongoing ventures like a program that provides free robotics education for middle schoolers, Shapiro said. Other venture ideas include a a storage unit for backpacks on school buses and a recycled jewelry business that used sanitized neighborhood litter as material.

Entrepreneurship resonates with children because it has so many components, including writing, building and public speaking, Keay said. “With a little bit of prodding, everyone can find their niche,” she said.

Alma Fuerte students have held classroom markets where they can earn “Fuerte Bucks,” the school’s mock currency, by selling their own products to fellow students and their parents. Students have sold perfume samples from magazines and, before the COVID-19 pandemic, homemade hand sanitizer. The school also purchased supplies for them to make and sell soap, said Adriani León, the school’s director of operations.

Last year, the school invested in a makerspace, supervised by a new staff member and equipped with materials for robotics, digital design, heat press, arts and crafts, candle-making and more.

“[Students] come to me every day asking if they can start their business,” Keay said. “We’ve had really interesting conversations, where I ask, ‘Why should I let you? What are you offering that somebody else isn’t offering?’ And they come up with answers and their own business plan.”

At one point, the entire 3rd grade set up, during recess, a salon offering services like hand massages, hair braiding and nail painting, Leon said. Students outlined the salon’s floor plan with playground blocks and created waiting, service and checkout areas staffed by greeters, cashiers, nail and hair technicians, and even security, she said.

The opportunity to earn “Fuerte Bucks” also has become an incentive for children with challenging behaviors to behave more positively, Leon added. 

Rely on the experience of volunteers

YEP was borne out of an unfilled need to teach entrepreneurship to high schoolers, which many schools, particularly those that are underfunded, can’t tackle, Shapiro said.  She was an undergraduate at Brown University when she tutored young students in the local area and realized many wanted to learn about entrepreneurship, which led to YEP’s founding, she said.

YEP has an all-volunteer staff and guest speakers, such as local business entrepreneurs, professors and student experts. Such guest speakers are often an untapped resource for schools and can help teachers develop and deliver entrepreneurship curriculum for their students, she said. 

Each YEP chapter gets funding from its local university, mainly for t-shirts and meals, “because there is nothing worse than hungry students,” Shapiro added.

It’s essential for everyone involved in teaching entrepreneurship to encourage students to acknowledge, and even welcome, any obstacles in launching their endeavors, Shapiro said.

“You have to acknowledge that it didn’t go as planned and emphasize that having a bump in the road is one of the keys to success,” she said. “Show them that this is an opportunity to learn, and help them figure out how to pivot.”

The term “networking” might conjure images of awkward social events rife with bland appetizers and stunted conversations, but that’s an old-school view educators should chuck, experts say.

Instead, networking is about relationships and relationship-building — and teaching that concept doesn’t have to be boring.

For starters, rather than “networking,” the best terms to use are “professional relationship building skills,” or simply, “relationship building skills,” said Sean O’Keefe, founder and partner at Career Launch, which works with higher ed institutions, high schools, non-profit organizations and government agencies to help expand job and internship pathways for students.

In fact, educators can help students identify the relationships they already have and expand their network of relationships, or “social capital,” so they can access and build professional pathways to launch into successful careers, said O’Keefe.

Additionally, students should be encouraged to think not in terms of meeting new people, but having different types of conversations with people they already know, said Julia Freeland Fisher, education director for the Clayton Christensen Institute, which created a playbook for building and strengthening students’ networks. 

Half of all internships and jobs come through networking and connections, and students’ access to those varies greatly based on where they grow up and their parents’ level of education, Freeland Fisher pointed out. 

Educators, however, can help students build their relationship networks and address opportunity gaps with the following five tactics.

Map relationships

All students have “social capital” and can leverage that for career exploration, internships or job searches, O’Keefe said.

Career Launch works with more than 100 school districts across the country and uses an eight-step framework that emphasizes “relationship mapping,” or identifying all the people with whom students have ties, O’Keefe said. 

Those ties can be strong, weak or loose, and they include all kinds of people: near and extended family, church members, mentors, friends’ parents, community members and much more. Loose ties can include people with interesting jobs, who students may have never met but heard about from their connections, O’Keefe said.

The idea is to “make the invisible visible,” Freeland Fisher said. “It’s a very practical way to teach students you are already a member of a social network across different domains and categories.”

Career Launch’s framework asks students to select five people in their network who they identify as positive influences, O’Keefe said. Students then work on setting up a conversation or video chat with one of those people for a general discussion about career and career readiness. They wrap up by asking that person if they know anyone in their desired industry or career path, he said.

“We tell students the answer is most likely going to be ‘no,’ but if you ask enough times, you’re going to find someone who says yes,” O’Keefe said.

Teach practical steps

Teachers should help students prepare for and successfully carry out their career exploration in a professional manner, O’Keefe said.

Teachers can give advice, show videos of mock career conversations, and help students practice in class, he said.

Students also need to learn skills like personalizing emails, writing subject lines, and sending calendar invites for video chats, O’Keefe said. They also should know how to follow up, such as sending a “thank you” email within 24 hours, or a handwritten note if a work address is available, he said.

Acknowledge responsibility

Traditionally, teachers see their role as forming deep relationships with students, but a key component of their jobs should also be helping students expand their network of relationships, said Tyler Thigpen, co-founder and head of schools for The Forest Schools and co-founder and executive director of the Institute For Self Directed Learning. 

“Inevitably, in any school, you have a set of learners who don’t have social capital, and neither do their parents,” he said. 

In that case, teachers and administrators have a responsibility to use their own social capital to help students connect with mentors and professional adults, and, in turn, to increase the students’ social capital, he said. Schools should make that a priority by having focused weekly meetings and allocating time and resources, Thigpen said.

Freeland Fisher said educators, particularly in high school, should broaden their vision of family engagement by tapping into the school’s parent network. “Schools typically put a lot of resources into employer partnerships, and that is great, but rarely have they started with their families and what their families do for a living,” she said.

Students also find connections with and advice of near-peers, such as those who just finished an internship or started their first job, especially valuable, she added.

Begin before high school

Teaching about networking and social capital is typically included in career and technical education , electives or internship classes, but the best approach is to incorporate that into general core subjects, O’Keefe said.

It’s especially helpful to tackle the subject in 8th grade, so by the time students reach high school, they can make more informed decisions about things like CTE pathways, he said. 

Additionally, educators should emphasize that young people can build trusting and reciprocal relationships not just with people of their age, but also adults, Freeland Fisher added.

Educators can also help students process any negative interaction they may experience during their work on relationship building, such as unreturned emails or unpleasant conversations, Freeland Fisher said. When that happens, students should debrief with a trusting adult, such as a teacher or guidance counselor.

“What we know from the mentoring world is that a bad relationship is worse than no relationship at all, because it can harm students’ sense of self-efficacy in the long term,” Freeland Fisher said. 

Tap online resources

Educators can use virtual tools to connect students with adult professionals, explore career pathways and increase their social capital, Freeland Fisher said. 

“I definitely see a lot of potential in the online world, particularly to diversify students’ weak tie network,” she said. “Research shows that weak ties are a kind of ‘special sauce’ for making career connections.”

Resources Freeland Fisher pointed to include: 

• Pathful Connect (formerly Nepris), which matches teachers and students with industry professionals.

• CareerSpring, which has a career video library, an advisor forum and job placement services.

• Connected Futures, a curriculum designed to help students form meaningful connections with adults.

• nXu, which helps students define personal and professional pathways.

• Social Capital Builders, a Black-owned and operated enterprise with a mission to raise the social capital literacy and connections of one million youths and adults by 2025.

However, Freeland Fisher also cautioned that technology cannot fully replace the value of face-to-face interactions, which are particularly critical for young children.

When thinking of classes on artificial intelligence, you probably imagine students on a computer writing code. But that’s not where Joseph South, chief learning officer for the International Society for Technology in Education, says educators should start.

Instead, teachers should help students learn how to approach decisions the way digital programming might — by working through information, finding patterns and making a choice.

“At ISTE, we feel strongly students need to learn how the digital world works,” South said. “Those skills would be incomplete without an understanding of how these extremely powerful tools are working."

Computers and digital devices are as ubiquitous to today’s students as pencils and pens were to their grandparents. People commonly call on Siri to send a text message or allow Netflix to select the next show to watch. Underpinning those actions is artificial intelligence, or AI, which uses a system of data analysis and algorithms to help machines make decisions like which letter to pick for a word that sounds like “hey” and not “hay,” or how to select a movie a “Star Wars" fan might want to see next based on available information.

Experts believe having students learn about machine learning is a crucial piece of learning how AI technology works and should start when they're young. Then as students get older, the curriculum can broaden to include ethical issues, such as AI bias or how data is collected and applied, and who ultimately owns it.

Crucially, though, teachers must understand the topic themselves to be able to help steer students toward fluency of their own.

Using machine learning for problem solving

When teaching students the basics of machine learning and how AI operates, Michael Daley, an associate professor and director of the Center for Professional Development & Education Reform at the Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester, suggests classes should learn how to apply a machine learning approach to solve problems. 

In other words, they should learn how to think like a computer.

“We know there is an explosion of big data,” Daley said. “It’s an awareness we believe people should be learning in school, because their data is shared everywhere. We want them to have an understanding of big data and how big data is processed.”

This interest has spurred Daley to launch EAGER, a two-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to help build machine-learning mindsets in K-12 students.

One part of the project is a program that turns data into a visual representation, such as a pictograph of a face. For example, the program may reflect the abundance of beetles in a specific region by having certain facial features appear more or less prominently in a visual representation. Eyebrows may represent the air temperature in a given area, while the nose on the figure may demonstrate humidity, and the ears might stand for the number of beetles. These characteristics change based on the data: Eyebrows can be thicker and ears smaller, for instance.

Students can then visualize the data without getting lost in the numbers. They can also drag the pictographs on top of each other to look at clusters, such as comparing the faces with thinner eyebrows representing lower air temperature regions. Patterns then appear, pointing to evidence that can help students create a hypothesis.

“We do think this way of asking questions is an emerging way to do science,” Daley said.

Standards — and laws — are needed

South said ISTE began thinking about the rise of AI about five years ago, with a focus on how to help teachers instruct students on the technology and related ethical issues around designing for machines.

“We wanted students to participate in activities so they could understand how AI functions and the ethical issues that arise,” he said. “AI reflects human values and biases, and we wanted to expand the numbers and types of students designing AI.”

To that end, ISTE developed a partnership with GM in 2017 that began by teaching educators how to teach the subject. To date, more than 1,500 teachers have been trained in how to think about machine learning — and they in turn have taught over 3 million students, South said.

The program is free and launched with high schools in California, Texas, and Michigan that serve high-poverty populations or had populations historically underrepresented in STEM fields.

That approach stemmed from seeing AI as an “equity issue,” said Nancye Blair Black, ISTE-GM AI Explorations Project Lead. The program has since expanded into teaching guides that focus on elementary school curriculum, secondary schools, computer science, ethics and AI.

“Children and humans, in general, deserve to know how their world works and have a say in how their world works,” Black said. “They should know the pros and cons of AI, what works well, the societal impacts, and how AI can solve problems.”

One challenge — and motivation — for creating an AI curriculum has been a lack of standards, experts said. While most states have computer science standards, building computational models and understanding machine learning is an entirely different field.

But it should start with young students and not wait until upper grades, said Yigal Rosen, a former technology and assessment researcher with the Harvard University Graduate School of Education who now develops AI learning tools for BrainPOP.

"Computational thinking, which is a mindset, needs to start early,” Rosen said. “You have to build those skills starting in elementary school, as opposed to waiting for high school.”

New standards and assessments are also slowly appearing on the global stage. One assessment, the PISA 2025 Learning in the Digital World, will look at how prepared students are at applying computational logic to solve problems, with results expected by December 2027.

Nations are also taking a hard look at how AI is applied and used in everyday life. In the EU, the proposed EU AI Act will apply a scale to the risk of uses for artificial intelligence in certain industries, including AI that scans job applications or the way AI can assign a social score which is then used by a government. The White House also recently released a proposed draft for an AI Bill of Rights to examine the regulation of AI in healthcare, financial services and other sectors.

To Patricia Scanlon, Ireland’s first AI Ambassador and founder and executive chair of SoapBox, a speech recognition tool designed for children’s voices, this concern about how AI is involved in our lives underpins the need to ensure students learn at least a conceptual understanding of machine learning. Whether they end up designing artificial intelligence or are just engaged citizens of the world, knowing how AI works is key.

“Not everybody needs to know every detail,” Scanlon said. “The people who will contribute to AI, not everybody will have to be technical. But you need to know how to evaluate [AI], and how it’s regulated. There are so many aspects in how it’s a part of our lives, and kids are living in that world.”