5 ms·

Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

25 points by belter 2y ago

ksaj 2y ago
What kind of school has weekend detentions? What if a student has a job. Even without that, weekends are often family time, and certainly unwind time. I would never allow a school to punish my kid on a non-school day, no matter what they may or may not have done.
- Shawnecy 2y ago
  Where and when I grew up, Saturday detentions were pretty common in high schools (don't know if they still are or for other parts of the U.S.). The movie 'The Breakfast Club' is based on Saturday detention. That gave me the impression back then, that they were pretty normal.
- wil421 2y ago
  Saturday school was common when I was in school a while back. A girl I rode with was late and I had to do it a few times. They even tried to hold my transcript and said I needed to make one up after graduating but they sent it anyway. If you had to work you could get out of it that weekend. You’d still need to make it up and if you worked every weekend maybe you’d get another punishment.
- hahdflakdfwdasd 2y ago
  They can be cooperative. I had to work M-F and weekends and they let me serve detention during active school hours, typically during lunch hours or a study hall block.
  - ksaj 2y ago
    This is how we used to do it. Lunch or during a spare (unassigned class time) only. I think weekend detention would feel like detention for the teacher/monitor as well.
- aaron695 2y ago
  [dead]
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  Most schools I imagine. Often, it's used for extreme truancy issues, i.e. in the State of Texas, you have to be present a certain number of days I believe per school year. So Saturday detention tended to be a thing you'd get sent to if you had a truly outrageous number of absences. I believe there was a way for situations like serious illness where this rule doesn't apply. But let's be honest, most situations of excessive absences that I saw back in High School were NOT that. In that sense, your kid isn't really being "punished" by receiving Saturday detention. It's just, the school doesn't have to advance them to the next grade level either if they missed like half the school days for the year and are under the minimum attendance. Like it or not, education in the United States is compulsory and part of that is that there is usually some kind of attendence policy. If you don't like it, then you can homeschool.
- whycome 2y ago
  Weeknights suffer from same issues tho
chabes 2y ago
Tl;dr: a student was caught cheating on their project, admitted to such, was punished, and now the parents are suing the school in an attempt to salvage their child’s academic reputation. The parents say that the student will suffer irreparable harm from the school’s punishment. From the article: > RNH was temporarily held back from joining the National Honor Society and parents want their offspring's academic records cleared of any mention of the incident. In addition, they want the student to receive a B grade for the project and the removal of any indication that cheating was involved. The school’s defense is that students weren’t allowed to use AI for their research, and that the student failed to cite the AI as a source. From the article: > The school argues that RNH, along with his classmates, was given a copy of the student handbook in the Fall of last year, which specifically called out the use of AI by students. > "RNH unequivocally used another author’s language and thoughts, be it a digital and artificial author, without express permission to do so," the school argues. > "Furthermore, he did not cite to his use of AI in his notes, scripts or in the project he submitted. Importantly, RNH’s peers were not allowed to cut corners by using AI to craft their projects; thus, RNH acted 'unfairly in order to gain an advantage.'"
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > a student was caught cheating on their project, admitted to such, was punished, and now the parents are suing the school in an attempt to salvage their child’s academic reputation To be fair, the question is whether the student handbook's definition of cheating covered using AI. Of course, the kid is almost certainly already rotten, given his parents couldn't find a better way to resolve this.
  - avmich 2y ago
    I'd reserve the judgement on the last one. It may become hard to get attention of the school, and the damage to the student at this stage is very real. However as stated in the article, the part about school policies, even the use of AI to research for the paper was forbidden. Well, maybe this is unreasonable enough... but I wouldn't be swift with decisions here.
  - pinkmuffinere 2y ago
Vuska 2y ago
The motion to dismiss is revealing. https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf The AI policy starts at the bottom of page 5. Students have to mention any use of AI, even generating ideas. They must include an appendix with "the entire exchange, highlighting the most relevant sections" and provide an explanation for how and why everything was used. It seems overly strict to me, hastily written when ChatGPT became popular perhaps. Pretty soon most students are going to be say "Hey Siri, help me with my homework it's about X" and get an AI answer - are they all academically dishonest?
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  Kids need to learn how to think and have their own ideas, then as adults if they want to give in to the mediocrity of offloading their thinking to machines they'll have that chance.
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  I do think that could be academic dishonesty depending on what came out of ChatGPT and how it was used. But it depends. Let's also be perfectly clear that "Can you help me with homework about X" is probably not the question actually being asked. We know that these questions are just being pasted in verbatim. That is absolutely academic dishonesty. This case is a little different. But let's not pretend that teachers in many subjects areny being taken advantage of and screwed over by these tools and students willing to use them. I'm sure they are all frustrated and willing to jump the gun against the slightest sign of this sort of thing. Tragedy of the commons situation, it's going to ruin academic culture in the US imo if there aren't extremely strict rules laid down and quickly.
- krapp 2y ago
  >Pretty soon most students are going to be say "Hey Siri, help me with my homework it's about X" and get an AI answer - are they all academically dishonest? I mean, it doesn't matter in the long run since academia will be as entirely AI driven as education soon enough, and the entire concept of "academic integrity" will be nothing but a quaint atavism from the days when the human in the loop was actually relevant, but yes.
haburka 2y ago
Absolutely insane that you can sue a school in the US for this kind of thing. I mean, these parents have got to be out of their mind to spend so much effort and money to defend their child from rule breaking. It must be so embarrassing as the child to have parents like this.
- grugagag 2y ago
  On the one hand I agree with you and think school shouldn’t allow for sloppy thinking and relying on effortless work such as prompting, copying and pasting. And yet we have no idea where this will take is nor have we any idea if it will be 100% bad, we assume so and I tend catch myself do this too. But once the storm settles this could open us up to a new chapter in education for example. Mainstream AI may evolve beyond ChatGPT at some point and if that happens humans will have a very different place in history.
  - zifpanachr23 2y ago
    I have a concern about a tragedy of the commons type situation. How many students is this going to force into cheating in this manner in order to remain competitive? I think a lot, if we aren't incredibly strict right away. It could ruin academic culture in the US, which was generally very good when I was in school (as in, cheating was taken very seriously and was socially frowned upon by students as well as faculty). I don't think the benefits of AI are so great at this time as to make that a risk worth taking.
    - grugagag 2y ago
      I agree with you and that’s most concerning, studens who don’t intend on cheating may have to in order to stay competitive. But maybe the method of testing needs to change. Again, only time will tell how this all will play out. Pocket calculators were probably a concern for education when they came out and yet things evolved in a way that worked out. Personally I highly dislike oral examinations but maybe they’ll make a comeback and AI technology will play a part in students training for it.
- 2y ago

25 points by belter 2y ago

ksaj 2y ago

What kind of school has weekend detentions? What if a student has a job. Even without that, weekends are often family time, and certainly unwind time. I would never allow a school to punish my kid on a non-school day, no matter what they may or may not have done.

Shawnecy 2y ago
Where and when I grew up, Saturday detentions were pretty common in high schools (don't know if they still are or for other parts of the U.S.). The movie 'The Breakfast Club' is based on Saturday detention. That gave me the impression back then, that they were pretty normal.
wil421 2y ago
Saturday school was common when I was in school a while back. A girl I rode with was late and I had to do it a few times. They even tried to hold my transcript and said I needed to make one up after graduating but they sent it anyway. If you had to work you could get out of it that weekend. You’d still need to make it up and if you worked every weekend maybe you’d get another punishment.
hahdflakdfwdasd 2y ago
They can be cooperative. I had to work M-F and weekends and they let me serve detention during active school hours, typically during lunch hours or a study hall block.
- ksaj 2y ago
  This is how we used to do it. Lunch or during a spare (unassigned class time) only. I think weekend detention would feel like detention for the teacher/monitor as well.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
zifpanachr23 2y ago
Most schools I imagine. Often, it's used for extreme truancy issues, i.e. in the State of Texas, you have to be present a certain number of days I believe per school year. So Saturday detention tended to be a thing you'd get sent to if you had a truly outrageous number of absences. I believe there was a way for situations like serious illness where this rule doesn't apply. But let's be honest, most situations of excessive absences that I saw back in High School were NOT that. In that sense, your kid isn't really being "punished" by receiving Saturday detention. It's just, the school doesn't have to advance them to the next grade level either if they missed like half the school days for the year and are under the minimum attendance. Like it or not, education in the United States is compulsory and part of that is that there is usually some kind of attendence policy. If you don't like it, then you can homeschool.
whycome 2y ago
Weeknights suffer from same issues tho

chabes 2y ago

Tl;dr: a student was caught cheating on their project, admitted to such, was punished, and now the parents are suing the school in an attempt to salvage their child’s academic reputation. The parents say that the student will suffer irreparable harm from the school’s punishment. From the article: > RNH was temporarily held back from joining the National Honor Society and parents want their offspring's academic records cleared of any mention of the incident. In addition, they want the student to receive a B grade for the project and the removal of any indication that cheating was involved. The school’s defense is that students weren’t allowed to use AI for their research, and that the student failed to cite the AI as a source. From the article: > The school argues that RNH, along with his classmates, was given a copy of the student handbook in the Fall of last year, which specifically called out the use of AI by students. > "RNH unequivocally used another author’s language and thoughts, be it a digital and artificial author, without express permission to do so," the school argues. > "Furthermore, he did not cite to his use of AI in his notes, scripts or in the project he submitted. Importantly, RNH’s peers were not allowed to cut corners by using AI to craft their projects; thus, RNH acted 'unfairly in order to gain an advantage.'"

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> a student was caught cheating on their project, admitted to such, was punished, and now the parents are suing the school in an attempt to salvage their child’s academic reputation To be fair, the question is whether the student handbook's definition of cheating covered using AI. Of course, the kid is almost certainly already rotten, given his parents couldn't find a better way to resolve this.
- avmich 2y ago
  I'd reserve the judgement on the last one. It may become hard to get attention of the school, and the damage to the student at this stage is very real. However as stated in the article, the part about school policies, even the use of AI to research for the paper was forbidden. Well, maybe this is unreasonable enough... but I wouldn't be swift with decisions here.
- pinkmuffinere 2y ago

Vuska 2y ago

The motion to dismiss is revealing. https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf https://regmedia.co.uk/2024/10/15/dismiss.pdf The AI policy starts at the bottom of page 5. Students have to mention any use of AI, even generating ideas. They must include an appendix with "the entire exchange, highlighting the most relevant sections" and provide an explanation for how and why everything was used. It seems overly strict to me, hastily written when ChatGPT became popular perhaps. Pretty soon most students are going to be say "Hey Siri, help me with my homework it's about X" and get an AI answer - are they all academically dishonest?

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
Kids need to learn how to think and have their own ideas, then as adults if they want to give in to the mediocrity of offloading their thinking to machines they'll have that chance.
zifpanachr23 2y ago
I do think that could be academic dishonesty depending on what came out of ChatGPT and how it was used. But it depends. Let's also be perfectly clear that "Can you help me with homework about X" is probably not the question actually being asked. We know that these questions are just being pasted in verbatim. That is absolutely academic dishonesty. This case is a little different. But let's not pretend that teachers in many subjects areny being taken advantage of and screwed over by these tools and students willing to use them. I'm sure they are all frustrated and willing to jump the gun against the slightest sign of this sort of thing. Tragedy of the commons situation, it's going to ruin academic culture in the US imo if there aren't extremely strict rules laid down and quickly.
krapp 2y ago
>Pretty soon most students are going to be say "Hey Siri, help me with my homework it's about X" and get an AI answer - are they all academically dishonest? I mean, it doesn't matter in the long run since academia will be as entirely AI driven as education soon enough, and the entire concept of "academic integrity" will be nothing but a quaint atavism from the days when the human in the loop was actually relevant, but yes.

haburka 2y ago

Absolutely insane that you can sue a school in the US for this kind of thing. I mean, these parents have got to be out of their mind to spend so much effort and money to defend their child from rule breaking. It must be so embarrassing as the child to have parents like this.

grugagag 2y ago
On the one hand I agree with you and think school shouldn’t allow for sloppy thinking and relying on effortless work such as prompting, copying and pasting. And yet we have no idea where this will take is nor have we any idea if it will be 100% bad, we assume so and I tend catch myself do this too. But once the storm settles this could open us up to a new chapter in education for example. Mainstream AI may evolve beyond ChatGPT at some point and if that happens humans will have a very different place in history.
- zifpanachr23 2y ago
  I have a concern about a tragedy of the commons type situation. How many students is this going to force into cheating in this manner in order to remain competitive? I think a lot, if we aren't incredibly strict right away. It could ruin academic culture in the US, which was generally very good when I was in school (as in, cheating was taken very seriously and was socially frowned upon by students as well as faculty). I don't think the benefits of AI are so great at this time as to make that a risk worth taking.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    I agree with you and that’s most concerning, studens who don’t intend on cheating may have to in order to stay competitive. But maybe the method of testing needs to change. Again, only time will tell how this all will play out. Pocket calculators were probably a concern for education when they came out and yet things evolved in a way that worked out. Personally I highly dislike oral examinations but maybe they’ll make a comeback and AI technology will play a part in students training for it.
2y ago