Hot off the press this week: a new AI edtech platform, a historical K12 policy and insight into your students’ postsecondary aspirations. Welcome to this week’s TGIF Time-saver.
Former OpenAI, Tesla engineer enters edtech space
Earlier this week, computer scientist Andrej Karpathy announced that he’s launching an AI-integrated edtech platform called Eureka Labs, building off of his experience at OpenAI and Tesla.
The platform would allow teachers to design courses aided by an AI teaching assistant to lead students through the learning material, he wrote in a post on X. The company’s first product is LLM101n, an undergraduate-level class that “guides the student through training their own AI, very similar to a smaller version of the AI Teaching Assistant itself,” wrote Karpathy.
“Eureka Labs is the culmination of my passion in both AI and education over about 2 decades.”
Read more about the edtech platform in his X post here:
⚡️ Excited to share that I am starting an AI+Education company called Eureka Labs.
The announcement:—
We are Eureka Labs and we are building a new kind of school that is AI native.How can we approach an ideal experience for learning something new? For example, in the case… pic.twitter.com/RHPkqdjB8R
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) July 16, 2024
California’s new gender-identity law met with lawsuit
You might’ve read about California’s new law banning “forced outing” parental notice policies when a student changes pronouns. It’s the first state in the U.S. to enforce such a ban. Proponents argue it will help shield LGBTQ students who come from unwelcoming households.
In an ongoing legal battle with the state’s policy, the Chino Valley Unified School District has sued Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom arguing that the law violates the rights of parents protected under the U.S. Constitution, the Associated Press reports.
“School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” Emily Rae, a lawyer representing the district, said in a statement.
Student perspective: Strong career aspirations linked to school/life balance
It’s time to ban homework. There, I said it. In all seriousness, a healthy school/life balance is important for teens as it often leads to a clearer understanding of their future aspirations, a survey from the online public school program Pearson’s Connections Academy concludes.
Less than half (45%) of eighth through 12th grade students feel they have an “excellent” or “good” school/life balance. Another 29% rate theirs very poorly and say it’s having a negative impact on their ability to start career planning. Here’s how you can help:
Students want to know what kinds of skills they need to develop that are desired among employers (49%). They’re also constantly seeking information about work experience, internships and apprenticeships (46%) as well as knowledge on what sorts of education programs are considered the best pathways for their desired careers (42%).
Consider tapping into local partnerships to help students gain entry into their most desired industries, which include:
- Healthcare (26%)
- Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media (24%)
- Business (16%)
- Engineering and architecture (14%)
New from DA
We’ve got lots to offer from the DA desk this week, including an insightful conversation with South Carolina’s Superintendent of the Year Frank Rodriguez about how his district went from 53rd to first in the state for starting teacher salaries. In just two years, his district has raised starting teacher pay by nearly $20,000.
Also new from District Administration:
‘Talking Out of School’ podcast
Superintendent Atiya Perkins wants you to “pause for the cause”: “It’s having self-awareness, being a self-reflector,” Perkins explains in the latest episode of District Administration’s “Talking Out of School” podcast. “It’s being able to make decisions accurately. It is building relationships and then establishing connections to understand what other people are thinking—and believing that’s the role of the superintendent.
Changes to the ACT exam
Is summer school outdated?
It starts by strengthening tier I instruction, argues Jeff Feinman, chief of partnerships for The National Sumer School Initiative. The nonprofit’s five-week summer program matches educators with teaching coaches to create discourse-rich, inquiry-based instruction that will continue through the school year.
