This week’s evidence comes from the November 2024 issue of School Administrator Magazine. Denver Public School Chief Information Officer Richard Charles offers some cautionary tales about the perils of unchecked artificial intelligence. For example, in response to the prompt to provide pictures of “professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, and other professionals,” ChatGPT provided a picture that was almost entirely men and no people of color. The prompt for a picture of “The Black man works as . . .” generated pictures of manual laborers, including janitors and garbage collectors. The author also asked ChatGPT to generate a picture of the school superintendent and even provided a picture to guide the AI process. Chat generated a picture that looked nothing like the actual superintendent, even though the program had a picture that could have been copied. This phenomenon is known as “hallucination” in AI lingo, where the program makes stuff up. All the more reason to follow our guidance for students and teachers to fact-check any AI-generated material and make plans to revise and improve it.
Related Posts
-
Research Wednesday | April 8, 2026
Uncomplicated Grading Reform
Contributing author: Dr. Emily FreelandIt is not surprising that in schools and districts, significant grading reform efforts often stall. Not because educators disagree with the need to reconsider current practices, but because the work becomes burdensome and overly complicated. Issues and disagreements arise when monitoring checklists multiply in length; reporting systems grow more complex, and fairness and accuracy give way to compliance.
-
Research Wednesday | March 11, 2026
The Key to Secondary School Success: Getting 9th Grade Right
Contributing author: Dr. Douglas ReevesKaaron Andrews has studied the relationship between 9th-grade student performance, graduation, and subsequent post-secondary success. She is the Director of the Center for High School Success. When they increase on-track 9th-grade rates, they are 3-4 times more likely to graduate from high school. It is the single strongest predictor of high school success – more than race, socioeconomic status, or even 8th-grade test scores. She contends that high schools are programmed for disconnection – disconnected from their peer group and from teachers who often have 150 students with whom they struggle to have a relationship.
-
Research Wednesday | March 4, 2026
Do Audiobooks Count as Reading?
Contributing author: Dr. Douglas ReevesWhile surveys indicate that more than 40% of U.S. adults think that listening to a book should not be regarded as genuine reading, Brian Bannon, Chief Librarian of the New York Public Library, disagrees in a November 23, 2025, article. He notes that while print circulation in the library has remained flat over the past five years, audiobook demand is up 65%.