Anonymous wrote:In FCPS, they have a list of allowed phrases they pick from. It's worse than AI.

My district too. But it’s middle and high school. Most teachers don’t leave comments at all. So if my teen gets an “outstanding effort” I believe it. They don’t have to leave them

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In FCPS, they have a list of allowed phrases they pick from. It's worse than AI.

Same in my district. Everyone gets “Is a pleasure to have in class,” except for the few who aren’t. If the trouble makers are smart, they get, “Understands concepts,” and if they are struggling they get, “Needs to improve study skills.”

+1

exact same in our school district

I used to write 64 comments five times per school year (fall and winter progress reports and report cards for each trimester). If I spent an average of just ten minutes writing and revising each comment, comments took me between 10 and 11 hours. However, I also had to spend time completing grading before these reports could be written. In the end, I could not communicate much that was meaningful either, as admin required that we meet in advance with families if there was any bad news to share in the report cards. (This also placed additional time stress on me as I approached progress reports and the end of each marking period.)

If you'd like teachers to be able to plan interesting lessons and to be available to give timely feedback to students, writing comments on report cards works against that goal. Teachers will also do whatever they can to complete end-of-term reporting within a reasonable length of time. When I wrote five-sentence paragraphs for each student, three of those sentences were the same or nearly the same for each student--a template of sorts. Then I had some slight variations within my other two sentences that helped me to note homework habits, class participation, and assessment scores. I completely understand why teachers would use AI now that it is an available tool. It is not ideal, but little about communication between home and school is ideal.

Last, do not assume that AI detectors are infallible. They are likely to over-identify writing with em dashes as AI. As well, more formal writing styles are likely to be flagged as AI: GPTZero famously tagged the US Constitution as likely to have been written by AI.

Anonymous wrote:In FCPS, they have a list of allowed phrases they pick from. It's worse than AI.

Same in my district. Everyone gets “Is a pleasure to have in class,” except for the few who aren’t. If the trouble makers are smart, they get, “Understands concepts,” and if they are struggling they get, “Needs to improve study skills.”

My kids are in APS elementary and I don't even read the report cards. Meeting, exceeds, whatever, it's pointless and the comments are just filled in via check the box.

PP here - clearly did not read the original post correctly. I would much rather have a few phrases, written by AI, that reflect my child than the generic FCPS phrases.

In FCPS, they have a list of allowed phrases they pick from. It's worse than AI.

Does it matter if AI wrote the comments if they are accurate? I’m not saying the teacher should blindly add comments they didn’t write, but if they look over the AI comments and say, “Yeah, that’s accurate,” then what’s the issue?

I teach secondary school and I’ve started using AI to help me give feedback on essays. I teach over 100 students, and giving detailed feedback on essays takes a lot of time. So either I grade the essays quickly with few comments, or I give detailed comments and it takes me weeks to get through them. Either way people complain. With AI assistance I can give detailed comments much more quickly. I still read the essays and I check over the comments before assigning a grade and handing back the assignment. It’s still work for me, but it’s more efficient. Plus it’s better for the students to get detailed feedback quickly.

I think this is something that will make parents have even less respect for teachers. Not a good thing.

Checkboxes and scores are fine. BS comments that aren’t even specific to my kids are not.

The bougie private school I work for requires we put our comments (many paragraphs long) through chat gpt. Then admins go through and edit also. Basically, we have to leave about every single good thing. All the bad stuff gets watered down so much even that sounds like praise. There's very little truth to any of it. Everything we say is to keep the dollars flowing.

I would raise hell to the principal.

Bullet points ,check boxes, notes, are all fine.
Lies from a confabulating BS machine are not fine.

As long as grades are fine, I dont care about the comments. Teachers have a lot on their plate. I will get more direct feedback on my child during the annual teacher conference.

I am curious how parents view an elementary school teacher using AI to help with report card comments. Do parents want the teacher’s words and thoughts, or would an AI generated comment be fine?

I’m on the fence about this both as teacher and a parent. My own kids are in FCPS and teachers choose generic comments from a drop down menu that aren’t that different from AI. As a teacher, I try to put a few comments in that are very specifically about each child’s behavior, personality and interests, but maybe this isn’t really appropriate anymore. Do you value the comments if they are written by your child’s actual teacher or is an AI generated comment good enough?