America is in a literacy crisis. Is AI the solution or part of the problem?

By Gordon Ebanks, CNN

(CNN) — Reading levels dropped to historic lows during the pandemic. Now parents, teachers and tech companies are hoping AI can help solve America’s literacy crisis.

America’s literacy challenge has been building for years, with reading scores sliding even before the pandemic pushed them to their lowest levels in decades. Educators said potential factors include children’s increased screen time, shortened attention spans and a decline in reading longer-form writing.

Mississippi, Louisiana and other states have experimented with shaking up reading curriculums and passing laws aimed at improving childhood literacy. But the rise of artificial intelligence is creating another opportunity to reimagine how students learn to read.

Across the US, parents, educators, and community groups are trying AI-powered tutors that listen as children read, correct mistakes in real time and adapt lessons to each student’s reading level — though questions remain about the risks of using AI and whether it can actually improve literacy skills.

Denver Public Schools made headlines in recent years for embracing AI products, both as teaching tools and as teacher supports. The system of roughly 200 schools began working with Amira Learning, a company that specializes in AI reading tutors, in January.

Thousands of its elementary students are currently reading with the platform, according to Jennifer Begley, the district’s director of humanities.

When a child reads aloud, the AI tool will listen and “micro-intervene” when they struggle with a word, said Begley. For example, the program might prompt the student to move their fingers around the mouse pad while sounding the word out.

The AI program can also teach students in both English and Spanish — a major selling point in Denver, where about a third of students speak Spanish at home, according to district data. Around 4 million students in the United States have access to Amira’s software, according to CEO Mark Angel.

Begley, who was initially skeptical of using AI in classrooms, said artificial intelligence has been a success for the district.

“Students are just reading to AI, and they think it’s fun because they’re getting feedback… it allows for a very individualized differentiation that a teacher cannot do, like at that scale,” Begley told CNN.

But AI can’t replace in-person instruction

Artificial intelligence might show some promise in literacy efforts, but researchers say the technology can’t singlehandedly improve reading levels.

Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who has studied AI reading assistants, found that “when kids read with an AI chatbot that asks them questions and then provides feedback, the kids actually gain similar level of benefits” to reading with an adult.

But she said her research doesn’t show that AI can replace parents and teachers. Rather, the technology should be explained to kids as a complement to what they learn at home and in class.

“There is no substitute for a teacher or an adult reading with a kid. That lap time is key, whether they’re one (year old) or seven (years old),” said Andra Jones, a former school principal and the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of the Permian Basin in Texas. She said her community has long struggled with low literacy levels, a problem she said is intergenerational.

This spring, her Boys and Girls Club partnered with Edsoma, an AI-powered education company. The software determines students’ reading levels, then allows them to choose books based on the assessment. The AI-powered tool also provides real-time feedback on pronunciation and fluency as children read aloud.

Jones, whose daughter is in kindergarten, said she sees firsthand how uneven children’s skills are when they enter school. “Some can already write their name in cursive,” while others don’t know what letter their name starts with, she explained. The AI tool is a way to meet the needs of children whose families who don’t have time to regularly read with them or whose first language isn’t English, Jones said.

Screen time, data privacy and other concerns

Even as the AI tools change how kids learn to read, education experts warn that schools and tech companies need to align reading curricula with the new technology.

Susan Neuman, a professor of childhood and literacy education at NYU and former federal assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, works with students in New York City public schools on reading practices. She said she has had success with using ChatGPT to tailor a text to a student’s reading level, then slowly add longer words and more complex sentences — a technique educators refer to as “scaffolding.”

With AI, she can make a lesson like that in five minutes.

But the AI-powered lesson needs to line up with what’s going on in the classroom, she said, otherwise “students are now having two curricula rather than just one, and negotiating two different kinds of skills and strategies instead of one.”

Parents might also worry about increased screen time or sharing their kids’ data. New York public schools walked away from a contract with one AI-powered reading program last year after the comptroller’s office raised privacy concerns. School district officials in Denver told CNN that they had strict requirements for how student data is used.

And some AI leaders worry brining the technology to young students could have unintended consequences.

“It seems more likely in 10 years that all the poor kids have all the AI—they’re going to have the AI teachers, the AI mentors, the AI gamified learning apps,” Alex Kotran, the co-founder and CEO of AiEdu, a nonprofit dedicated to boosting knowledge around AI among students and educators, told CNN. “And I think wealthy kids are going to be in teacher-centered classrooms, reading the classics, writing with pen and paper… I worry about that a lot.”

Figuring out how much to lean on AI-powered literacy tools will take time. Jordan Caldwell, the principal of a Pennsylvania elementary school, said her staff is in the early stages of integrating AI into their operations but stressed that books and libraries are still foundational for students.

“We don’t want to overload them with technology throughout the day and then have them go home and use more technology,” Caldwell explained. “It’s quite a balancing act.”

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