Mike Soskil

As AI enters Pennsylvania classrooms, teachers and students face a learning curve Pennsylvania schools are racing to determine the role artificial intelligence should play in education – and when.

Honored to have help contributed to @cityandstatepa.bsky.social journalist Hilary Danailova and this important piece on this incredibly significant and rapidly evolving topic along with fellow PSEA AI Task Force members @msoskil.bsky.social & Marilyn Pryle.

www.cityandstatepa.com/policy/2025/...

✊🏾✊🏻✊🏾 This 4th of July, we stand with U.S. educators fighting for inclusive public schools and for democracy.

From around the 🌍, you have our #solidarity.

➡️ eiie.io/4lxMLUA

#GoPublic4Solidarity @neatoday.bsky.social @aft.org @neapresident.bsky.social @rweingarten.bsky.social @daveswords.bsky.social

What a pleasure to listen to 2025 Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year Leon Smith keynoting the PA Educators Rising Conference. @pseaorg.bsky.social

This decision to dismantle the US Department of Education was never about educational achievement. It was always about removing equal opportunity for all children. 14/14

The USDoEd doesn't set curriculum. It doesn't tell teachers how to teach. It helps provide equal opportunity for all kids. Which is exactly why it's being shut down. If you examine the words the administration banned from federal websites & research studies, "equal opportunity" is on the list. 13/

By ignoring the full USDoEd mission including equal opportunity and removing that oversight, some states are once again able to ensure rural, poor, and students w/ disabilities and communities will never get what they need to be successful. 12/

Kids in rural and poor were not given an opportunity to succeed. Additionally, children with disabilities were ignored in some states. The US DoEd's mission was to help those schools and those kids have the opportunity to be successful. That is now in danger. 11/

As a country, we have far more income inequality and children living in poverty than almost any other developed country measured by PISA tests. The USDoEd was created in part because some states refused to fund rural schools and schools in poor areas equally. 10/

Finally, to your point of the US Department of Education's mission - if you read it, it's not just about student achievement. It also explicitly mentions global competitiveness and equal access to education. 9/

And, it's also worth noting that the President recently signed executive orders dismantling the little data privacy protection we had. So, this will likely worsen in the age of Generative AI. 8/

It's worth noting at this point that other countries, especially in Europe, have much stronger data privacy laws than the US has, and this has protected students in those countries more than here. 7/

I'm really good at what I do, but it's hard to compete with algorithms designed to tap into your inner psychology and make you addicted to a screen. 6/

It's addictive. We see many kids spending hours per day doom scrolling on Tik Tok, Instagram, etc. Adults aren't immune - you probably found this post during your daily FB scrolling. As kids got addicted to the dopamine hit from scrolling SM, they became more difficult to motivate in school. 5/

What’s been happening in the same time period (namely about 2017 to now)? Predictive AI being used in social media. Around that time, accelerated by the pandemic, students and others have been subject to SM algorithms designed to keep you consuming social media so that companies can profit. 4/

It is true that on the NAEP, a test used internally in the US to measure student educational progress, scores have declined sharply since the pandemic. I've seen this used as justification to attack USDoEd as well. Let's explore that, since it somewhat correlates with the decline in math scores. 3/

In fact, on the international PISA test used to compare ed systems, in 2022, US reading scores were 6th in the world -among our highest ever. We were 10th in science. But, math scores showed a sharp decline. This decline was consistent with other countries as well. This ties into a second point. 2/

I got a question from someone on FB questioning whether the US Department of Education has failed its mission since 1979. Here is my answer:

First, there is no truth to the claim that test scores or US education performance has been declining since the opening of the USDoEd in 1979. 1/

The old ibm slide that originally said A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION Except edited to say A computer can never unionize therefore a computer is management

Behave accordingly

There are plenty more differences, and I'm all for trying to better our education system to be more like other countries that outperform us. I am pretty confident that closing the US Department of Education will do none of these things, though. In fact, it's guaranteed to make things worse. 8/8

In high-performing education systems there is an understanding that teachers need time to collaborate, develop themselves professionally, & think deeply about how to improve their craft. US teachers are lucky if they get to go to the bathroom at a time that coincides with their body's needs. 7/

*More teacher planning and collaboration time - Even though there are plenty of countries where students go to school more days than in the US, American teachers spend more time in front of students than almost any other country in the world. How can that be? Well… 6/

*Holistic curricula - Instead of focusing solely on "core" academic subjects like reading/math, high-performing ed systems embrace the arts, humanities, physical activity, & recess. Kids are developed as holistic individuals and not as cogs in a future economy to benefit wealthy business owners. 5/

*Lower societal inequality - High-performing systems have less poverty & income disparity, universal health care, publicly funded childcare & preschool, & a strong social safety net. This means kids come to school healthier, better prepared, & with less family stress impacting their learning. 4/

*Lower education system inequality - US is one of the only countries where schools w/ the most need (those in poorer areas) get less funding. This is due to funding structure of using property taxes & local $ rather than federal funding to pay for education. Dismantling USDoEd makes this worse. 3/

*Highly qualified and respected teachers - Countries that have the highest-performing education systems tend to have well-paid, very respected, and highly qualified teachers. Some, like Finland, require a Masters degree to teach - and compensate those in the profession accordingly. 2/

Dismantling the US Department of Education will devastate students and rural communities like mine. The justification is that American education is falling behind other countries. So, let's examine what other countries do to get better outcomes so that we can implement those changes. 1/

It’s a great day for the PSEA Artificial Intelligence Task Force to have important conversations about how human educators can shape the future of education.

Using AI to scrub web pages and research studies based on banned keywords is the new book burning.

There is no ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in schools if that technology is controlled by for-profit companies operating in an unethical system that rewards immoral behavior.

"A bad system will beat a good individual every time." - Deming

I’d like to talk about some of the changes we’re seeing locally due to attacks to/from the USDoEd, but the first rule of Fight Club prohibits me from disclosing anything. #BFC530