this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2024

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Parents Sue School That Gave Bad Grade to Student Who Used AI to Complete Assignment (gizmodo.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/fuck_ai

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A Massachusetts couple claims that their son's high school attempted to derail his future by giving him detention and a bad grade on an assignment he wrote using generative AI.

An old and powerful force has entered the fraught debate over generative AI in schools: litigious parents angry that their child may not be accepted into a prestigious university.

In what appears to be the first case of its kind, at least in Massachusetts, a couple has sued their local school district after it disciplined their son for using generative AI tools on a history project. Dale and Jennifer Harris allege that the Hingham High School student handbook did not explicitly prohibit the use of AI to complete assignments and that the punishment visited upon their son for using an AI tool—he received Saturday detention and a grade of 65 out of 100 on the assignment—has harmed his chances of getting into Stanford University and other elite schools.

Yeah, I'm 100% with the school on this one.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (26 children)

Bad parenting. Not only did they not talk to their kid about what constitutes honourable academic conduct, not only did they not talk to their kid about the pitfalls of using generative AI, especially in an academic context, they are now teaching their brat that the proper response to fucking up is to blame the rules, to blame the school, to blame other people. Bad parents.

I wonder, have these people no shame?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 months ago (23 children)

Should kids use chatgpt to do their assignments, probably not. I think everyone here is looking at this in the wrong way though. If they rules did not state he could not use it, a proper response to me would be to tell the kid to do the project over without using chatgpt on another topic, and update the rules. Instead they did the school equivalent of arresting the student and detaining him (detention), and marked the assignment poorly which impacts his future.

The kid should not have done this.
The school/teacher also should not have done this.

According to the information we have, no rules were broken, so it was an unwarranted punishment.

On a side note your comment is also very "fall in line" thinking. One could argue the parents are standing up for their kid and teaching him how to stand up for himself.

The authorities need to follow written laws and procedures. Otherwise we are just punishing people for being different.

Everyone should be mad at the school because we are having to use taxes to address a situation that a teacher could have addressed long before by just telling the student to do the assignment over.

[–] kalleboo 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There were rules against using AI, they're just arguing that they weren't in the "Student Handbook".

If you click through to the legal filing linked in the article, they lay out that they informed the students of the rule during a lecture, they have a record of his attendance at that lecture, and parents also got handouts during a parent teacher day.

edit: quote

During the first week of class, RNH and his classmates were given a copy of HHS’ written policy on Academic Dishonesty and AI expectations.4 The students are clearly informed that this policy applies to all classes, not simply ELA classes. The policy was distributed in RNH’s class on the same day a PowerPoint presentation entitled “AI & Schoolwork” was presented to RNH’s class.5 This is the PowerPoint presentation referenced in paragraph 129 of the Verified Compliant.

Attendance records show that RNH attended the class at which the policy was distributed and the PowerPoint presentation was shown. Furthermore, the written policy was also posted on Google Classroom, on online portal containing policies which is accessible to HHS’ students. It was also distributed at Parent's Night which was held in September 2023. If RNH’s parents were present at Parent’s Night, a copy would have been provided to them.6

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