One of the biggest school districts in the Northeast is embracing an AI tool designed to tackle attendance and boost outreach with student families. It comes at a time when the district is still defining its approach to artificial intelligence.
Presiding over the biggest high school in Springfield, Massachusetts, Central High Principal Tad Tokarz says his school of about 2,000 students has gone to great lengths keep those students regularly coming to school.
Afterschool programs, sports and other incentives have been part of the package, but as he told WAMC in March – there’s always been a segment of the student body that makes it as far as the campus, but not into the school itself.
“We thought that we had about a 2% margin of kids getting dropped off and not coming directly into the building,” he explained at the time. “They would go to the store, they'd hang out at Blunt Park, depending on the weather. So, we thought if we could capture that 2%, it would not only help our numbers, obviously, but it would also help the students academically.”
Enter “Edia,” an AI-powered software tool the school acquired last year.
Overseen by Central staffers, the software began taking in attendance data and, more importantly, began reaching out to parents directly, notifying them when their child was missing from class, often by text.
Implementation started about this time last year, Tokarz said. Now, Springfield Public Schools at large seems to be embracing the technology.
“Listen, I'm not the technical guy here. Joe Philleo] and Assistant Superintendent Jose Escribano and Superintendent Dr. Sonia Dinnall can explain that - I still have an Etch A Sketch,” said Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno at a Tuesday, Sept 1 press conference. “They're going to tell you how this works and how immediately it's going to get word to [student] family members – [to] the moms and dads saying, ‘Hey, junior's not in class today. Is there something wrong? Are you aware of that?’”
Sarno, along with Springfield Public Schools leadership and Edia’s founder, Joe Philleo, were on hand this week as SPS announced the platform’s rollout this year.
It’s a three-year contract, averaging about $163,000 annually. It’s intended largely for high schools and the “upper grades,” says Superintendent Sonia Dinnall, though some elementary schools could also utilize it. It’s also not just intended for attendance, either, she adds.
“We’re going to start utilizing it to its fullest, so not only are we going to continue to communicate about absence - we're also going to communicate other important parent-centered events/family-centered events that we would love to have the parents engaged in,” she said.
After a year, Central has proved to be a decent case study, officials say. The overall attendance rate nearly hit 93% last year, according to state data – a near-1% increase compared to the year before.
But, looking at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data further, inroads made on chronic absenteeism are visible. Chronically absent students who missed 10% of the school year dropped from nearly 28% to 24.3%.
Meanwhile, those missing 20% of the school year or more went down to 5.4% compared to 9.1% last year.
There’s work to do, officials say, with Springfield’s overall numbers not being great. About 32.7 percent of the student body reportedly missed 10% or more of school last year – just over 7,600 students in a district of 24,000.
School Vice Chair LaTonia Monroe-Naylor says it’s an issue that’s been dogging SPS since well-before the pandemic.
“Attendance has been one of the worst, most-challenging situations for us because, at the end of the day, if kids are not present, they can't learn and if kids are not present, they can't be encouraged,” she said. “We can't understand what their challenges are and where they need support - whether it's academic, whether it's mental health, whether it's anything. It's impossible to know if they're not there.”
Monroe-Naylor says Edia is a step in the right direction – it’s multilingual, makes use of chatbots, and, so long as a student’s parent or guardian supplies a working phone number, it’s steadfast.
It also comes at a time when SPS is still figuring out how AI in the classroom will work. The school committee itself only recently approved various use policies, she says.
“There are a lot of ways that we can use the tools and there are ways that are not good and not going to produce a stronger student,” Monroe-Naylor said. “But there's a lot of ways we can take AI and use it to improve upon the proficiency of our kids. And so, using it in this way - to communicate with families - is phenomenal. And, to be honest, this is just the beginning.”
As WBUR reported last month, the city may be hosting the first public school in Massachusetts to “pilot an artificial intelligence-powered education model.”
It’s happening at Kiley Prep, a school that falls under the city’s “Student Empowerment Zone Partnership” – a non-profit organization that involves SPS, the state and teachers union.
It has garnered backlash from the Springfield Education Association – including a cease-and-desist request, WBUR reports, partly over concerns that the pilot, which involves a single, sixth-grade class and a fair amount of screentime, could end up being detrimental for students and teachers, with student and teacher data safety also a concern.
As for Edia, though, an SEA official tells WAMC that the union did not appear to have a stance on the tool just yet (the SEA represents educators both at SPS and Empowerment Zone schools).
When asked by WAMC, Edia CEO Joe Philleo emphasized that, as 300 school districts adopt the tool, including the state of Rhode Island’s Department of Education, the data that makes up Edia is ultimately the district’s, with a number of access parameters installed.
Using that data, he says, ultimately goes toward reports and analysis specifically for educators, geared toward making sure students are in class and having needs met.
“If a student's getting picked on, they don't want to come to school. If a student's anxious about math, they don't want to come to school. If a student doesn't have money for lunch and they're sitting by themselves or don’t have friends, they don't want to come to school, and so attendance is where the rubber meets the road, where a lot of these issues are manifesting,” he said, referencing his product’s ability to reference student observations and notes entered by staff. “With a program like Edia, school staff and districts can start to understand why kids aren't showing up, and those things come to the surface.”
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Some audio for this story was provided by Focus Springfield
