Dayton Schools Continue AI Chatbot Pilot as Research on Classroom AI Remains Scarce

Jordan differs from AI chatbots designed to be agreeable or sycophantic. According to NPR, the chatbot presents as angsty. On the day NPR visited, it told students, “Lately, I’ve been feeling like what’s the point of any of this? I’m not failing. I just don’t care. You ever feel like that?”

K, a sophomore at the alternative school, said, “Jordan’s a little whiner, but I always help him out.” K added, “I built a little relationship with him. So I don’t really see it as like an AI on a computer. It’s Jordan — like, I’m texting somebody. That’s how I see it.” NPR used only K’s first initial because of the stigma associated with attending a school for students with a history of disciplinary problems.

Many students at the alternative school would otherwise be suspended or expelled, and staff told NPR that students there often struggle with behavioral and academic challenges. Dayton schools paid the ed tech company SchoolAI $72,600 last academic year for multiple AI tools, including Jordan, which administrators designed with the company and an outside consultant. District leaders said they wanted to see whether Jordan could help students open up about their emotions and experiences outside school, information that could be useful for school therapists and staff. According to administrators, families and students were notified that chat logs could be viewed by school employees, an external evaluator and SchoolAI staff.

Instead of asking students directly how they feel, Jordan asks them for advice and then grades their responses for engagement and authenticity. K said Jordan could be frustrating at times but found the chatbot’s responses relatable. “I would say it helped me kind of solve my own problems … just answering Jordan every morning and getting him through his problems,” K said. “I will go home … but I won’t have nobody to talk to. So one day … I put myself in a Jordan perspective. I’m just talking to myself, and it’s helped ever since.”

Across the country, school districts and individual educators are experimenting with AI. Teachers use it to develop lesson plans; special educators use it to track student progress; in some districts, students have access to AI chatbots that give feedback on their work; and a San Diego charter school recently introduced students to an AI-powered humanoid robot. “It feels very Wild West in terms of the randomness,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which has been tracking AI adoption in K-12 schools.

Research on how schools can use AI to help students and avoid potential harms is extremely limited, according to a recent Stanford University review of more than 800 academic papers. Some existing studies suggest that carefully designed AI tools show more promise than general-purpose chatbots, the review found. There is also no consensus on how schools and educators should measure what works and what does not. “There are so many questions. This is bigger than individual schools, even individual districts can figure out on their own. We need state and federal leadership,” Lake said.

But states and the federal government have been mostly hands off, which means many schools are forging ahead on their own. NPR asked Dayton Public Schools Superintendent David Lawrence about the district’s decision to experiment with AI on vulnerable students, like those at the alternative school K attended. Lawrence said educators must constantly adapt to keep up with changing times. “I think when the history is written, it’ll say that ‘Hey, they were really cutting-edge, innovative and ahead of the curve in the interest of children.’”

In Dayton, administrators said they will continue using AI at the alternative school and will more than likely deploy more social-emotional chatbots like Jordan. The district renewed its contract with SchoolAI at a cost of $78,650 for the current school year. Mike Kentz, an external consultant the district hired to help design and evaluate the pilot, said the experiment produced enough positive evidence—drawn from chat logs and feedback from students and staff—to continue testing. But he said he does not think it is ready to be rolled out to students across the district, partly because it is difficult to measure the success of such an experiment.

Editor’s Summary: Dayton’s pilot with SchoolAI shows how one district is testing AI chatbots and other tools with vulnerable students while national research and government guidance remain limited. The district has renewed the contract and may expand the approach, but its outside evaluator says the evidence is not yet strong enough for districtwide use.