School Did Nothing Wrong When It Punished Student For Using AI, Court Rules

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A federal court yesterday ruled against parents who sued a Massachusetts school district for punishing their son who used an artificial intelligence tool to complete an assignment. Dale and Jennifer Harris sued Hingham High School officials and the School Committee and sought a preliminary injunction requiring the school to change their son's grade and expunge the incident from his disciplinary record before he needs to submit college applications. The parents argued that there was no rule against using AI in the student handbook, but school officials said the student violated multiple policies.

The Harris' motion for an injunction was rejected in an order (PDF) issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials 'have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law.'

'On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris' son, referred to by his initials] had cheated,' Levenson wrote. 'Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants' considerable discretion in such matters.' 'On the evidence currently before the Court, I detect no wrongdoing by Defendants,' Levenson also wrote. 'The manner in which RNH used Grammarly -- wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted -- powerfully supports Defendants' conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion,' Levenson wrote. While 'the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced, as there is no discernible pedagogical purpose in prompting Grammarly (or any other AI tool) to generate a script, regurgitating the output without citation, and claiming it as one's own work,' the order said.

Levenson concluded with a quote from a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that said the education of youth 'is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges.' According to Levenson, 'This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor. The public interest here weighs in favor of Defendants.'

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