Court rules that schools can punish students who cheat using AI even if it is not prohibited in the student handbook
The rise of generative AI is disrupting education, from academic issues such as AI-based
MEMORANDUM AND ORDER ON PLAINTIFFS'MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION
(PDF file) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.275605/gov.uscourts.mad.275605.30.0_3.pdf
School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/11/school-did-nothing-wrong-when-it-punished-student-for-using-ai-court-rules/
The lawsuit dates back to December 2023, when a high school senior, identified in court documents as 'RNH,' was disciplined, including receiving extra classes and being banned from the National Honor Society, for using AI in an assignment.
RNH and another student, both of whom attended Hingham High School in Massachusetts, reportedly attempted to submit the results of a generative AI as their own work while working on an AP American History project (Advanced Placement , an accelerated program that provides American high school students with entry-level college curriculum and exams).
The students were allowed to use the AI to brainstorm and even find sources, but the students copied and pasted the entire text output by the AI, including citations from books that did not exist, i.e. hallucinations caused by the AI.
'The evidence shows that the pair did not use AI solely to outline research topics or identify sources to review. They appear to have indiscriminately copied and pasted text generated by Grammarly, a publicly available AI tool, into their manuscripts, and it is clear that the pair did not even bother to review the sources provided by Grammarly before plagiarizing,' the court documents read.
When the manuscript was submitted to Turnitin, a plagiarism-checking service, Turnitin flagged parts of the manuscript as being AI-generated, and an AP U.S. History teacher investigated the manuscript and found that much of it was copy-and-pasted.
'The revision history showed that RNH spent about 52 minutes on the test, compared with seven to nine hours for other students,' history teacher Susan Petrie said.
As a result of the AI cheating, RNH and his team failed two parts of their multi-part AP American History project and were ordered to stay after class on Saturdays. However, they were allowed to work separately and redo the assignment from scratch and resubmit it. RNH was also not selected for the National Honor Society in spring 2024, but was eventually accepted.
In response to this measure, RNH's parents, Dale and Jennifer Harris, sued the school, arguing that there was no provision in the student handbook prohibiting the use of AI, and seeking to have their son's grades corrected and his disciplinary record expunged by the time he applied to college.
Parents sue school for punishing students for using AI in assignments - GIGAZINE
In a ruling dated November 20, 2024, the court dismissed the Harrises and RNH's request for an injunction, concluding that 'school officials could reasonably have concluded that RNH's use of AI violated the school's 'rules regarding academic integrity' and that any student in RNH's position would have understood that.'
'There is virtually no preliminary factual record to suggest that Defendants Hingham High School officials jumped to the conclusion that RNH had engaged in wrongdoing, nor were the penalties Defendants imposed so liberally as to exceed their reasonable discretion in such matters,' Massachusetts District Judge Paul Levenson wrote in a filing.
The Harrises also allege that school officials engaged in 'patented conduct of intimidation, threats, coercion, bullying, harassment and threatened retaliation,' but Judge Levenson noted that 'Plaintiffs have presented few factual allegations on these grounds.'
The lawsuit has not yet ended, but the dismissal of the injunction request indicates that the court believes that the high school is in the right in this lawsuit.
Judge Levenson wrote in the case, 'While the advent of generative AI may present delicate questions for educators, this case is not particularly delicate, as there is no clear educational value in prompting an AI tool like Grammarly to generate scripts, then rehashing the output without citations and claiming it as your own work.'
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