Using Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms to Guide Education Choice

The 2020 Netflix film, “The Social Dilemma,” examines how Social Media companies, like Facebook, collect large amounts of data from user interactions and then use artificial intelligence and computer algorithms to attract an individual’s attention and convince them to buy things, including buying into false conspiracy theories or other distorted ideas about ourselves and each other. According to computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier, the “product” that Facebook and other social media platforms is selling is the ability to, in “gradual, slight, imperceptible ways,” change in our own behavior and perception – changing “what you do, how you think, who you are.”

Former Facebook engineer, Justin Rosenstein, emphasized how such algorithms can convince people to choose something that might not be in their best interests:

We’re seeing corporations using powerful artificial intelligence to outsmart us and figure out how to pull our attention towards the things they want us to look at rather than pay attention to the things that are most consistent with our goals, our values and our lives.” -Justin Rosenstein former Facebook engineer.

In a recent podcast, Doug Tuthill outlined how Step Up for Students has created an e-commerce platform, that will collect data from its voucher recipients and use Artificial Intelligence and algorithms to guide them towards the “best educational options” for their children. Apparently, those “best educational options” will never be district managed public schools.

SB48 will transform all of Florida’s current school voucher programs into Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, which will, instead of simply funding private school tuition, provide families with publicly funded accounts to spend in this new e-commerce marketplace.

Currently, Florida has 2 ESA programs:

• The Gardiner Scholarship program which offers flexible spending to its approximately 17,000 students with special education needs and unique abilities. The Basic scholarship amount for 2020-21 varies by county but is approximately $10,000/year. Currently, Gardiner recipients can use their funds to purchase tuition and therapy (with prior authorization) or pre-approved products on the e-commerce site.
• Reading Scholarship Accounts are available for students in grades 3 through 5 who are enrolled in a Florida public school and scored below a Level 3 on the grade 3 or grade 4 statewide, standardized English Language Arts assessment in the prior school year. Qualifying students receive $500 to spend on tutoring, summer programs, curriculum or other instructional materials. Just over 2,500 students participated in the program in the 2020-21 school year.

Currently, Step Up For Students (SUFS) manages an e-commerce site called “MyScholarShop” which was designed to give “Gardiner families a one-stop online shopping experience to meet their Gardiner Scholarship needs.” Currently, MyScholarShop offers products, including curriculum and instructional materials, which (per SUFS COO Gina Lynch) “could be anything from a computer, to a pencil, to a stuffed animal, to a TV.” Current Gardiner recipients have purchased Apple Watches, swing sets and gaming consoles. At this time, private school tuition, tutors and therapy sessions are allowed purchases but not available on the e-commerce site. In the recent Senate Education Appropriations meeting, Senator Janet Cruz reported “It’s easier to get a Play Station or a Peleton now, with a Gardiner Education Savings Account, than it is to get the therapies that the child need.”

MyScholarShop currently serves approximately 20,000 Gardiner and Reading Scholarship ESA recipients, meaning SUFS manages more ESAs than anyone else in the country. Arizona has the second largest ESA program (~9,000 participants) and you can read about the amount ($700,000 in 2018) of fraud identified in their program here. If (when?) SB48 passes, and five of Florida’s voucher programs are converted into ESAs, the number of accounts SUFS manages will skyrocket from 20,000 today to, potentially, over 230,000 by mid August 2021 (an increase of 1,150%!). In a recent podcast featuring Doug Tuthill and two SUFS executives, COO Gina Lynch and CFO Joe Pfountz, Tuthill asked:

“Talk to me about the terror that brings to you when you think about going from 20,000 to 230,000 – what are the things that you guys doing with your team to prepare… talk to me about what you guys are doing to prepare for the future where ESAs are more ubiquitous and you have hundreds of thousands of kids spending billions of dollars on Education Savings Accounts …

The answer, of course, is they are developing automated technology and using artificial intelligence and algorithms to monitor and guide purchasers on their site. Tuthill sees the use of Artificial Intelligence as vital to the future of ESAs.

In December 2020, SUFS announced its selection of NLP Logix to build an Education Savings Account Platform which would allow for “exponential” expansion of its ESAs. NLP Logix is a Jacksonville, Florida-based machine learning and artificial intelligence company, which was chosen (according to the press release) “to integrate and build the platform the parents can use to manage their children’s education. The platform is incorporating high levels of artificial intelligence to provide such things as course recommendations, educational product purchase recommendations, charter school options and other applications to help users interface with their scholarship benefits.”

Having an opportunity to support transforming the K-12 education system in America is something we could have only dreamed of when we started NLP Logix ten years ago.” Ted Willich, CEO, NLP Logix

https://www.nlplogix.com/education-savings-account-platform/

To be clear, using AI to monitor accounts for fraudulent activity or to prevent cyber attacks would be welcome protections of tax payer dollars. Tuthill, however, argues that the use of Artificial Intelligence is necessary to collect the data and provide the information low income families need to make “the best educational choices” possible for their children and that may be problematic. While public school students are given state mandated standardized assessments and public schools are ranked and sorted by calculated school grades, Tuthill is looking forward to ESA recipient families (who, with SB48, are NOT required to take standardized assessments) providing Amazon-like reviews of products and services which will be shared amongst families to “help them make better choices.”

Tuthill says he is having conversations with NPL Logix about collecting data on participants and using that data to encourage “better choices”:

“how do we begin to collect data, use that data in a way that can inform algorithms that can give families feedback about, you know, you live in this neighborhood in Tampa, other kids in your situation in this neighborhood with similar demographics and challenges have made these kinds of choices and had these results. No one’s going to tell families what to do, of course, but if we can provide more support and more information… As I mentioned earlier, human development is complex, every child is unique, not every parent has a PhD in Child Psychology, and so trying to navigate the universe of choice that’s expanding dramatically is not an easy task so we have an obligation to do everything we can to help families.”

https://www.redefinedonline.org/tag/sb48/

SUFS CFO Joe Pfountz explained how filters can be placed over a parent who is searching for products and services on their marketplace, that would limit searches to only pre-approved items. He also suggested that they could use a student’s demographic information to create profiles and influence decisions: 

There’s also ways in using the data we have, to starting really looking at what are really parents doing? what are similar parents with similar children doing? What’s working for them and using AI that really starts creating profiles and saying “Hey, this might work for you” so it brings back products and services that say “Hey you live in this area, this particular therapist has a 5 star rating from parents with similar circumstances.”

https://www.redefinedonline.org/2021/01/podcasted-sufs-president-doug-tuthill-interviews-nonprofits-officers-on-complexities-of-education-savings-accounts/

Using demographics to filter or guide education choices for low income children is concerning. Doesn’t encouraging families to choose options in their neighborhood risk “trapping students in their zip code?” While public schools and their students are held accountable with an excessive number of standardized tests, ESA recipients will be presented with choices devoid of outcomes data, relying rather on a neighbor’s 5-star rating.

While Florida Tax Credit (FTC) tuition vouchers have been portrayed as a way to allow low income students access to elite private schools, the reality is that as Florida’s voucher programs expanded, access to established private schools did not increase simultaneously, resulting in a shift of students towards schools with weaker track records of improving student outcomes (read more here). This may account for the 61% FTC two-year drop out rate documented by The Urban Institute report. When Florida’s ESA marketplace rapidly expands to serve 100s of thousands of Florida’s most at-risk students, allowing them to spend public funds on a vast array of products beyond tuition, will a similar shift towards low impact products occur?

Cathy O’Neil, in her 2016 book “Weapons of Math Destruction” explored how big data algorithms are increasingly used in ways that reinforce preexisting inequality and can result in discrimination. As summarized by The National Book Foundation:

“We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we get a car loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by mathematical models. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules, and bias is eliminated.

But as Cathy O’Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination: If a poor student can’t get a loan because a lending model deems him too risky (by virtue of his zip code), he’s then cut off from the kind of education that could pull him out of poverty, and a vicious spiral ensues. Models are propping up the lucky and punishing the downtrodden, creating a “toxic cocktail for democracy.” Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.””  https://www.nationalbook.org/books/weapons-of-math-destruction-how-big-data-increases-inequality-and-threatens-democracy/

Per Ms. O’Neil, the problem with these algorithms is that they can be opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable. As a non-profit, Step Up For Students is not subject to the same levels of transparency demanded of other government entities, like school boards. The AI and algorithms used to guide decisions will likely be proprietary. What will protect Florida’s ESA recipients from the “dark side of Big Data”? Will such algorithms reinforce preexisting inequalities? How will we know?

In “The Social Dilemma,” Justin Rosenstein, emphasized how algorithms can convince people to choose something that might not be in their best interests. With the passage of SB48, Florida will be rapidly transforming its billion dollar voucher industry into a marketplace where families must reassemble their child’s education piecemeal and will be handing all oversight to a political connected non-profit. What could go wrong?

In his recent podcast, even Doug Tuthill seemed concerned:

“you guys are dealing with potentially hundreds of thousands of products and services and you have to vet all those to make sure they’re appropriate so its kind of a combination of Airbnb, Uber and Amazon, all integrated into a single platform developed by a small nonprofit in Florida (giggles)… sounds crazy, isn’t it?”

-Doug Tuthill, CEO Step Up For Students https://www.redefinedonline.org/2021/01/podcasted-sufs-president-doug-tuthill-interviews-nonprofits-officers-on-complexities-of-education-savings-accounts/

If it sounds crazy to Mr. Tuthill, it probably is…