Artificial intelligence has made its breakthrough in education, but students are not the only ones taking advantage of this. Increasingly, teachers have been using AI for lesson plans, teaching materials and grading. These practices jeopardize students’ education and should be a telling sign for FCPS to restrict AI use among teachers.

The FCPS Guidance for AI outlines that teachers are able to use AI as a tool as long as they “maintain a human-centered approach,” review the generated content and provide the final feedback to students.

“The county is moving towards encouraging responsible AI use by staff,” school-based technology specialist Bridget Donoghue said. “They’ve been giving training on how to use AI.”

But some teachers are not following FCPS’s established guidelines. Teachers have been using AI to generate slideshow lessons, grade students’ work and provide feedback on essays and assignments. The blurred lines of AI usage creates a double standard within classrooms.

“Sometimes we would use an AI detector to look at the feedback we received on our essays, and it would be 90% to 100% AI detected,” an anonymous senior said.

While teachers leverage the convenience of AI for lessons and grading, they turn around and strictly enforce policies regarding students’ use of AI. Many teachers use programs such as Turnitin and other plagiarism checkers to ensure that a student’s work is their own.

Beyond teaching in the classroom, teachers serve as role models to students. Teachers cutting corners in an attempt to reduce their workload creates the impression that students are able to do the same. Teachers’ use of AI conveys to students that shortcuts taken through AI are acceptable in the workplace and necessary to save time.

When students realize that AI is a viable method to complete their work, it diverts a student’s focus from understanding the content and using critical thinking skills. Instead, students will immediately resort to AI to find solutions. This limits students’ creativity and ability to problem solve, two crucial qualities that teachers aim to cultivate.

Another major issue that arises with teachers using AI is unfair grading. Grading through AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini prevent students from receiving a grade accurate to their performance on the assignment.

Grades, specifically for writing-based classes, are subjective. Writing assignments and essays do not follow rigid, checkbox rubrics. Teacher feedback is crucial for students to build a foundation for success.

“Especially in English classes, the use of AI should be very minimal by teachers, since feedback from these assignments is used to directly improve our craft and structure,” the anonymous senior said.

Feedback is also critical for students’ performance on College Board exams. Only teachers with experience teaching Advanced Placement (AP) classes can effectively provide feedback that will help students meet established standards. AI platforms can not take into account the expertise that teachers develop as a result of teaching the same or similar classes consistently.

“As a teacher, your job is to give [students] human, professional feedback to help us grow,” the anonymous senior said.

Many argue that AI provides teachers a level of convenience as it reduces their time spent on assignments and grading, freeing up their schedule to provide students more one-on-one attention. But this ignores the core principles of education. When teachers are creating lessons and grading through AI, the quality of students’ education is sacrificed for the time they save. The time saved is also minimal because teachers still need to go through and fact-check all AI-generated class material.

AI is rapidly being integrated into the educational field and the county has yet to fully eradicate AI usage among teachers. Clearer regulations are necessary to ensure that replacing original work with AI-generated content is not normalized. FCPS must enforce firm consequences similar to those imposed on students to force teachers to move away from AI. This way, responsibility of teaching returns to the teachers and restores quality education for students.