Tech Equity and Inclusion: Insights from Pedro Martinez of Chicago Public Schools and Dr. Maria Armstrong of Association of Latino Administrators and Superintendents

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show. Pedro Martinez was named Chicago Public schools Chief Executive Officer in 2021, the first Latino in the city's history to hold the position outside of interim capacity. Martinez has more than 30 years of experience in the private nonprofit and public education sectors. He's previously served as superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District Superintendent in residence for the Nevada Department of Education and Superintendent of the Washoe County School District in Reno

Nevada. Martinez was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico and came to Chicago with his family at the age of five in search of a better life. He credits the education he received in Chicago Public Schools with changing the trajectory of his life. Dr. Maria Armstrong is the executive director of the Association of Latino Administrators and

Superintendents. Her career in education includes serving as a teacher, school counselor, Assistant Principal Principal, Director of English language learners, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction superintendent and as an educational consultant for the Puerto Rico Department of Education, leading the department's hurricane Maria

recovery efforts. Prior to working in education, Dr. Armstrong worked in the biotech industry, and is committed to ensuring that students are college career and life ready. Dr. Maria Armstrong and Pedro Martinez, welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

getting to One to One. And it was either financial, it was sometimes on philosophy about, you know, can we trust children taking devices home? What are the right devices, I mean, he went on and on and on. And what I'm excited is that some of our conversation, what's even more exciting, is what we can do

today. The fact that you know, we're doing this podcast now, the things that are and we'll talk more, you know, in the in the interview about the things that we're doing now in our school system that we never had the infrastructure to do, and now we're doing it, and it is now part of our normal lives. It's our normal lives, as you know, in the roles that we're in. And what I love is that our students, and we know this have always been technology natives.

So for them, it's second hand, it has been the adult, they had to catch up. And so I feel like we're just at an exciting time, both for my staff and for our students about how technology is being used. But even more importantly, how it can be used. It's

of the story going forward. I'm really excited to hear more about how you're thinking about it there and Dr. Armstrong as the executive director of ALS that's Association of Latino administrators and superintendents, you are at the forefront of Educational Leadership. 20% of all school students in the US are Latino and Latino background at least 20% and 25% of kindergarteners tell us how does the ALA s approach The concept of integrating technology into the

education landscape. And how do you think about it specifically within the context of Latino education?

And so going into an education system that I had left, decades prior, and walking into see that nothing had changed, really blew my mind for the worse, because I thought, I've been gone so long. And we're still the same setup. And so I've been a champion, and a forefront leader back then as

a classroom teacher. And that's because I have the support of and it only took one, you know, that one building principal, that one superintendent who, you know, taught that there was this thing going on, and we need to, you know, expand and then you know, rally the other staff around you and say, Hey, I'm willing to share with you how I use technology in the classroom,

because it's not going away. So I've been beating the drum for decades, coming into this space at a national level has been really helped to come in on March one of 2020, I lost had never held anything virtual or online. And for me, it was

second nature to do that. I immediately called you know, five of my closest superintendent, friends and knew right on, I mean, once you wear that suit, Pat, you are always in that mode, no matter how many times we tried to, you know, yank it off our head, we are

always in that mode. So it really lent itself to be able to put yourself in their shoes, and know that now that we're in this crises, the mics are going to be coming in front of you just need to start thinking about two weeks, two months, two years down the line. And so with the rallying supportive colleagues, they actually were able to be one of the first ones out nationally to say what those inequities have been exposed to

because of the pandemic. So we're super proud of the support and the work that our nation's leaders out there and those schools and districts were able to do and with their communities.

I mean, arguably, this is the most, you know, tech enablement period that we've seen in at least decades, if not ever there was the beginning of the computer cards, or maybe the day, the first, you know, iPad got into a classroom. But I would argue, and I think a lot of people would argue that this is the biggest wave of technology moving into the school system that we've ever experienced. Pedro, I'd love to hear some of your thinking about

this shift, right? I mean, what shifts have you observed, from your perspective in Chicago about the role and the importance of technology in schools in the last, you know, three to five years?

it. And I say this myself as being a superintendent for this many years, where, you know, I saw it, I wanted to solve it, but there was always these these struggles. And what I love now, isn't even I remember capillary anymore. Now it's okay, why isn't assault, right? And I just give us a couple of examples,

though. It's both in my current district, and in my former district, you know, we laid out our own fiber in the community, so that our infrastructure had to be you know, and we're, it's still getting finished here in

Chicago. I was able to finish it just before I left in San Antonio, but we have our fiber so that our school infrastructure is strong and solid, so that when our children are opening up hundreds of devices at a time when I've seen you know, unstable illness in the internet, we still have some work to do, you know, to bring me Sure the internet is at the home level, but I'll tell you because of efforts and initiatives across the country, during the pandemic, and because

it's that Clemson, or college was speaking up about it so much, we see more connectivity today than ever before. So now we can build on that, and then really bring the classroom to

life. So for example, in our district, we have a new curriculum that we have that's been that's accessible to every school for the first time in our districts past, you know, two or three decades, that is a digital curriculum that's culturally responsive, that is really going to help our students who live in our poorest communities, who historically maybe didn't have access to that kind of rich content, and it aligns to all of our values. And so that's what

technology allows us to do. In addition, you know, we set up during the pandemic, a virtual school, the virtual school was in response for children that needed to be educated at home, what it is becoming now, it has become a way to reduce the opportunity gap in our district, that I can get more details on with the course offerings that

we're doing. So what I'm seeing technology do for us, it's enabling our teachers to be stronger, it's also enabling our students to have experiences that wouldn't have been possible to prior to this technology being in place. Yeah,

on it. But what's the forcing function to really make it sort of obvious that it has to be solved rather than something that's easy to complain about, and sort of report on but not doesn't have to be really

actually addressed. And I really appreciate the point of saying, you know, we're getting to a point where these things are coming together in all the right ways, there is now a full understanding among pretty much every level every you know, parents and teachers and administrators, and certainly superintendents and school leaders that it's just not acceptable to have students who have no access, especially when

they're at school. And it's becoming increasingly unacceptable for them not to have home access, as you mentioned. So because the things you can do when you are connected, and the things you can do when you're not connected, are getting further and further and further apart. It's just becoming so obvious.

So it's very exciting to hear that, as you say, in San Antonio, and in Chicago, and many other districts around the country, especially urban districts, you know, where things are a little more centralized, it's just becoming a sort of a legacy idea that people won't have be have connectivity, because it's the

baseline for everything. Dr. Armstrong, I'd love to hear your take a little bit on this as well, you know, this is a big country, we have a lot of different types of school systems, considering the really diverse needs of the education community in different places, especially within the Latino education community, which is all over the country, you know, how does all this navigate the challenges and the opportunities of implementing these ed tech

solutions? What role does collaboration play between the different districts between the different schools and ensuring that technology is really integrated and actually working for the community?

device for our students. And it was in the northern part of California, very remote, and I literally was going to battle with AT and T, we can't get access, you know this than the other. And I'm like, if we have access in our offices, and there are accesses in the casinos on our native lands, if there's access here, then you need to open up the pipes or kids have access. I mean, it was one of those things where it was almost like an arm wrestle, but you have to do what you have to do.

But they were the first ones to call and say we did not miss a beat our kids kept learning, because they were ahead of the game. And that was least about, you know, 12 years in advance. So for them to come back and say, thank goodness, we did what we did, because they used all that other time in getting like what Bedros says, the adults up to speed we provided professional learning and growth

for them too, as well. And that's a parallel kind of run and you run the risk, you know, because parallel when you're introducing something new and you're giving them the professional development to use it, there is a time gap in there as well. And so to be able to feel comfortable that Her staff felt comfortable, like we got this, that was such a huge blessing. It was one of those warm moments that as an educator, you often don't get to, you know, see in your lifetime, and the fruits of your

labor. And so now what we do is I really pay attention to what our members are, are chatting about. And when they start talking about we still need funding, we still need need the capacity of being able to lift our human resources, so that they can feel that they are actually leading this charge, and not depending on the kids to show them how the how to use the technology and whatnot, or suggest how to use the

technology. You know, one of the things that we're privileged to do as an organization here in DC is working with other nonprofits and on the hill. As a matter of fact, a couple of days ago, I was able to on behalf of our organization, sign on to the E SRA, which is another authorization bill Act, to be able to continue the use and supporting the funds to further develop what they're doing. And one of the things that I was so

happy to see. Because I again, I've seen this missing for so long in education that actually got placed into the bill. And that's research and development. School districts need research and development funds to be able to do what they've got to do we know what needs to be done when it comes to individualized learning. What we don't have is that capacity to be able to say, if we could only twist it this way, can we run this pilot on

these kids? What about these kids here and being able to really get down to individualized learning? That's the exciting part. No more buckshot? You know, throw the spaghetti on the wall and see what works. No, it's let's use the tools that we have today. Like Bedros says, because these tools are only going to get sharper as tomorrow comes.

rural areas. But you know, the pandemic created this moment where virtual schooling became de rigueur, right, everybody had to be doing it for at least a little while. And now as schools have opened, again, we have all proven that the infrastructure is there that you can actually teach that way. And some students and families really,

really preferred it. And so I'd love to connect this concept of individualized and personalized learning to what you were saying earlier about, you know, what is the future of the hybrid schooling of virtual schooling, you know, now that we've in Chicago, and all sorts of places shown that it is possible to educate even relatively young students with virtual instruction, it opens up a whole world of different types of individualized instruction, what do you see as the future of, you

know, families being able to decide, you know, how many days a week their students go into school, whether it's 05, or somewhere in between?

other communities have. And what we have seen, we learned for this pandemic, first of all, is that our older students actually enjoy not only having technology as part of their learning, but even can flourish even in a hybrid environment. And so, you know, I want to hold that up to and I have really good examples for you and CPS that are happening today in the Chicago

Public Schools. One thing I would call out, though, is that because of the inequities that exist, you know, across our communities, I am not a believer that they're necessarily that the home is the place to learn. So I want to separate those two things. And so let me give you

two examples of what I mean. So, you know, three years ago, and my third finishing my third year in Chicago, so three years ago, we had about 20% of our students that were ready for algebra by eighth grade, we're not getting access to algebra, for different reasons. Schools were to spa they couldn't find algebra teachers for many different reasons. And you know, this is a district that has, you know, about 20, over 20, almost 25,008th graders in any given

year. So when I talk about 20%, we're talking big numbers again, and these are again, students that were ready for algebra array that we have our different diagnostic tools and they were ready, but just that you have access to it, whether we are children of poverty, alternative color, just for the record, today as we sit almost 99% of my students that are ready and I'm not gonna start to like get to 100 but you know how it is it's always have access to algebra, you know, as long as you're

ready And what's fascinating is that some of them are having it with the traditional algebra teacher, and they're in their Cade or pre K school, or their middle school. Some of them have it in hubs where picture a strong algebra teacher from their high school is actually giving direct instruction, real time. And I have small groups of students across different elementary schools, all with an adult, sometimes it's a math

teacher, sometimes it's not. And they're working with a teacher, and they're receiving algebra in real time. Sometimes it's before the school day, sometimes it's during the school day, sometimes it's after the school day. And then even for students who may be you know, just they struggle a bit with algebra, they get to even dues or take if they still need more help, that extends

into the summer, right? Because there's no magic, you know, we're the ones that get educated we get, we get caught up on the amount of time, right? Like, there's no magic to the time, right? Students learn in different modes, sometimes they need a little bit more time, some of them learn faster, and they, you know, they can be accelerated, right. And so what the Virtual Academy is allowing us to do is to do that right

now. And what I love, I'm not worried about them having stability of internet, or the device, they have it. But they're also in our classrooms where they're being fed. They're also in our classrooms, where we know they're going to be in a safe space, where we know there's caring adults to support them. And I'll tell you, so now, with this increase of access to algebra, you would think our proficiency results would decline. And we saw the opposite, they actually

increased. So now more students are set up for STEM career so they can have precalculus, statistics, other advanced math by the time they get to senior year in high school,

education, technology. But I think technology plays a really important role. I think I'm hearing you say this too, in being able to provide the access that people need, but also sort of change the assumptions about what it means to learn in a traditional school system, just because your school may not have you know, enough teachers, or may not have enough access to the curriculum doesn't mean that every student within it should have to fall under that lack

that gap. There is a really interesting solution, as you say, you know, before school, during school, after school learning hubs, you know, hybrid learning and various types of ways, it's very exciting to start breaking some of those traditional assumptions about what school has to be and trying new models. And as you say, you can see some really, really positive results from that. And

building. And once you build this ecosystem, it is amazing, because you can push our students to go as fast as they want to, and accelerate them as much as you want, while still making sure we're providing supports for students who need more supports. Absolutely.

in which school, you know, can be changing to address the needs of students even more directly?

this arena now. It is really starting to blossom on the creativity that each of the communities hold because everyone's got their kind of nature uniqueness to them that they can start to really color outside those lines. For me, I think probably the one most exciting is that when you know your community that's where they get creative and can thrive, like, you know what Beth was saying they're focused, that's a priority, of course, algebra and being able to zone in on that.

But the reality is that they are able to then transfer all of those types of learnings into the other aspects. You know, the dream world, of course, has always been to connect the dots for the adults so that they can connect the dots for kids. Because too long, the kids have to wait till the bell rang, go home, and then start to learn on

their own. Now, they're going to have the advantage of being able to take hold to these different safe environments, before school after school during school, just like Pedro has demonstrated

within his own district. Because where we've come up, oftentimes as an obstacle, perceived challenge, I like to call it is that we oftentimes hear and you know, hybrid means only one of two things, you know, you're either sometimes on a computer, sometimes you're at home, and that's the definition people run with that soundbite when, in fact, we know parents have to work. And most times, if you have two parents in a household,

they're both working. So it's not realistic to think that, you know, kids are going to be at home for you know, four days on three days off, or whatever. Instead, it goes back to that point of creativity, how do we make it equitable, accessible in a safe environment, where kids Oh, my gosh, actually love to learn.

answer. But even so, there's all this creativity happening, coming out of the pandemic, and just coming out of this era of technological connectivity for how to get students, you know, to the places we all want them to go, and not just feel constrained by the traditional sort of rules, quote, unquote,

of schooling. And so, you know, Pedro, I want to ask you, you know, Chicago is a very special place in the US, it is an enormous city, it has enormous number of people in it, and students you mentioned, you know, 25,008th graders, it's also a place that sort of had decades and decades and decades of very stark inequality inside the city from different socio economic backgrounds, different racial backgrounds, sort of has become almost a poster child of a place with a lot of different

types of people who are you have to figure out how to serve everyone. And I'm curious how you've addressed that and sort of thought about educational inequality and equity in Chicago, and how you've seen technology start to you know, chip away at some of these inequities.

period. And so that, for me, has really put me now on this mission of really looking at who has access to what offerings in our district, because we have amazing offerings, we have amazing programming, you know, I don't have to go to other cities to find, you know, great STEM programming, or we have an amazing agricultural school that is one of the top in the nation, or our fine art programs or dual language programs. But across our city, we don't have

equitable access. And so what I see now is an opportunity, you leveraging technology, because the challenge always we're in a resource constrained environment. And as Dr. Armstrong said, it's not that my colleagues and I don't want to do things, we don't usually have the resources, you know, we don't have the you know, always all with all the staffing and personnel that's needed for it.

And so not to mention, also, you know, that, you know, just, you know, making sure we have the proper support and training for the staff and, and supporting

those students. What I see technology that's able to do is it take some of our best staff and talent that if they just leave it with us, you know, they stuck with us, and allows me to leverage that talent across the city with no boundaries, because I can have, you know, an amazing teacher, whether it's whether it's a world language teacher, or an algebra teacher or now or an advanced placement calculus teacher, and it doesn't matter where the choppy because again, I have schools in every

neighborhood, they have the infrastructure, what it's also allowing us to do Alex's for example, we just set up a an initiative with one of our universities, Illinois Institute of Technology, a very nationally renowned university that focuses on STEM fields with them in our community colleges, we now have a program where we're starting starting at this year with 85 students, where these students as juniors, can get up to an associate's degree while they're finishing high school, the goal

is to get a bachelor's degree two years afterwards, and then a master's degree two years after that, in cybersecurity, and by the way, so we'll get in the way the students and this is eight different high schools across the city, by the way, and our neighbors that again, that tend to have the higher poverty areas. And it's a model where they'll have a combination of online courses, again, real time learning, they'll also have opportunities to be on campus.

And so it's the blending, again, of all these amazing technologies. But what I love at the end, what our students getting access to great content, great professors, great teachers, by the way, what I love about the model, they build support systems around the students, including current students at the university, that will be actually mentoring the students, and so very thoughtful plan. But for me, you know, I remember when we, you know, we talked about this concept, it

was a dream that I had. But you know, I was always wondering, how do we get it across my city? Because I have so many high schools, and how do I make sure it's, it's also the students that are in these neighborhoods that I know are not going to get the same opportunities. And so, you know, it showed me again, we're going to do it through this model that's going to involve technology. And we're going to leverage our expertise

and infrastructure. And so that's what I see is such an opportunity game changer, that we can now start to address these long term inequities. And we can do it in the right way. Because we're using the resources in a very efficient

manner. And more importantly, we're still not losing the personal touch of having the connection, because I think one of the fears that people always have about technology, and this is the fear is when we started getting into, you know, the virtual learning that it was not going to be personal, that we're going to lose the relationship building, I'm seeing the best of all worlds come together.

these things. But by having programs that reach across districts that can offer high quality content, high quality teaching, and professional development and mentoring, as you mentioned, from college students, by offering them across districts, you're able to avoid and sidestep some of the traditional problems we've had with with urban education in the US, which is that, you know, depending on what neighborhood you're at, you might have a humongous, hugely different

experience, you're creating high quality experiences that are shared, and that can be spread through technology.

or anything like that. But even with that, I also know that in my city, I have schools, who've had teachers who have the content, who have the areas that you know, the content that our students can access, but at the same time, so for example, they have AP calculus teacher, but for me to do that across 100 high schools and do it in an equitable way. It's just not

feasible. And more important for me, that's not even enough, because now my students are getting access to these college level courses that are in a content area that could drive

their excitement. So for those 85 students, who they really are right now, and he says juniors interested in cybersecurity, this could hopefully drive that this is what they want to do in a career, and now they have access to the content, even though, you know, without technology, there's no way we would have been able to do this in the past, because we would have never been able to get that kind of access to professors or content teachers.

That, you know, there's all sorts of things there that I think are really, really

powerful. So speaking of sort of peeling back some of the assumptions, one of the things that has been incredibly interesting, Dr. HomeStart, I'd love to bring in your voice on this is that, you know, we are I mentioned a couple of high level stats you both know probably know a lot more than I do about this, but we are in a country where somewhere between one out of four and one out of five students have a Latino background, where the fastest growing population of young

people in the country is of Latino origin. And I know we're talking about Latino administrators As in supervisors, and teachers, but there's a really big and very growing population. And one of the things that comes up a lot is the concept of bilingual education, certainly not in everybody's mind. But it's important to a lot of states.

And it's a debate that has had a lot in especially in California and Arizona and Texas, I'd love to hear your thoughts about bilingual education, how you think about it, how you're sort of members of iOS, think about it, and how you've seen edtech being leveraged to start bridging the gaps for bilingual education in sort of all formats.

been steadfast on that. We have, I believe, grown to where it's now multilingualism, right, the majority of our students and our colleagues and staff are not only bilingual, but there are also learning multiple languages, you know, when you have success, and another language, and we often take it for granted, or many of us have been stifled, because we have

that secondary language. Now we're seeing that as the globe continues to get smaller and smaller, and we're reaching out on our own to recruit bilingual educators from other lands, we're starting to see that having those multiple languages, only to become greater and more benefit for all the children that we serve. And so I see that that has been a shift that's

been taking place. What we really like to stand on as a national organization for others is to come to our table, come learn about what works for kids that are either newcomers that haven't attained the language of English yet, because they are always learning. And as you know, kids learn a lot faster than us as adults. But we've got to be not only on the ready, but completely prepared and focused. For them to be able to be

successful. We talked about the career aspect, real quickly, like Pedro said, you know, multilingualism, bilingualism that is a door opener anymore for any job, not only for a job or a career, but the creators of the jobs of the future, is what I'm most excited about. As long as we can continue to toss open that gate for our kids to be able to meet the qualifiers that lead them to these higher levels

of math, and literacy. That's what's going to open up that imagination and keep them entertained, to want to continue to learn more and create be the creators of what we have no idea is a waiting around the corner, I'll give you a real quick example. We just had our 20th Anniversary Summit here in October, and it was in San

Antonio. And one of the things that I love, I think is probably one of the best parts of my job outside of visiting schools and districts is being able to work with different industry leaders. And we're very intentional about who we partner with, or who we bring into our space, because space is always in person limited. There is a group of Latino based organizers who they have gone off, and they've worked for Google and Facebook and all those other you know,

industries. And, you know, to be quite frank didn't find that they had a voice at the table for their creativity. So they wound up leaving and creating their own community, their own company. And now they're leading the forefront when it comes to. And I demonstrated this at the summit, where we can put in front of our kids now by having the use of a QR code and a phone or monitor. And we can pick what language we want instruction to take place. And it's real time in the sense that I had a

conversation with Cleopatra. I mean, think about it, we have access to everything ever written, or collate it on information and put into a database where I am asking the questions, I feel most pertinent of Cleopatra. And she's answering me, I cannot wait to get that in front of kids, because they come up with the most amazing questions. You want to talk about peeking their interest in multiple languages.

That means everybody's going to have access, whether you just arrived, or you're just learning a language, no matter what the language is. That is exciting.

segment. This is not a few students out there that are learning in multiple languages. This is a huge, huge group of students. You know, in California, it's over 40%. In Texas, it's almost 50%. In Texas, 49% of zero to eight year olds are bilingual. So you parts of this country are, and a lot of parts. And a lot of very populated parts are learning language in all of these

different ways. And I love the way you're talking about how technology can sort of not only make, you know, translation and make it feel doable, but also make it feel interesting and entertaining, and sort of allow people to slide between different types of language learning and different types of entertaining, and interesting ad tech. And language can just be one of the elements that allows that kind of switching. It's a

really exciting future. And, you know, we just covered the meta Facebook just put out some open source content last week, basically about not only being able to do real time translation of voice into different languages, and they have I think four languages right now, but they're working on 30. But it's that translation can also keep the tone of the voice, it can sound like the same person, it

can keep the expression. So it's not just that it's translates it and it sounds like some kind of you know, old fashioned phone translation, something that feels really old, it can feel incredibly real and keep the enthusiasm, but maintain, you know, but be real time translated, it is such an exciting moment for technology. And it doesn't

stuff happening. But before I get too geeky out on the Ed Tech side, there's one more topic I really want to hear from both of you about. And I know you've both thought a lot about this, which is AI, one of the you know, underlying technologies is probably underlying your Cleopatra experience. And it's just becoming everywhere, and it has the potential to revolutionize education even

further. But it also has raised a lot of concerns about exacerbating inequality, there's bias in AI, there's a lot of confusion about whether it's hallucinating or you know, who has access to using it, or who can sort of has the cultural capital to learn how to use it in different ways. There's a lot of concerns coming up and a lot

of excitement. Let's start with you, Pedro, how is the Chicago Public School System, beginning to think about the ethical and equitable and also exciting implementations of AI in education?

really interesting example. So in our district, one of the investments we've made that showed huge economic gains and supports was, we have intervention teachers in every single school, so that our classroom teachers can focus on

tier one instruction. What was interesting now is that, you know, we now get it, you know, wanting to give him the other support and tools, we started piloting some tools that are AI driven, where intervention teachers working with a small number of children, I saw, like a demonstration of it, where the children are speaking into the device, and then they're learning about phonics. So this is the foundations of literacy.

And they can hear back, you know, they need to correct how they're pronouncing a word, or how they're, you know, reading a sentence or a paragraph in its in real time. And so what I saw immediately was how it just all it does just empower that intervention teacher to even be even much, much more effective working with the children and the children love because they're going back and forth. Similar, you know, we're seeing applications in math that are

doing the same thing. So when I think about where we're at today, it really feels you know, and we talked about this right that we're at the beginning of this, but this really feels like we're barely at the beginning.

You know, I when I think about any transformative invention that's common, like for example, when we started seeing, you know, on demand programming versus you know, you remember the C These I remember the VHS tapes, you know, the VHS tapes, I'm dating myself, it feels like that, if feels like things are just going to change, because what I see, for example, is the potential and I'm really pushing our team on this was how do we look at our curriculum systems there right now, even though

it's great content, you know, they're not the easiest to

navigate for our teachers. And I still one of my pet peeves, and I'm about your digression, but I'm doing this, you know, for as long as I have, I still think, you know, it should be easier for teachers to be able to develop personalized lesson plans, and personalized support and scaffolding for students, I could see the potential of AI, because our teachers right now in my district, they're very data driven, we have strong diagnostics, they like using

them. But to use AI to take all that analysis, all of that data, help them really, you know, tailor down a lesson plan to be to support students, I can see it. And I will tell you, Alex, you know, prior to AI, I dreamt about it, because I've had experience in helping you know, districts develop curriculum systems. But this is the first time we're actually seeing the technology power, that is actually possible to do it. And so I am just excited about what

the future is going to be. I think my recommendation to my colleagues is embrace it. You know, so we can talk about the ethics. I hate to say this, Alex, I even take issue with the way you ask the question, I would, because for me, you know, I want to just go on the other side, let's embrace it, understand that there's going to be some unintended consequences. Look, trust me, we're dealing with some of our students, we give them a certain assignment, guess what they're using AI to

do it. And the teachers get upset and say, Look, do you really want to fight that? Or really now think about, okay, how do we build that into the actual assignment? How do we because we know it's unavoidable, right? How do you make sure that whatever the final product, it's still, you know, the personal product of that student, and don't look at AI as Oh, this is a shortcut that they shouldn't have, right?

Just like teachers will fight calculators, we really want to fight calculators, we can still have the foundations, you know, that students learn, and then let them build from that leveraging technology.

biases. But the good news is, I've talked to a lot of people about some of this stuff in AI, including some of the companies that their whole job is to catch integrity issues and catch students who are cheating. And that's not what they are interested in either even they don't want to be on the wrong side of this. They're like, it's

so exciting. And people can do so many amazing things, we should not be in the way of this, we should just, you know, minimize the unintended consequences when we can, but we can throw out the baby with the bathwater, because it is a very exciting technology.

is today. Because whether we like it or not putting the stuff together, which I get it, there's a value in that, but it isn't always, you know, the best use of our time 100%

just gonna ask AI. So you say, don't just make a case for it, you know, give me a 20 page document with all this and that and this and that, and like, go really deep because they can use AI to accelerate what they're doing. Yeah, we're very much on the same page here. I'm very excited to hear that perspective. How about you, Maria, how about Association of Latino administrators and

supervisors? I'm sure you're hearing about AI people using creative ways of using AI and maybe concerns as well, from all over the country. What is your take about AI and its potential for education?

ourselves on what this is. AI has been around for a while. Oh, it's just now coming into the mainstream up. You know, one of the things I learned in working in private industry is that education and then moving to education was in the mainstream, we're always about 10 years behind what's going on in industry. And so for us to actually get on the same page a lot faster than in previous decades, is super exciting to

me. Why would we waste I think about my experience as a classroom teacher, you know, I was using spreadsheets way back then as well. And I would make sure that I know, I got to know what my kids need, I want to know exactly what each one needs. And I would spend so much time creating these spreadsheets, and then putting in in the graphs, and creating the lessons that I'm going to do

small group instruction. And I think, oh, my gosh, if I was a classroom teacher, right now, do you know how many years that would save me? Because that's the thing is, we you want to be able to use productivity tools.

That's what they are. And so if I would be signing up for every class, you know, but that's the thing, if you want to gain back some of your personal life, and you're an educator who puts in the hours anyways, you know, think about how you can engage and learn what kinds of opportunities could I see would

be a quick transference? Why would I continue to ask my kids questions on things that they can Google, let's move on the cognitive learning that the adults have to we have to catch up to what our kids need is the fact that we can't rest any more on being tied to the traditional and the limitations of a curriculum that is ever changing, garbage in, garbage out. That's an old data term that we used to use back in the field. So when it comes to the monitoring, of what are our kids

going to be exposed to? That's why I think it's so important to have r&d financed in our education systems now more than ever, because it's not about the limitation of a practice. To me a certain, you know, a best practice is so limiting. It's something that is just like, stagnant, it's the heartbeat that's gone dead. It's like, we need to think bigger than that.

And so I just feel like if we can do everything, like we've done in the past and work in parallel fashion, we have committees that work on, you know, different kinds of policies all the time, have a committee that's working on, what does it you know, do what you got to do. But don't hold back until there's a perfect scenario to bring forth to the kids. Otherwise, you might as well say goodbye to another two decades.

do with AI. And whether we embrace it whether we say this is something that can change our teaching practices make teachers burnout a lot less by making their all that you know, back office work they have to do with the spreadsheets automated, which is definitely possible. Now, I can do translation, it can do changing formats to video. Yeah, we could talk about it all day. Okay, unfortunately, we're coming near the end of our time, we're actually a little

over our time. So I want to get both of your answers to our final two questions. But there's so much to unpack here. I'm really excited about the future of schooling when I have this conversation with the two of you. So hijra, let me start with you. What is the most exciting trend that you see in the EdTech landscape right now that our listeners should keep an eye on?

mentoring. And when again, where technology is really making this possible, because the challenge has always been well, how do I get my students to those campuses? How do I get the professor's to the high schools? what technology has done is that we now can do that, again in these different modes of learning, whether it's virtual learning in real time, we're

hybrid models. And so for me, you know, eyes and this is an initiative that I spearheaded in San Antonio had amazing success and Antonio and Dallas led it in the state. Great results. In Chicago. I say we're in the first inning, but I will tell you it's the first initiative at scale, where we're not seeing any opportunity gaps by race. I had almost 5000 seniors in college Horses last year, as they were finishing high school with a record number of getting associate degrees getting at

least 15. College when they get in, we're very early. But this trend is not going away. And what I tell parents, Alex, think about the savings you have in terms of college costs. But more importantly, it is students finding themselves finding

what's exciting them. Because one of the challenges we have as so many of our students, especially our students are poverty for first generation students who are taking longer to finish college, some of them don't finish, they come out with loans, they come out with degrees that don't necessarily get them the jobs they want. We

get to do this now earlier. And what I always tell parents, we have the support, we have the counselors, we have the teachers, we can partner with our higher ed partners and with our industry partners, to give them those supports, so that they're not just alone, trying to figure things out. Phenomenal.

feel relevant. So I couldn't agree more really exciting to hear you say that. Maria, what is a trend that you see in the ad tech landscape?

You can't just aspire to go to MIT because this is a niche, you've got to be able to increase what your course offerings are at an exponential level, so that kids will start to look towards you as because they aren't coming out far more knowledge based. They're going to be looking at well, what does this school have? What does that school have, and I may be dually enrolled in other colleges to

get what I want. So the trends I see that are starting to have that conversation, and hopefully that it moves from conversation to action. Because again, when you have traditional systems in place, and we know that there's a trickle down effect, right now we're seeing a push up effect towards the demand is asking, I just finished reading the learning game by Anna Lorena Ferreira. And she talks about how public education and we've been sitting on our laurels for

a long time. But we're excited now that those who are willing to run with leaders such as federal that you've been talking with this morning, you're gonna find that there's going to be a rise in who wants to go and follow these kinds of leaders into education, because people want to share what they've been given. So we've got to keep that intact, and keep them excited to do that. So we can grow a pipeline of kids that will want to train and teach and create other kids to do the same.

That's how we're going to, I think, start to narrow that pipeline, because right now, teaching as a profession that many really are gravitating to. So we've got to change what we're offering as an employer as well. Fantastic.

world. And, you know, Todd, get the privilege to have worked with them and talk to them every week. But also, it's just people need to feel inspired. You know, when you said it's the first time in a while that you felt, you know, optimistic about some of the things that are coming. We've all felt that education is

it can wear you down. And I think it's a really exciting time to get some more excitement and inspiration and enthusiasm and break down some of these barriers between college and high school between college and other colleges. As you're mentioning, maybe somebody can be dual enrolled in multiple colleges that's really exciting.

educators. You want to come Keep staff engage, let them choose from a plethora and a menu, if you will, to really individualize their learning and professional growth, so that they become inspired and want to bring that back to their students. So we're super excited that it's no longer just, you know, the ones that we always go to, they're great. But to be able to have access to those from around the world, if our kids can do that, so should our staff,

And last question. So we have the learning game as a resource to recommend for our audience here, Pedro, what resource would you recommend for somebody who wants to go deeper into any of the discussions we talked about today? What are they?

content there. I would also just invite our listeners, please go look at our website, if you want to get in touch with leaders that are in our Virtual Academy are leaders that are working on these model pathways where we have, they have a great relationship with the community college, we call it the roadmap initiative. Those are all things that you know, one thing that Alex that I always remind people, and education, we're not like the private sector, none of

our work is copyrighted. It's publicly available for other school districts, for researchers, for anybody. You know, we have so many different partners that we have industry partners, community based organizations, and so know that anything we're doing in Chicago, and it's always a work in progress, but it's always

available. And I always, you know, what I'd love to hear from some of my colleagues from different areas, like we just got, you know, these tools that you guys are using for student voice, or what you're using for dual credit and dual enrollment or in your virtual school. And I always love that, because they said, Look, they are working product, but they like it helps us move our work further and put

it in our context. So that's what I would suggest Alex then know that as a city, we know the city of Chicago, 322,000 students fourth largest Street in the country, we know our place. And it's always our place to get back to our communities, not only here in Chicago, but across the country. So any lessons that we're learning, because by the way, we do the same thing. We are always looking for lessons to learn from my colleagues across the country as well.

a link to that article. It is called Not every Chicago School offers algebra in middle school. CPS is working to change that. And it's in Chalkbeat, just a few weeks ago, as you mentioned, we will put that in a link from the show notes, as well as link to the Chicago public schools, you know, system and some of the amazing initiatives you've mentioned today. This has been an absolute pleasure. I really, really appreciate both of your

time today. Pedro Martinez, Chicago public schools chief executive officer and Dr. Maria Armstrong, Executive Director of the Association of Latino administrators and superintendents. Alice, thank you so much, both of you for being here with me on edtech insiders.