Teachers Hate These Kinds of Paperwork. Can AI Help?
However many kinds of paperwork you're imagining, imagine more.
In 2022, the annual Merrimack College Teacher Survey revealed that teachers really dislike the administrative work of their job. Teachers wish they could spend much more time actually teaching and preparing to teach and much less time on “general administrative work.”
In 2023 and 2024, they repeated themselves, listing “fewer administrative burdens associated with meetings and paperwork” in the top four actions their district or school could take to support their mental well-being.
The Rorschach Test
That chart is a Rorschach test—a problem into which you can read several different solutions.
Someone like me, for example, someone of pure heart and mind, might stare at it and decide that we should re-evaluate the administrative burdens we ask of teachers, either eliminating them or, if they are truly necessary, delegating them to front office staff who can handle them at scale.
The bad news. That plan would require more staffing for schools and, consequently, higher taxes. It would generate 0% returns to shareholders. This plan is therefore ruled offside by the tech and business class before it steps onto the field.
Other people stare at teaching’s deep discontent and see an opportunity for market-based solutions, for software. They see an opportunity for artificial intelligence.
I will say again that I would only be thrilled if we could reduce the administrative burden on teachers through This One Weird Trick (AI). But I note wearily that the people promoting AI as the solution to teacher problems seem deeply incurious about both the teachers and their problems.
At NCTM, I asked two practicing teachers about the biggest drag on their happiness in teaching. Both independently quoted “paperwork” to me. I asked them to tell me specifically the kinds of paperwork that take up their time.
Teachers Hate These Kinds of Paperwork
They described these categories:
Student forms. “We still collect all the beginning-of-year stuff on paper! Emergency, income, medical, photo day, etc.”
Tracking spreadsheets. “Everything from school-wide student of the month, entering every locker combination and who's using it, tech and supply requests, student data at both the school and district level, parent communication, etc.”
Field trip and event forms. “I made an approximately 15-step Google checklist my team manages for each field trip. Add to that the communication with school and outside organizations.”
Endless administrative work around eighth-grade graduation. “Between caps and gowns, T-shirts, trips, ceremony prep, etc, it’s a Google Sheet with probably 50+ cells of to do’s.”
Emails.
Writing lesson plans. Creating presentation slide decks. Compiling practice sets. Handouts. Notes.
Writing substitute lesson plans and posting announcements on Google Classroom.
Writing pre-observation and post-observation forms that align with Charlotte Danielson Framework that connects to lesson plans and lessons to be observed. “This happens two to three times a year for most teachers in my district.”
Writing, recording videos and doing work for National Board Certification or maintaining certification.
Grading, writing meaningful feedback, and entering formative and summative assessments on a regular basis of 150+ students.
Keeping up with communication and assignments posted on Google Classroom with students and families.
Recording and documenting Behavior Incident Reports. “Anytime we communicate home we need to document this internally.”
Keeping a running list of professional development records to get evaluated by the end of the year.
Maintaining documentation and filling out surveys and forms for students with IEPs and 504s in addition to attending the meetings.
Updating syllabi, course materials, including a daily schedule calendar.
Creating and maintaining permission slips for field trips.
Filing paperwork to request classroom supplies.
My Questions
If you are excited about the power of AI in education, I have several questions for you:
Which of these categories of paperwork do you imagine those teachers could outsource to AI?
How will the AI access all the context necessary to complete the paperwork?
Will the work involved in making that context accessible to the AI offset any productivity gains?
Honest questions. I think I know the answers, but I would love to be surprised here.
What Does It Matter?
A reporter asked me last week, “What does it matter whether you’re right or wrong about AI in education?” My response is that we, society, have put teachers in a really bad place. They are vocal and consistent about why it is a bad place and what would make it a better place. But their solutions would require coordinated action at the local, state, and federal level. Their solutions would require a re-investment in our schools. And many of us live in places that would struggle to summon the collective will to fund a public library right now were public libraries not already invented.
It matters whether AI works as advertised. If it doesn’t work, we are wasting our time and our people pretending that teaching is an AI-shaped problem, ignoring all evidence that it is a people-shaped problem instead.
Featured Comments
Dylan Kane, a year ago in the comments here, gave his own list of administrative work he’d like to heave off his plate:
But I think this points to a bigger problem. Lots of people want to solve the sexy-sounding challenge of "help teachers plan lessons" even if they don't do a very good job, and no one wants to solve the less-sexy "free teachers from some time-consuming administrative tasks."
The most important thing school district leaders can do right now is have the courage to pause purchasing or accepting free “pilot” programs so teachers can help define AI’s role in their work rather than others defining it for them. Slowing down when others are moving fast is tough politically, but usually results in a better system.
I use AI to help write up announcements and assignments to post on Canvas, to create a rubric for a project, to create a self-assessment/reflection for relevant content, and to generate ideas for a bulletin board to name a few. I haven't found a need to use it for content. We use a highly rated curriculum that I really like. What might I be missing?
Odds & Ends
¶ Okay well now you’re all in big, big trouble. All your AI silliness has brought Audrey Watters out of retirement. If you have ever found my critiques of edtech’s remora-like attachment to generative AI a bit harsh, a bit untowards, a bit “not at all how it’s done around here, my good chap,” I promise you Audrey’s approach will make mine feel like a goose down pillow:
One of the reasons I am not particularly worried about AI – I come to you as Ed-tech's Cassandra here – is that the vast majority of people don't want it, don't like it, truly believe it's all bad-f------ news.
I’m not sure if she’ll be writing at her newsletter or her blog or both, but I have dragged my RSS reader out of mothballs just so I don’t miss anything.
If you aren’t yet acquainted, treat yourself to Audrey’s “The 100 Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade.” It is a thorough and unsparing critique and should be required reading for every one of you working in edtech, especially the five or six of you who have earnestly pitched me on #14 ten years after the fact.
Not required reading: Audrey’s retirement announcement. Who can remember why she retired from edtech reporting? Not me. I’m looking forward, not backward.
First I was an elementary teacher and specialist, so reading the list I assume this is what high school teachers are faced with. It made me exceedingly tired and wondering who would enter this profession if they were faced with this list prior to deciding to do a fifth year in education? Keeping in mind the terrible pay most teachers receive.
For me, in the elementary, I found two things immensely helpful. The first is both a reading and math specialist at the school that each spend 92% of their time working with teachers both in their classrooms doing demonstration teaching and providing curriculum assistance and the second is a FULL time aid in the classroom who is hired by the classroom teacher and able to assist with teaching, lesson planning and all the other mundane tasks we are expected to do including writing weekly newsletters.
I know, as a math specialist, that my teachers really appreciated my working with them in the classroom. They could watch and see how I planned and executed a lesson. They could see what I did when a lesson failed. When they were overextended I planned the lessons for the next few weeks. I was able to do this because I worked in their classrooms and knew their students. As a specialist I rarely sat in my office. There is a whole lot more but I hope you get the idea.
As a classroom teacher having a full time aid was a gift. I looked for people who were creative and willing to put in time knowing that both of us are not paid adequately for time spent. My assistants have remained my life long friends. Their talents have enriched me, my classroom teaching, and my students. There is no way AI could come close to either my job as a Specialist or as a classroom teacher with a special assistant.
I would add on that not only paperwork produces a problem, but also non-intuitive and cumbersome learning management systems do. I have been using Schoology and PowerSchool for the past 15 years. I have also taught the same three courses for the past several years, and I keep things very structured and organized from year to year. This structure and organization helps students see what is expected of them so that they can see when assignments are due, when tests are given, and when projects need to be completed by.
There are an inordinate number of buttons that a user has to click on some learning management systems to simply set up the same exact same schedule from the previous year. Of course small adjustments need to be made each year, but simply anticipating how to set up something that you have already done before is an avenue for AI to explore in learning management systems.