NYT Learning Network: AI and College Essays

 NYT Learning Network: AI and College Essays

Hidden Expectations of College Application Essays - from Marshall Memo 998 8/14/2023

 Hidden Expectations of College Application Essays

In this American Journal of Education article, Sarah Beck (New York University) and

Amanda Godley (University of Pittsburgh) say the decision by many colleges to make SAT

and ACT scores optional, along with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on race-based

affirmative action, have made the application essay more important than ever. “The pressure is

on college applicants,” say Beck and Godley, “to illustrate the kinds of nonacademic factors

increasingly prized in applicants – namely, attitude – and so-called performance factors such as

teamwork, leadership, grit, and motivation.”

Beck and Godley analyzed college essays that were identified as exemplary by college

admissions staffers at four highly selective U.S. colleges, and also studied the advice given by

several groups to students writing college essays. Some common themes from the latter:

- Convey your identity, personality, uniqueness, values, thoughts.

- Present a unique topic.

- Reflect your maturity, introspection, grit, drive, curiosity.

- Provide new information (not a repeat of other parts of the application).

- Stick with the same main idea throughout.

- Give details, “show don’t tell,” be concise, don’t use clichés.

- Don’t be formal, but be clear and proofread your essay.

- Use your “voice and style.”

- Stand out from others.

- Demonstrate that you are a good, creative writer.

- Show how you will fit at this school and contribute to the community.

Beck and Godley believe the college essay is a unique genre that most high-school

students have not had exposure to. “Given the lack of alignment between the college

application essay genre and traditional school-assignment genres,” say the authors, “we are

concerned that emphasis on these essays for admissions decisions may continue to

disadvantage first-generation, racially and linguistically minoritized, and low-income students

in underresourced schools. Students with access to extra financial and human resources

increasingly receive the additional guidance needed to discern the hidden expectation of this

genre, whereas those with fewer resources do not.”

Beck and Godley identified a number of characteristics in the 20 highly-rated college

essays they analyzed, including:

- The use of an extended metaphor – for example, a tortilla, a Greek island, a bridge, a

pickle truck, Chuck Taylor shoes;

- Presenting themselves as good creative writers with maturity, introspection, grit, drive,

and curiosity;

- Standing out from the crowd, frequently indicated by the applicant’s cultural

background – “I am Puerto Rican and Irish and French and Polish and all these

backgrounds have allowed me to see unique perspectives.”

- A niche interest – Legos, music, fly-fishing, rock-climbing, nanomedicine, farming,

potatoes, soccer, creative writing;

- Presenting themselves as “authentic, distinctive, and a suitable fit for membership in

the community;”

- Exemplary essays avoided direct self-appraisal, instead referring to the reactions of

others: “My climbing partners say that I take the most unorthodox routes when

climbing, but ironically they’re the most natural and comfortable paths for me.”

- Including micronarratives – short, embedded stories – and vivid imagery;

- Mixing exposition and narrative in effective ways.

“This structure,” say Beck and Godley, referring to the last item on the list above, “illuminated

one of the ways in which the genre of college admissions essays is quite different from the

genres of essays typically taught in schools – such as literacy analysis, persuasion, and

personal narrative – and why this genre can be particularly confusing for students who do not

have access to expert guidance in the essay-writing process.”

Beck and Godley have these pointers for teachers, counselors, and parents preparing

students to write effective college essays:

• Expose students to literary journalistic essays (such as those in The New Yorker) that

combine personal narrative, persuasion through compelling example, and scientific findings on

data in novel ways that bring issues and ideas to life for readers. “Studying and emulating

multiple examples of such published essays,” they say, “is one approach that teachers and

counselors could take to provide support for students writing the new and unfamiliar genre of

college admissions essays.”

• Explicitly discuss with students “the aspects of self that admissions offices seem to

value,” giving them agency for the “cultural expectations for the representation and sharing of

the self with unknown readers.”

• The topics, vocabulary, and syntax of successful college essays are a linguistic resource

that can be taught to all students and form an important part of the “tool kit of academic

literacy skills” needed to vault over disadvantages.

• Beck and Godley discussed ChatGPT with college admissions officers and were told

that at least so far, artificial intelligence is incapable of emulating “the compelling personal

voice that distinguishes outstanding essays that improve applicants’ chances for acceptance at

elite colleges.”

“‘What Makes You, You’: The Discursive Construction of the Self in US College Application

Essays” by Sarah Beck and Amanda Godley in American Journal of Education, August 2023

(Vol. 129, #4, p. 539-564); the authors can be reached at sarah.beck@nyu.edu and

VPGodley@pitt.edu .

End of the Take-Home Essay? from Marshall Memo 9/25/2023

 Is This the End of the Take-Home Essay?

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, political science professor Corey Robin

(Brooklyn College, CUNY) says that at first he wasn’t worried about ChatGPT. The skills it

took for a student to coax a plausible essay out of artificial intelligence, he reasoned, were

similar to those involved in actually writing the essay. “I could rest easy,” thought Robin, “in

the knowledge that, at least, I wasn’t not teaching my students what they needed to learn how

to do.”

But then he explored the second generation of large language models and was alarmed.

He asked his high-school daughter to prompt GPT-4 to write an essay he’d assigned the

previous year. The first draft was competent but lacked a clear thesis and had other flaws. But

when his daughter prompted it to fix those shortcomings, the second draft was impressive.

Further prompts produced an essay that Robin says was “as good as what many of my students

produce after a semester of effort.”

With current technology, all a student has to do to produce high-quality essays is be

able to see the difference between good and not-as-good work and prompt AI to improve

drafts. Even students who struggle academically can do that, says Robin – but it doesn’t mean

they can write a good essay themselves. Now, thanks to large language models, they don’t

have to.

Why do teachers ask students to write essays? he asks. And why do we grade them?

Because writing is a helpful medium for students to explore, inhabit, and make sense of worlds

that may be alien to them. “None of that is easy,” says Robin. “Through requiring students to

write multiple drafts, intensive comments on each draft, ongoing revision, and conversation, I

teach them that all writing is rewriting, and good work is just that: work.”

“Academic writing,” he continues, “has never simply been about producing good

papers. It’s about ordering one’s world, taking the confusion that confronts us and turning it

into something intelligible, wresting coherence from chaos. And knowing that that doesn’t

happen spontaneously or instinctively. That’s not a skill for college only. It’s a life-long

practice. Being able to see a situation, picking out those elements that matter and lend it

significance, bringing clarity to obscurity: these are what good readers and good writers do.

They’re what good friends, good parents, and good citizens do, too.”

In spoken conversation, we can replicate some of these processes, says Robin, but

writing is different. It gets our thoughts down on paper (or on a screen), objectifies them,

freezes them in time, and lets us look at them from a distance, as if they weren’t our own,

allowing us to revise and improve them. “That’s what makes writing, and rewriting, such a

distinctive experience – and opportunity,” he says. “It requires you to make your fleeting

thought a hard fact in the world, and to make yourself answerable for that fact.”

This is hard work, and it doesn’t come naturally to most of us. “It’s effortful,” says

Robin. “It’s frustrating. It’s disappointing. Failure looms large. We need incentives to do it. All

of us are vulnerable to shortcuts and escape hatches.” He describes his own procrastination

strategies: surfing the web, lying on the couch, doing e-mail, looking out the window, doing

everything but the work that needs to be done. His students describe similar evasions.

How do teachers deal with students’ struggles? By helping them break daunting

assignments into smaller parts, develop resilience, know where to get help, push back on their

evasions, become patient with their inadequacies. But teachers also need to set clear

expectations and make good use of deadlines, reminders, and sanctions (often in the form of

grades). Robin believes it’s a fantasy to think that teachers can get students to produce

excellent work solely through charisma, teaching skill, and inspiration.

“There is nothing in the realm of work,” he says, “– no matter how interesting or

exciting or desired – that does not entail, at some point, the experience of frustration, self-

doubt, loneliness, and anxiety. Experiences that most of us (realistically, all of us) flee from,

especially when we’re by ourselves, without the helping hand or reassurance or conversational

ease of another.” The threat of bad grades is not what produces this discomfort in students. It’s

intrinsic to the work, even if teachers are doing everything right. Our goal is not to eliminate

that discomfort but to give students the tools to deal with it.

“But for students to really get that,” Robin continues, “– to believe it, to feel it – they

have to do the work. They have to go through the process in order to learn that they can’t run

from it, or outsource it to AI, and, more important, that they don’t need to run from it.”

Sometimes the shock of a critical comment or a low grade turns things around and gets

students doing the kind of work that leads to discovery, clear thinking, and deep satisfaction. If

students know they get by via GPT-4, will they ever achieve that exalted state of mind?

What is to be done? Should teachers assign take-home essay assignments so artfully

framed that AI can’t psyche them out? Should students’ writing be assessed every step of the

way? Should we resign ourselves to the fact that some students will cheat with AI and that’s

their decision?

None of these feel right to Robin. “We shouldn’t let our fear of being cops prevent us

from being good teachers,” he says. “The issue is not punishment but pedagogy. Unlike

policing, teaching is a two-way street. To throw myself into my students’ work, I need to know

that they’re willing to do the work. But neither of us can know that, for certain, until we’re

doing the work, together. Simply leaving it up to students to decide whether they’re going to

do the work, without further comment or intervention or negative sanction from me, is a failure

of pedagogy.”

His solution? This semester, for the first time in 30 years in the classroom, he won’t

assign take-home essays, instead requiring students to write papers, midterms, and finals in

class. This will cut into the amount of class time used for discussing the texts being read, and it

will eliminate some opportunities for revision that are so important to writing. He’s not sure

how this will work out, but he’s giving it a try. It’s a challenge, an experiment, a draft, up for

revision as they proceed.

“The End of the Take-Home Essay? How ChatGPT Changed My Plans for the Fall” by Corey

Robin in The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2023 (Vol. 70, #2, pp. 34-37);

Robin can be reached at crobin@brooklyn.cuny.edu .

Five Key Drivers of Equity in Schools (from Marshall Memo 9/25/2023)

 Five Key Drivers of Equity in Schools

(Originally titled “Creating Clarity on Equity in Schools”)

In this Educational Leadership article, Pedro Noguera (University of Southern

California) and Joaquín Noguera (Loyola Marymount University) say we’re living through “a

particularly perilous time for equity efforts in education.” That’s because K-12 equity work is

being questioned by the political right (for being “woke” on race and LGBTQ) and by K-12

leaders (defensive about their lack of measurable progress).

When the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act proclaimed that all students would receive an

adequate education by 2014, there was lots of support in red and blue states and lofty slogans

and exhortations around equity. “However,” say Noguera and Noguera, “support for what

equity work truly entails never ran deep, and it soon became clear that many policymakers and

education leaders who espoused support for equity did not actually understand what was

required to achieve it… Lack of progress combined with lack of clarity on equity has left

schools open to backlash.”

Some schools are making solid progress, say Noguera and Noguera, and that’s because

they have articulated a clear vision that responds to student and community needs, decided on

effective strategies, implemented an action plan, and monitored progress. Successful schools

embrace a vision of equity that provides historically underserved students with the support they

need, identifies the root causes of disparities in special education and disciplinary referrals, and

maintains high standards and expectations for all – which includes keeping honors and

advanced placement courses. “It is profoundly important,” say the authors, “that the

commitment to equity not be interpreted as a retreat from the pursuit of academic excellence.”

To be successful, they say, schools must somehow work on “everything, everywhere,

and almost all at once” – curriculum, learning materials, cultural responsiveness, high-quality

teaching, school climate, and more. To keep from being overwhelmed and scattering their

efforts too widely, Noguera and Noguera recommend the five essentials for school

improvement identified in 2010 by the Chicago Consortium on School Improvement. They

believe these are what today’s equity warriors should focus on:

• A coherent approach to learning and teaching – School leaders articulate a clear

instructional framework and bring teachers together to plan lessons and assessments, analyze

student results, and continuously adapt and improve instruction. “By reducing teacher isolation

and providing greater clarity on curriculum and instructional expectations,” say Noguera and

Noguera, “leaders can increase teacher quality throughout a school – a key starting point for

equity.”

• Ongoing development of professional quality – “Like students, teachers vary in their

abilities and needs,” say the authors; “teachers cannot teach what they do not know.” Schools

must provide high-quality, differentiated professional development that addresses pedagogical

and cultural gaps, and give teachers opportunities to plan and analyze student work with

experienced colleagues, observe other classrooms, and get specific feedback and coaching that

is helpful, not threatening.

• A student-centered school culture – “The schools that make the greatest progress in

meeting their equity goals,” say Noguera and Noguera, “work to create a culture that prioritizes

students’ needs. This means faculty and staff must be curious about students’ needs and

students’ interests. They must work to become students of local culture and keepers of

community knowledge.” This includes finding curriculum materials that affirm students’

culture and heritage and address their developmental needs.

• Parent and community involvement – The key is going beyond bake sales and

engaging family members as thought partners, collaborators, co-designers, and community

leaders who are valued and respected partners in providing all students with high-quality

learning experiences. Effective schools also develop partnerships with community

organizations, churches, universities, hospitals, and local nonprofits.

• Shared leadership that drives change – Research on effective schools has always

emphasized the critical role of the principal, say Noguera and Noguera, and that role has even

more impact when school leaders distribute decision making and responsibility. “When a

school staff embraces a common vision of how things should be done,” they say, “and when

staff are able to take ownership of common goals, progress can grow exponentially.”

“Creating Clarity on Equity in Schools” by Pedro Noguera and Joaquín Noguera in

Educational Leadership, September 2023 (Vol. 81, #1, pp. 28-34); the authors can be reached

at rossier.dean@usc.edu and joaquin.noguera@lmu.edu .

14 Opening and Closing Classroom Routines

 https://www.edutopia.org/article/14-effective-opening-and-closing-routines-for-teachers?utm_content=linkpos1&utm_source=edu-legacy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-2023-08-30

David Brooks on Moral Education 2.0

from MM 1000

 David Brooks on Moral Education 2.0

In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks says he’s obsessed with two questions:

Why have Americans become so sad – increasing rates of loneliness, depression, and suicide?

And why have Americans become so mean – polarization, conspiracy theories, mass

shootings? Several explanations have been offered:

- Technology – social media are driving us crazy.

- Sociology – people participate less in community organizations and are isolated.

- Demography – white Americans are in a panic about increasing racial diversity.

- Economy – high levels of inequality and insecurity make people feel afraid, alienated,

and pessimistic.

These are all real, says Brooks, but they don’t fully explain why Americans have become so

sad and so mean.

The most important reason “is also the simplest,” he believes: “We inhabit a society in

which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our

society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.” That’s

happened because a web of institutions – families, schools, religious groups, community

organizations, and workplaces – are not doing the job they used to do: forming people into kind

and responsible citizens who show up for one another.

“For a large part of its history,” says Brooks, “America was awash in morally formative

institutions” that taught people three things:

- How to restrain their selfishness – keeping their “evolutionarily conferred egotism

under control;”

- Basic social and ethical skills – how to welcome a neighbor into the community, how to

disagree constructively;

- Finding a purpose in life – “practical pathways toward a meaningful existence.”

For 150 years after the nation’s founding, says Brooks, leaders focused on perfecting what they

acknowledged were flawed human beings. Moral education was a centerpiece in schools and

universities; the McGuffey Readers and other textbooks were full of tales of right and wrong.

Churches, Sunday schools, the YMCA, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, settlement houses,

professional organizations, unions had similar themes. One 19th-century headmaster said the

purpose of his school was to turn out young men who were “acceptable at a dance and

invaluable in a shipwreck.”

3Marshall Memo 1000 August 28, 2023

The two premises of this moral drive, says Brooks, were (a) “training the heart and

body is more important than training the reasoning brain,” and it is accomplished through “the

repetition of many small habits and practices, all within a coherent moral culture,” and (b)

“right and wrong are not matters of personal taste; an objective moral order exists.” Underlying

both was a belief in human fallibility. “The force of sinfulness is so stubborn a characteristic of

human nature,” said Martin Luther King Jr. a century later, “that it can only be restrained when

the social unit is armed with both moral and physical might.”

Coexisting with this crusade, says Brooks, were “all sorts of hierarchies that we now

rightly find abhorrent:” beliefs about racial superiority, men dominant over women,

antisemitism, homophobia, and more. “Furthermore,” he continues, “we would never want to

go back to the training methods that prevailed for so long, rooted in so many thou shall nots

and so much shaming, and riddled with so much racism and sexism.”

Yet the old push for morality was egalitarian, says Brooks, at least in theory. “If your

status in the community was based on character and reputation, then a farmer could earn

dignity as readily as a banker. This ethos came down hard on self-centeredness and narcissistic

display. It offered practical guidance on how to be a good neighbor, a good friend.”

And then, just after World War II, “it mostly went away,” says Brooks. A series of

phenomenally successful books – Peace of Mind, The Power of Positive Thinking, Dr. Spock’s

child-rearing manual, and others – preached a new gospel of self-actualization. “According to

this ethos,” Brooks writes, “morality is not something we develop in communities. It’s

nurtured by connecting with our authentic self and finding our true inner voice. If people are

naturally good, we don’t need moral formation; we just need to let people get in touch with

themselves.” A mid-1970s Girl Scout handbook asked, “How can you get more in touch with

you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?”

By the 1960s, says Brooks, K-12 moral education was in full-scale retreat, with an

increasing focus on SAT scores and getting into elite colleges and universities. In higher

education, the “research ideal” replaced an earlier humanistic ideal of cultivating the whole

student and thinking about how to live a good life, which now seemed hopelessly antique.

An analysis of words used in the nation’s books in the post-war era showed bravery

dropping 65 percent, gratitude down 58 percent, and humbleness 55 percent lower. Incoming

college students increasingly said that being financially well off was their leading goal in life.

Asked by researchers about their moral lives, young people said they hadn’t given it much

thought. “I’ve never had to make a decision about what’s right and what’s wrong,” said one. A

common refrain among students was that their teachers steered clear of controversies.

“Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy,” wrote

psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Brooks believes that people raised in a culture without ethical

structure become “internally fragile,” without a moral compass and permanent ideals, with no

personal why. “Expecting people to build a satisfying moral and spiritual life on their own by

looking within themselves is asking too much,” he says. “A culture that leaves people morally

naked and alone leaves them without the skills to be decent to one another. Social trust falls

partly because more people are untrustworthy.”

4Marshall Memo 1000 August 28, 2023

The result is “vulnerable narcissists… people who are addicted to thinking about

themselves, but who often feel anxious, insecure, avoidant. Intensely sensitive to rejection,

they scan for hints of disrespect. Their self-esteem is wildly in flux. Their uncertainty about

their inner worth triggers cycles of distrust, shame, and hostility.” Not surprisingly, suicide

rates have risen more than 30 percent since 2000. The pandemic made things worse, but the

underlying conditions were there before and remain in full force today.

“Over the past several years,” says Brooks, “people have sought to fill the moral

vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized… For

people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy.

It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: the line between good and evil runs not down

the middle of every human heart, but between groups… The culture war is a struggle that gives

life meaning.” One study found that young people who are lonely are seven times more likely

to get involved in polarized politics than non-lonely youth. Politics gives them a sense of

righteousness, purpose, and identity.

Brooks points to a couple of glimmers of hope: people openly weeping in theaters as

they watched Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the film about Mister Rogers “in all his simple

goodness – his small acts of generosity; his displays of vulnerability; his respect, even

reverence, for each child he encountered.” And Ted Lasso, the series about an American coach

transplanted to U.K. soccer, who said his goal was not the championship but “helping these

young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”

That is a “description of moral formation,” says Brooks. “Ted Lasso is about an earnest,

cheerful, and transparently kind man who entered a world that has grown cynical, amoral, and

manipulative, and, episode by episode, even through his own troubles, he offers people around

him opportunities to grow more gracious, to confront their vulnerabilities and fears, and to treat

one another more gently and wisely.”

The question before us, says Brooks, is how to “build a culture that helps people be

better versions of themselves.” His suggestions:

• A modern version of how to build character – What we used to do was gendered and

old-fashioned, he says, and points to Iris Murdoch for a better idea: a moral life as something

that goes on continually, “treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily

existence.” Channeling Murdoch, Brooks says, “I become a better person as I become more

curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view.”

• Mandatory social-skills courses – Some possible components: how to listen well, be a

good conversationalist, disagree with respect, ask for and offer forgiveness, patiently cultivate

a friendship, sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. “If we’re going to build a decent

society,” says Brooks, “elementary and high schools should require students to take courses

that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another.”

• A new core element in the college curriculum – Brooks points to several college

courses, including “Life Worth Living” at Yale and “God and the Good Life” at Notre Dame,

that have students read classic literature and grapple with questions like: What is the ruling

passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What

5Marshall Memo 1000 August 28, 2023

will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s

world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and

human life?

• Intergenerational service – Brooks suggests “at least two periods of life when people

have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic – the

logic of service.” These might be right after school and at the end of one’s working years,

when young people and seniors come together to serve their communities in meaningful ways

– and cooperate with people unlike themselves.

• Moral organizations – Most institutions serve both instrumental and moral goals, says

Brooks: hospitals heal the sick and make money; newspapers and magazines inform the public

and try to generate clicks; law firms defend clients and maximize billable hours; nonprofits

serve the public good and fundraise. But too often the instrumental eclipses the ethical, he says.

“Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about

both sets of goals.” Here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better

serve our higher mission.

• Politics as a moral enterprise – “Statecraft is soulcraft,” says Brooks. “We can either

elect people who try to embody the highest standards of honesty, kindness, and integrity, or

elect people who shred those standards… Yes, of course people are selfish and life can be

harsh. But over the centuries, civilizations have established rules and codes to nurture

cooperation, to build trust and sweeten our condition. These include personal moral codes so

we know how to treat one another well, ethical codes to help prevent corruption on the job and

in public life, and the rules of the liberal world order so that nations can live in peace, secure

within their borders.”

“Look, I understand why people don’t want to get all moralistic in public,” Brooks

concludes. “Many of those who do are self-righteous prigs, or rank hypocrites. And all of this

is only a start. But healthy moral ecologies don’t just happen. They have to be seeded and

tended by people who think and talk in moral terms, who try to model and inculcate moral

behavior, who understand that we have to build moral communities because on our own, we

are all selfish and flawed. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the

skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It

means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and

respected.”

“How America Got Mean” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, September 2023 (Vol. 332, #2,

pp. 68-76)

When You’ve Lost Trust in an Employee

 from Harvard Business Review

When You’ve Lost Trust in an Employee

Leaders who don’t trust their employees are often more anxious, hesitant to delegate, and prone to micromanaging. A lack of trust can also diminish innovation, morale, and team performance. Here are five steps to take if you’re in the uncomfortable position of not trusting one of your employees. First, separate facts from assumptions and focus on specific problematic behaviors. What exactly did this person do or not do that has led to your distrust? Next, make a list of the areas in which you do trust your employee, and consider how you might incrementally build on these areas in low-risk ways. Focus on clear and frequent communication—checking in regularly one-on-one—as you delegate and add to their responsibilities. It’s crucial to provide feedback on the behaviors that are leading to your distrust. Be specific; is it their competency, consistency, or character that’s degrading your trust? Ask for their feedback too, and honestly reflect on what you might be doing (or not doing) to contribute to the situation. And finally, ask yourself if the breach of trust is repairable. If it isn’t, it might be time to part ways.