RAIL
RESPONSIBLE AI IN LEARNING
Stay Safe. Stay Ahead.
COHORT 1
COHORT I MEMBERS
Academia María Reina with Forward Learning (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
American Community School of Athens (Athens, Greece)
American School of Bahrain (North Riffa, Kingdom of Bahrain)
Beyond 8 (Chennai, India)
Choate Rosemary Hall (Connecticut, USA)
Episcopal Academy (Pennsylvania, USA)
Excel Education (Minnesota, USA)
Malvern Prep (Pennsylvania, USA)
Mount Lebanon School District (Pennsylvania, USA)
Washington International School (District of Columbia, USA)
SCHEDULE 2024
Week 1: April 24, 10:00AM + April 25, 2:00PM & 3:00PM
Onboarding Part 1 for all
Week 2: April 29-May 3
CliftonStrengths Assessment
Google Drive Doc Uploading
Slack Post Introduction
Week 3: May 6-10
Work
Onboarding Part 2 for Individual Teams
Asynchronous workshops on Pace Layer model, Culture & Identity, PoG
Week 4: May 13-17
Work
Slack contributions / conversations about any evidence from Culture & Identity Layer
Week 5: May 20-24
Work
Week 6: May 28-31
Work
Individual Team Check In
Asynchronous workshops on Governance Layer / Section Framework
Week 7: June 3-7
Work
Slack contributions / conversations about any evidence from Governance Layer
Week 8: June 11-15
Work
Week 9: June 17-22
Work
Week 10: June 24-28
Work
Individual Team Check In
Voiceover of Change Strategy
Week 11: July 1-5
Work
Slack contributions / conversations about Change Strategy
Week 12: July 8-12
Work
Submit Required Evidence
SIGN INTO SLACK
to STAY ABREAST OF RAIL NEWS, RESOURCES, SUPPORT + MORE!
RESOURCES
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQS)
GENERAL FAQs
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You can start in earnest after your second onboarding experience, but if you want to prepare you can gather the following documents, all of which you will update for RAIL:
-Mission statement
-Vision statement
-Values / Beliefs statement
-Portrait of a Graduate
-Portrait of a Teacher
-Strategic Plan
-Faculty / Staff handbook
-Student handbook
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As part of onboarding, we will share a Google Drive into which you will eventually upload or link evidence. For now, keep it in one central place!
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You will have until July 10, 2024 to submit your Self Study.
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Yes, although we will be doing 1:1 sessions along the way so you won’t want to submit too early, lest you miss the opportunity to learn something critical or to ask important questions!
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We will not require a visit, and we are evaluating the feasibility of visit requests. If you think you might want to host MSA for a visit, please contact Amber.
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You can find helpful videos on:
Zoom (join a test zoom meeting to make sure your connection works)
Google Drive (introduction)
Google Calendar (training and help)
Slack (quick start guide)
‘THE PROCESS’ FAQs
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As part of onboarding, you will receive a link to your team’s Shared Drive.
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You will have several opportunities to talk with us about the key concepts, indicators of quality, or required evidence. Your team will have three scheduled 1:1 meetings with us at the beginning, middle, and end of the process. In addition, you will have the chance to do workshops on specific evidence requirements. And finally, whenever you have questions, you can reach out to us!
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You absolutely can split up the work. While your team must agree on the final version of what you submit, you can distribute primary responsibility for generating the various pieces of evidence to different members of the team.
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This will vary depending on the robustness of your existing evidence and the degree to which you may need to change it—or whether you decide to throw out what you have and create things from scratch. For example, you might decide not to modify your mission statement, so the time required might be whatever it takes for your team to come to consensus. On the other hand, you might have no AI policies. The challenge may have less to do with creating policies (after all, it’s called “generative” AI for a reason) and more to do with debating as a team what you want to submit. During onboarding, we will recommend a decision-making framework that can clarify roles and expedite your team’s ability to finalize evidence.
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No—although you may want to. Once you earn your endorsement, it will be valid for two years (eg, if you earn the endorsement in August 2024, it will be valid until August 2026). That said, you may choose to stay up to date with the latest “versioning” of RAIL. Consider the possibility that your community may ask you to update things (eg, in response to state or federal policy). In those cases, only you can decide whether it’s valuable or necessary for you to make changes.
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When we update requirements or the process, we will send you “push notifications” via email, much as your smartphone does when your provider has created a new OS. It will be up to you to choose whether to do the associated work, just as you get to decide whether to download your smartphone’s OS updates.
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Yes, the checklist and timeline will be takeaways from Onboarding Part 1.
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You will have several opportunities to receive feedback on your work. Your team will have three scheduled 1:1 meetings with us at the beginning, middle, and end of the process. In addition, you can participate in optional workshops on specific evidence requirements. And finally, whenever you have questions, you can reach out to us! If your final Self Study is inadequate, we may issue you the endorsement with a “monitoring issue” or “stipulation,” just as we do with regular accreditation. Those qualifiers will come with timelines and instructions for remediating inadequacies. Our goal is to ensure that you succeed, so as you go through the process you should always err on the side of asking us questions.
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If you cannot complete your work in your current cohort, you can reapply to join a future cohort. Depending on the number of other schools already enrolled, you may have to wait before you can restart.
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Your dues cover one year at a time. If you choose not to pay your dues in year two, your endorsement will be updated to reflect its validity for only the first year. Our website, where we will publicly record the endorsements, will also reflect this change.
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No. While you will not be required to provide rough drafts along the way, we will encourage you to share your works in progress so that we can provide feedback. Just as formative assessment helps students to grow, such touch points with us can help you strengthen your final Self Study.
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You will have until July 10, 2024 to submit your Self Study.
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Your work will be reviewed by Amber Berry and Christian Talbot from Middle States. The criteria are the required evidence. You will not be required to host an on-site visit, although we may request one from a handful of schools so that we can better understand what implementation looks like at the ground level.
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At the end of year one, you will submit a progress report on the implementations of your change plan and your marketing plan. And throughout the two years that your endorsement is valid, you will periodically be asked to survey your community.
‘Success & Failure Modes’ FAQs
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A: We would expect to see and hear three things:
1.Clear team norms grounded in observable behaviors. For example, your team might agree that “We will lead with questions,” or “We will always end a meeting by recording who will do what by when.”
2. Challenges to the status quo. For example, your team might say things like, “We’ve always said that our mission is to form global citizens, but I wonder if we should start to talk about forming ‘good ancestors’.” This is not about being contrary for the sake of contrariness, but rather thoughtfully pausing to ask whether the status quo serves your community in a world of abundant AI.
3. Comfort with (or at least acceptance of) uncertainty. For example, you might have to settle for v1 of a school policy on generative AI even though your team wants to wait until the White House issues its next set of policies in a few months. You can’t know or do everything, and you will need to accept that some things will remain uncertain.
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We would expect a team might fail because of:
Lack of communication. The rest of this list isn’t rank ordered, but lack of communication is definitely the #1 reason a team will fail. To prevent this, set up clear communications expectations (eg, put dates on the schedule, create automated reminders, craft a team norm for communication, etc.)
Ambivalent or insufficient executive sponsorship. Change projects always require the full support of the senior executive. If the final decision maker has mixed feelings or is lukewarm about RAIL, we can assure you that it will not succeed no matter how passionate your team is. To prevent this, make sure that you regularly update your executive sponsor (this could be your head of school, superintendent, principal, or someone else). Make sure that these regular communications provide not only status updates, but also descriptions of the return on investment for this work. Whenever you are uncertain about ROI, ask us! (And, as you’ll see in the next question, you can also consult with your genAI of choice.)
Inadequate time and attention. We have estimated that each member of the team should invest an average of 2-4 per week on RAIL. If someone isn’t investing that much time (again, on average) then your team will be in danger of failing. A good team norm about communicating progress will do wonders. (Again, note the first item on this list!)
Fear as the mind killer. It is 100% natural to feel some anxiety or fear about how the rest of your community will react to what you are creating. In fact, if you don’t feel at least some anxiety about that, you’re probably not being ambitious enough. However, you cannot let that fear prevent you from doing what you know is right for your school, your community, and their long-term future. If you have read or seen Dune, then you know that “fear is the mind killer”!
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Your evidence requirements include crafting (1) a change strategy and plan and (2) a marketing strategy and plan. These elements will equip you with action steps to keep your community informed and to invite them into a discussion of what you have created. As former school leaders who have led complex change initiatives and who have advised many others on the same, we promise that we will be with you every step of that journey. You are right to name this concern, because it will likely be the hardest part of the RAIL experience. To quote Tom Vander Ark, a member of the Middle States AI Advisory Team, your team is “sprinting to literacy”... but the rest of your community is not there (yet).
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Reach out to us! In addition, as Ethan Mollick points out in his must-read Co-Intelligence, one of the best uses for generative AI is asking it for advice when you get stuck. But definitely reach out to us too.
MARKETING FAQs
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Middle States will have its own strategic marketing campaign about RAIL. On a regular basis, we will share content—blog posts, live chats, workshops, and more—about you and the other participants. You were already big news when we talked about you at ASU GSV. Expect that to continue as Middle States tells the story of RAIL—which is to say, of you!
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During your second onboarding session, we will equip you with a template for updating your community while you go through RAIL. In addition, as part of your final Self Study you will create a marketing strategy and plan (including a content calendar for 2024-25). Here are a few examples of what some RAIL schools have already done:
Press release from the Barstow School
LinkedIn post from Fayston Prep
LinkedIn post from Beyond 8
LinkedIn post from Excel Education
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As part of your final Self Study, you will include a change strategy and plan for generating momentum within your community. That change strategy will focus primarily on faculty, staff, and students, with a secondary focus on parents and alumni (if the last group is relevant to you).
