LAUSD's new student advisor is an AI bot that designs academic plans, suggests books

Security issues are always a potential concern — could hackers access the data? Could students go to unsafe places on the internet? Carvalho seemed confident that the answer is no.

The project could prove a positive leading indicator for a school district better known for struggling to catch up, and notorious for costly technological misfires.

A vaunted new payroll system created problems for years. A new student information system resulted in classroom and administrative disarray for weeks. An iPads-for-all effort was visionary but derailed by high cost, poor planning and mismanagement. Early in Carvalho's tenure, a massive computer hack put critical district records at risk, but was contained in time to prevent a catastrophic systems failure.

Early reviews on Wednesday were positive, including from Nery Paiz, the head of the administrators union, whose school principals would bear the brunt of complaints about the system if it doesn't work or creates new administrative hassles.

Alan Arkatov, a senior advisor to President Michael Crow at Arizona State University, said the effort could be a game-changer in the wake of the pandemic's academic setbacks.

"There was epic learning loss, and the social emotional damage to parents, teachers and, most importantly, students was again, epic," Arkatov said. "This is an inflection point that could fundamentally alter the equation. This is a fundamental tool, which allows students to engage, to find their voice."

Ed is Part of effort to bring about full academic recovery from the pandemic within two years. Intrinsic to the new app is the creation of an individual learning plan for each student. But this element was less clear on Wednesday.

Carvalho had introduced the idea of an "Individual Acceleration Plan" as early as December of 2022, modeled on the Individualized Educational Program, or IEP, that aims to provide a unique, appropriate education and support plan for every student who has a disability.

Disability advocates have long criticized L.A. Unified for not properly managing its existing system of IEPs, but that isn't stopping Carvalho from making the general idea universal.

Officials said the chatbot technology, which can communicate in 100 languages, is currently available at the 100 schools the district has designated as its most "fragile," reaching about 54,000 students out of about 420,000 across the school system.

The app "shows how we really want to prepare our students for the future," said Karen Ramirez, a senior who is the student representative on the board of education. This sort of technology is "something that they're going to be working with throughout their entirety of their lives."