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Dr. Reza Namin, superintendent of Maine Indian Education, gave me a phrase for the AI he worries about in schools: artificial ignorance. The risk is not students cheating. It's adults using a tool before they have done enough of the thinking themselves. His test for any AI is simple: it has to help the adult see the child more clearly.
CTO of Swiftscore. Writes about what we're learning from districts on the ground.
Superintendent of Maine Indian Education.
In a small Arkansas district, a leader trusts his read on classrooms. He also wants more behind it. Palestine-Wheatley is building a disciplined system where learning-walk notes, formal evaluations, value-added measures, and attendance converge so teacher support rests on evidence, not instinct.
Dr. Reza Namin gave me a phrase for the AI he worries about in schools: artificial ignorance.
He was not talking about students cheating. He meant adults using a tool before they have done enough of the thinking themselves.
Users can bring weak assumptions into AI and get them back with better grammar. A lesson can mention Native culture and still misunderstand the children it is for. An evaluation can sound more complete than the conversation behind it.
Namin is the superintendent of Maine Indian Education. I called because the district is "Above the Line." See our Above the Line introduction for those criteria.
Namin sums up his reasoning in three words: rigor, relevancy, and relationship.
By rigor, he does not mean school should be harder for the sake of hard work. School should ask more of its students because it connects to something real.
By relevancy, he means students should see their culture, language, history, and land in what they are learning. Science taught through the lakes around them. Social studies that understands what the land was before it became part of the state of Maine.
By relationship, he means students relating to each other and to their instructors. As an Iranian-American himself, Namin remembers what it felt like to be a student in a classroom where someone else decided what counted as language, history, and knowledge. He works to give his students a better environment than the one he experienced in the 1980s.
When a teacher receives feedback, what determines whether it actually changes practice?
The disconnect usually comes after the feedback is given, Namin said. The teacher might leave with notes and an action plan, but the system does not always return to see whether anything changed.
His answer is more frequent observation and more follow-up. Maine Indian Education does not have collective-bargaining limits on how often leaders can visit classrooms, he said, which gives principals more room to set goals, observe instruction, and return to see whether those goals are showing up.
"[H]ave observations set goals and SMART goals in the beginning," he said, then use "more classroom observation to see how those are implemented," followed by professional learning and more teacher consultation.
That feedback has to move "back and forth between a principal and a teacher."
"Taking risks and having supervisor's feedback in a non-intimidating environment is really important."
The paper still matters. The observation still matters. But the return visits matter more. That is the part an AI tool can easily miss or misunderstand.
Maine Indian Education has adopted a system-wide AI policy: first have conversations with teachers, then set parameters, then training, then practice. Namin wants teachers to understand what AI is, what it draws from, and how to tell whether it is helping.
Other districts move faster. Maybe they are jumping into the water before measuring the factors that matter.
Namin clearly sees the uses of AI: turn rough notes into polished evaluations, finish paperwork faster, draft a lesson plan. He talked about AI helping special education teachers with IEP work, and tools that help teachers understand student cognition and problem solving while the class is still moving. It can help teachers build lessons tied to culture and identity.
But the tool has to make the teacher more aware of the child, not less.
Careless and generic tools can do the opposite. They can make a generic lesson sound personal, or a thin culture reference sound respectful. That is the risk of artificial ignorance.
Namin is already preparing his district for AI in schools. There is no question that it is coming. The question is whether the tool strengthens the habits Maine Indian Education is already trying to build: keep the curriculum rigorous and relevant while protecting human relationships.
For districts built on his three Rs, AI has to meet the same standard as any other school practice.
It has to help the adult see the child more clearly.