Albright College is rolling out one of Pennsylvania's first structured AI training programs for K-12 teachers this fall — while four in ten fourth graders in neighboring states can't read at a basic level, and no parent was consulted about any of it.
The four-course Artificial Intelligence Endorsement, approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education in June, will train educators to integrate AI into their classrooms at $975 a pop. A $20,000 grant from the Glenn W. Bailey Foundation — a Florida-based outfit — is subsidizing the launch. The program goes live August 24.
The Mechanicsburg Patriot News framed the program as a straightforward response to demand, citing a 2024 RAND-CRPE study that found 60% of school districts planned AI training for teachers by the end of the 2024-25 school year. Albright's president, Debra Townsley, called educators "front lines" troops who "deserve high-quality, practical training." What neither Townsley nor the state education department addressed: where parents fit into this conversation, or whether AI integration serves students or simply accelerates their replacement by software.
The courses — Foundations of AI, Ethical and Responsible AI, AI for Teaching and Learning, and AI Integration and Leadership — sound like onboarding for the machine that eventually cuts your job. The program expects to reach 5,000 students and educators statewide over time. Whether those students learn anything a chatbot won't do cheaper is the question nobody in the endorsement pipeline is asking.
Meanwhile, kdhlradio.com reported that St. Cloud State University in Minnesota just earned an A+ from the National Council on Teacher Quality for doing something radical: training future elementary teachers to teach reading. The NCTQ evaluated syllabi, lecture schedules, assignments, and practice opportunities. The sobering context — four in 10 Minnesota fourth graders cannot read at a basic level — was buried in the report. Dean Melissa Hanzsek-Brill said the program is "helping transform how future teachers are trained to teach reading."
Two teacher-training stories, two priorities. One institution teaches teachers to use the tool that could make them obsolete. The other teaches teachers to do the one thing that actually matters — and gets a grade for it. The contrast writes itself.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education created the AI Endorsement credential to sit alongside existing endorsements in gifted education and autism. Whether AI integration deserves the same pedagogical gravity as special education is a call the establishment has already made — without asking the families who send their kids to those schools.
The Glenn W. Bailey Foundation, headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, is bankrolling part of this Pennsylvania initiative. A Florida foundation subsidizing AI curriculum for Pennsylvania classrooms raises the obvious question: whose priorities are being served, and who profits when AI gets embedded in public education?
Teachers need skills. Kids need to read. Parents need a seat at the table before the algorithm writes the lesson plan.
