FOX45 News: Anne Arundel mother fights to clear daughter’s school record in AI cheating case

The battle continues for an Anne Arundel County mother who is fighting to save her daughter’s academic reputation.

Tara Davis says her daughter was unfairly accused of using artificial intelligence to cheat on a school assignment, but she’s running out of chances to prove it.

“I want to keep going,” Davis told Project Baltimore. “I want to keep fighting the fight.”

Davis first spoke with Project Baltimore in May. Since then, she hasn’t gotten very far in her effort to clear her daughter’s name.

“I know there are people out there that are having a similar experience, and their kids have had this happen,” said Davis.

In defense of her daughter, Davis has now filed four appeals with Anne Arundel County Public Schools. The first appeal went to the Broadneck High School principal, who upheld the findings. Subsequent appeals went to the regional assistant superintendent, the associate superintendent of school performance, and most recently the district’s deputy superintendent.

All three additional appeals have upheld the original findings. But Davis says the process is unfair, because the school system has not given her daughter a chance to explain herself. She says her daughter has never been interviewed for any of the four appeals.

In her most recent appeal to the deputy superintendent, Davis wrote, “This matter is extremely important. This policy cannot fall under the plagiarism guidelines category — it’s an entirely separate animal that is treating good students unfairly. Something has to be done here and it has to be done now.”

The deputy superintendent replied saying, Broadneck’s initial investigation was “thorough” in concluding that the “style, syntax, vocabulary and sentence structure were not consistent with previous work submitted.”

The school has offered to remove the academic integrity violation from her daughter’s record at the end of senior year, if she has no more violations. But Davis says that may be too late.

“That’s not good enough,” she said. “College applications happen long before graduation. So, colleges are going to see that academic dishonesty is on her record.”

Anne Arundel County Public Schools does not have a board-approved policy concerning students using artificial intelligence, which is why Davis’ daughter was disciplined under the broader district policy for academic integrity. Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County Public Schools also do not have board-approved policies concerning AI.

But Carroll County Schools does. Earlier this month, the board established AI standards that say, in part, “While certain assignments in this course may permit the use of generative AI tools, such use is not allowed unless otherwise stated. Intentionally submitting AI generated work as original is considered academic dishonesty.”

“We’re preparing our kids for careers and college and for the real world, and these are things that are out in the real world,” said Carroll County Board of Education Member Tara Battaglia during a June 12 meeting. “It does have a lot of good to it, we just have to make sure we’re using it correctly.”

In punishing Davis’ daughter, Broadneck High School used an AI detection program called GPTZero, which claims with 90% certainty that the paper was written by artificial intelligence.

In the reply to Davis’ fourth appeal, the deputy superintendent wrote, “I have reviewed available information which notes that GPTZero is widely used and is reliable.”

But Davis wonders if the “available information” reviewed by the deputy superintendent included GPTZero’s own website, which reads, “This result should not be used to directly punish students.”

Davis now has one more opportunity to clear her daughter’s name. After four failed attempts, she plans to file a fifth and final appeal to the Anne Arundel County Board of Education.

“I just want her to see that standing up for what you believe in and standing up for what’s right, is worth doing,” Davis said of her daughter. “I’d love a positive outcome on the other side of this, so that she can actually see that it is worthwhile, even if it takes time and persistence.”