Can AI-translated text messages help students? Some Minnesota schools think so.

Zoe Kourajian makes a point of contacting her students’ parents often. The Mounds View social studies teacher loves sharing positive news — letting families know when their middle schooler aced an assignment or was extra helpful during a group project. But that back-and-forth communication wasn’t always easy or efficient for families who don’t speak or read English at home.

Now, thanks to new technology that uses AI to translate her message into different languages, including Arabic and Tigrinya, Kourajian can simply send a text through an app.

“It’s empowering,” she said. “The technology is definitely increasing the equity of how we communicate with families.”

Minnesota school leaders say they are hearing more from vendors about new offerings that use machine-learning algorithms to help translate websites, newsletters and even texts to parents into multiple languages. Several schools have signed on, hoping the latest apps or platforms will help streamline communication — an urgent need for districts that continue to receive more and more students who are new to the country.

Still, many Minnesota educators embracing such technologies say they are a tool, not a panacea. And some districts, including St. Paul Public Schools and Rochester, have recently learned the hard way about the pitfalls of automatic translations.

Panayiota Kendeou, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, urges schools to use caution as they explore the potential of AI. It can be a low-cost and efficient solution to specific challenges within the classroom, she said, but there’s little opportunity for “quality control.”

An automated translation may be inaccurate or not culturally appropriate, she said, adding that districts need to be transparent about what messages are translated using AI.

St. Paul school newsletters now end with a note explaining that they can be translated in many languages, but that the “translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete.”

At the end of September, Hmong, Karen and Somali families in St. Paul received an apology from the schools, explaining that computer-generated translations from a new district system “fall far short of our standards.”

The district advises principals not to use machine translations in emails or robocalls without verifying the accuracy with a staff member.

Rochester schools also learned that some messages don’t translate well in certain languages. The word “referendum,” for example, didn’t accurately translate in messages to families about an operating referendum that was on the ballot in November.

“It’s about thinking about the purpose and the why of using it,” said Natalia Benjamin, director of multilingual learning for Rochester Public Schools. “It can’t substitute all communication and certainly not the in-depth conversations that need to happen face-to-face. But it is bridging a gap we have in communication.”

South Washington County Schools also uses AI technology to translate websites and documents, and district staff have noticed that Somali and Hmong translations are not always as accurate as a translation into Spanish, for example. That’s why the district turns to its own team of interpreters to verify translations.

“We try to balance that technology with people on the backside,” said district spokesman Shawn Hogendorf. “If we’re using technology to translate things, but it’s not translating correctly, we’re not providing anybody the equitable service we were hoping to.”

After winter break, the district plans to roll out an app that will connect teachers to a live interpreter to help interpret conferences, or parent meetings, for example.

“That’s going to be such a resource for us,” said Danilo McCarthy, an English language support specialist for South Washington County schools. He also holds workshops for families on using those new technologies to best communicate with their child’s teacher.

Kourajian, the Mounds View middle school teacher, offered similar training for her fellow teachers on the translation app — called TalkingPoints — that allows her to translate quick messages to and from parents. The district first offered TalkingPoints to its staff in the 2022-23 school year, but it wasn’t immediately embraced by all, Kourajian said.

Usage has jumped this year and more than 23,000 messages have gone to families, most commonly in Spanish, Somali and Arabic. Still, only about 40% of staff are using the app.

“I would love to see more teachers embracing it,” Kourajian said.

She speaks Spanish, but some of her students speak Arabic, Tibetan, Vietnamese and Tigrinya, an Eritrean language. Google translation services allow her to quickly create worksheets in those languages. And during class, she can sit next to a student and communicate instructions or questions by typing them into Google Translate. It’s not always perfect, but the technology offers another way to connect, she said.

“This helps build relationships,” Kourajian said. “And teachers are nothing without relationships.”