A poster with information for students on using ChatGPT, an AI platform, in English teacher Jen Roberts' class at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.
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Adriana Heldiz
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CalMatters
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Topline:
California schools are using more chatbots, and teachers are using them to grade papers and give students feedback.
The benefits ... with a catch: English teachers say AI tools can help them grade papers faster, get students more feedback, and improve their learning experience. But guidelines are vague and adoption by teachers and districts is spotty.
The unknown: The California Department of Education can’t tell you which schools use AI or how much they pay for it. The state doesn’t track AI use by school districts, said Katherine Goyette, computer science coordinator for the California Department of Education.
Read more ... to get more perspective from educators actively using AI.
Your children could be some of a growing number of California kids having their writing graded by software instead of a teacher.
California school districts are signing more contracts for artificial intelligence tools, from automated grading in San Diego to chatbots in central California, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
English teachers say AI tools can help them grade papers faster, get students more feedback, and improve their learning experience. But guidelines are vague and adoption by teachers and districts is spotty.
The California Department of Education can’t tell you which schools use AI or how much they pay for it. The state doesn’t track AI use by school districts, said Katherine Goyette, computer science coordinator for the California Department of Education.
While Goyette said chatbots are the most common form of AI she’s encountered in schools, more and more California teachers are using AI tools to help grade student work. That’s consistent with surveys that have found teachers use AI as often if not more than students, news that contrasts sharply with headlines about fears of students cheating with AI.
Teachers use AI to do things like personalize reading material, create lesson plans, and other tasks in order to save time and and reduce burnout. A report issued last fall in response to an AI executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom mentions opportunities to use AI for tutoring, summarization, and personalized content generation, but also labels education a risky use case. Generative AI tools have been known to create convincing but inaccurate answers to questions, and use toxic language or imagery laden with racism or sexism.
California issued guidance for how educators should use the technology last fall, one of seven states to do so. It encourages critical analysis of text and imagery created by AI models and conversations between teachers and students about what amounts to ethical or appropriate use of AI in the classroom.
But no specific mention is made of how teachers should treat AI that grades assignments. Additionally, the California education code states that guidance from the state is “merely exemplary, and that compliance with the guidelines is not mandatory.”
English teacher Jen Roberts uses Writeable, an AI platform, to grade students’ work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.
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Adriana Heldiz
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Goyette said she’s waiting to see if the California Legislature passes Senate Bill 1288, which would require state Superintendent Tony Thurmond to create an AI working group to issue further guidance to local school districts on how to safely use AI. Cosponsored by Thurmond, the bill also calls for an assessment of the current state of AI in education and for the identification of forms of AI that can harm students and educators by 2026.
Nobody tracks what AI tools school districts are adopting or the policy they use to enforce standards, said Alix Gallagher, head of strategic partnerships at the Policy Analysis for California Education center at Stanford University. Since the state does not track curriculum that school districts adopt or software in use, it would be highly unusual for them to track AI contracts, she said.
Amid AI hype, Gallagher thinks people can lose sight of the fact that the technology is just a tool and it will only be as good or problematic as the decisions of the humans using that tool, which is why she repeatedly urges investments in helping teachers understand AI tools and how to be thoughtful about their use and making space for communities are given voice about how to best meet their kid’s needs.
“Some people will probably make some pretty bad decisions that are not in the best interests of kids, and some other people might find ways to use maybe even the same tools to enrich student experiences,” she said.
Teachers use AI to grade English papers
Last summer, Jen Roberts, an English teacher at Point Loma High School in San Diego, went to a training session to learn how to use Writable, an AI tool that automates grading writing assignments and gives students feedback powered by OpenAI. For the past school year, Roberts used Writable and other AI tools in the classroom, and she said it’s been the best year yet of nearly three decades of teaching. Roberts said it has made her students better writers, not because AI did the writing for them, but because automated feedback can tell her students faster than she can how to improve, which in turn allows her to hand out more writing assignments.
“At this point last year, a lot of students were still struggling to write a paragraph, let alone an essay with evidence and claims and reasoning and explanation and elaboration and all of that,” Roberts said. “This year, they’re just getting there faster.”
Roberts feels Writable is “very accurate” when grading her students of average aptitude. But, she said, there’s a downside: It sometimes assigns high-performing students lower grades than merited and struggling students higher grades. She said she routinely checks answers when the AI grades assignments, but only checks the feedback it gives students occasionally.
“In actual practicality, I do not look at the feedback it gives every single student,” she said. “That’s just not a great use of my time. But I do a lot of spot checking and I see what’s going on and if I see a student that I’m worried about get feedback, (I’m like) ‘Let me go look at what his feedback is and then go talk to him about that.’”
First: A student uses Magic School, an AI platform, to help generate ideas for a classroom writing prompt. Last: A student reads their writing out loud. Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.
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Adriana Heldiz
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Alex Rainey teaches English to fourth graders at Chico Country Day School in northern California. She used GPT-4, a language model made by OpenAI which costs $20 a month, to grade papers and provide feedback. After uploading her grading rubric and examples of her written feedback, she used AI to grade assignments about animal defense mechanisms, allowing GPT-4 to analyze students’ grammar and sentence structure while she focused on assessing creativity.
“I feel like the feedback it gave was very similar to how I grade my kids, like my brain was tapped into it,” she said.
Like Roberts she found that it saves time, transforming work that took hours into less than an hour, but also found that sometimes GPT-4 is a tougher grader than she is. She agrees that quicker feedback and the ability to dole out more writing assignments produces better writers. A teacher can assign more writing before delivering feedback but “then kids have nothing to grow from.”
Rainey said her experience grading with GPT-4 left her in agreement with Roberts, that more feedback and writing more often produces better writers. She feels strongly that teachers still need to oversee grading and feedback by AI, “but I think it’s amazing. I couldn’t go backwards now.”
The cost of using AI in the classroom
Contracts involving artificial intelligence can be lucrative.
To launch a chatbot named Ed, Los Angeles Unified School District signed a $6.2 million contract for two years with the option of renewing for three additional years. Magic School AI is used by educators in Los Angeles and costs $100 per teacher per year.
Despite repeated calls and emails over the span of roughly a month, Writable and the San Diego Unified School District declined to share pricing details with CalMatters. A district spokesperson said teachers got access to Writeable through a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for English language learners.
QuillBot is an AI-powered writing tool for students in grades 4-12 made by the company Quill. Quill says its tool is currently used at 1,000 schools in California and has more than 13,000 student and educator users in San Diego alone. An annual Quill Premium subscription costs $80 per teacher or $1800 per school.
QuillBot does not generate writing for students like ChatGPT or grade writing assignments, but gives students feedback on their writing. Quill is a nonprofit that’s raised $20 million from groups like Google’s charitable foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the past 10 years.
English teacher Jen Roberts explains to her students how she uses Magic School, an AI platform, for classroom exercises and grading at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.
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Even if a teacher or district wants to shell out for an AI tool, guidance for safe and responsible use is still getting worked out.
Governments are placing high-risk labels on forms of AI with the power to make critical decisions about whether a person gets a job or rents an apartment or receives government benefits. California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said he hasn’t considered whether AI for grading is moderate or high risk, but “it definitely is a risk to use for grading.”
The California Federation of Teachers is a union with 120,000 members. Freitas told CalMatters he’s concerned about AI having a number of consequences in the classroom. He’s worried administrators may use it to justify increasing classroom sizes or adding to teacher workloads; he’s worried about climate change and the amount of energy needed to train and deploy AI models’ he’s worried about protecting students’ privacy, and he’s worried about automation bias.
Regulators around the world wrestling with AI praise approaches where it is used to augment human decision-making instead of replacing it. But it’s difficult for laws to account for automation bias and humans becoming placing too much trust in machines.
The American Federation of Teachers created an AI working group in October 2023 to propose guidance on how educators should use the technology or talk about it in collective bargaining contract negotiations. Freitas said those guidelines are due out in the coming weeks.
“We’re trying to provide guidelines for educators to not solely rely on (AI), he said. “It should be used as a tool, and you should not lose your critical analysis of what it’s producing for you.”
State AI guidelines for teachers
Goyette, the computer science coordinator for the education department, helped create state AI guidelines and speaks to county offices of education for in-person training on AI for educators. She also helped create an online AI training series for educators. She said the most popular online course is about workflow and efficiency, which shows teachers how to automate lesson planning and grading.
“Teachers have an incredibly important and tough job, and what’s most important is that they’re building relationships with their students,” she said. “There’s decades of research that speaks to the power of that, so if they can save time on mundane tasks so that they can spend more time with their students, that’s a win.”
English teacher Jen Roberts checks her student’s work at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024. Roberts uses AI platforms for classroom exercises and grading. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
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Alex Kotran, chief executive of an education nonprofit that’s supported by Google and OpenAI, said they found that it’s hard to design a language model to predictably match how a teacher grades papers.
He spoke with teachers willing to accept a model that’s accurate 80% of the time in order to reap the reward of time saved, but he thinks it’s probably safe to say that a student or parent would want to make sure an AI model used for grading is even more accurate.
Kotran of the AI Education Project thinks it makes sense for school districts to adopt a policy that says teachers should be wary any time they use AI tools that can have disparate effects on student’s lives.
Even with such a policy, teachers can still fall victim to trusting AI without question. And even if the state kept track of AI used by school districts, there’s still the possibility that teachers will purchase technology for use on their personal computers.
When teachers can’t tell if they’re cheating
Kotran said he routinely speaks with educators across the U.S. and is not aware of any systematic studies to verify the effectiveness and consistency of AI for grading English papers.
Roberts, the Point Loma High School teacher, describes herself as pro technology.
She regularly writes and speaks about AI. Her experiences have led her to the opinion that grading with AI is what’s best for her students, but she didn’t arrive at that conclusion easily.
At first she questioned whether using AI for grading and feedback could hurt her understanding of her students. Today she views using AI like the cross-country coach who rides alongside student athletes in a golf cart, like an aid that helps her assist her students better.
A student scrolls through their laptop during class at Point Loma High School in San Diego on May 3, 2024.
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Roberts says the average high school English teacher in her district has roughly 180 students. Grading and feedback can take between five to 10 minutes per assignment she says, so between teaching, meetings, and other duties, it can take two to three weeks to get feedback back into the hands of students unless a teacher decides to give up large chunks of their weekends. With AI, it takes Roberts a day or two.
Ultimately she concluded that “if my students are growing as writers, then I don’t think I’m cheating.” She says AI reduces her fatigue, giving her more time to focus on struggling students and giving them more detailed feedback.
“My job is to make sure you grow, and that you’re a healthy, happy, literate adult by the time you graduate from high school, and I will use any tool that helps me do that, and I’m not going to get hung up on the moral aspects of that,” she said. “My job is not to spend every Saturday reading essays. Way too many English teachers work way too many hours a week because they are grading students the old-fashioned way.”
Roberts also thinks AI might be a less biased grader in some instances than human teachers who can adjust their grading for students sometimes to give them the benefit of the doubt or be punitive if they were particularly annoying in class recently.
She isn’t worried about students cheating with AI, a concern she characterizes as a moral panic. She points to a Stanford University study released last fall which found that students cheated just as much before the advent of ChatGPT as they did a year after the release of the AI.
Goyette said she understands why students question whether some AI use by teachers is like cheating. Education department AI guidelines encourage teachers and students to use the technology more. What’s essential, Goyette said, is that teachers discuss what ethical use of AI looks like in their classroom, and convey that — like using a calculator in math class — using AI is accepted or encouraged for some assignments and not others.
For the last assignment of the year, Robers has one final experiment to run: Edit an essay written entirely by AI. But they must change at least 50% of the text, make it 25% longer, write their own thesis, and add quotes from classroom reading material. The idea, she said, is to prepare them for a future where AI writes the first draft and humans edit the results to fit their needs.
“It used to be you weren’t allowed to bring a calculator into the SATs and now you’re supposed to bring your calculator so things change,” she said. “It’s just moral panic. Things change and people freak out and that’s what’s happening.”
A man casts his ballot during early voting in Waukesha, Wis., on March 18.
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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.
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AFP via Getty Images
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Topline:
More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group.
Why it matters: It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.
Why now: The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. The breadth of the problems with the list was outlined in Saturday’s filing. It describes an analysis by two members of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, who filed a lawsuit challenging it with the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters in California by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant-rights group.
It’s the first outside analysis of a list that the Department of Justice has used to threaten prosecution of election officials. The analysis also found that thousands of U.S. citizens appear to be flagged as ineligible to vote on the government’s list.
The contention was made in a filing by two data analysts at the University of California, Los Angeles. They analyzed the 20,930 names that the department demanded that California election officials treat as possible illegal voters by separating their ballots during the vote count on Election Day.
Multiple judges have rejected the demand as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy, and local and state officials have said the list appears riddled with errors.
Court filing outlines problems with government list
The breadth of the problems with the list was outlined in Saturday’s filing. It describes an analysis by two members of UCLA’s Voting Rights Project, who filed a lawsuit challenging it with the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.
The research found that 8,880 of the names, representing 42% of the entire list, do not correspond to anyone in California’s current voter file. It also found at least 22 are U.S. citizens, and many more may correspond to those of confirmed citizens.
“The expert analysis further makes clear that the mandated voter list endangers a significant number of eligible California voters,” said the filing, which was cosigned by Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for California governor and an adviser to the UCLA Voting Rights Project. null
The Trump administration had objected to sharing the list, calling it a “fishing expedition” and noting that it included sensitive information. On Saturday, the federal prosecutor who spearheaded the Trump case in California called the analysis “bogus.”
“This is a bogus report by the activist illegal immigrant rights group CHIRLA,” Bill Essayli, who runs the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, posted on X.
Also on Saturday, President Donald Trump bemoaned the legal rulings against his effort to force California to separate votes from the individuals his administration labels suspected noncitizens, even though one came from a judge he himself nominated.
In a social media post, Trump claimed his Justice Department found “20,000, but potentially Hundreds of Thousands, and maybe even Millions,” of fraudulent votes, “and the Court has just ruled against it. Why would they reject fixing Election Fraud?”
The Trump administration has also urged Washington state to remove what it says were 400 possible noncitizens on its rolls, though state election officials there say that list is also unreliable and includes one voter who cast ballots in the 1990s.
The Justice Department has warned California election officials they could face criminal liability if they let noncitizens vote and issued subpoenas to election officials there.
Election officials say they have no time to investigate
Election officials have complained that the Trump administration has confronted them with lists of possible illegal voters at the last minute before Election Day, with no time to conduct the painstaking investigation required by law before removing someone from the rolls.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed to stop the administration from continuing to threaten local election officials.
On Friday, a federal judge in California ordered the Justice Department to stop sending demands to state officials, a decision the Trump administration appealed Saturday. Several counties in the state had run quick checks of the Trump list and found numerous errors.
Saturday’s broader analysis was possible because a federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to share the list with the plaintiffs in the case.
CHIRLA and the UCLA project sued the Homeland Security Department in early October to prevent it from using federal immigration data to challenge state voter rolls. The lawsuit cited examples in other states where the federal government’s data has been proven to mistakenly include thousands of citizens.
Case argues that government’s methods pose risk to voting
The case argued that the data-matching methods risk disenfranchising or deterring citizens from voting. On top of that, plaintiffs argued, the lists could disproportionately target naturalized citizens who are legally entitled to vote.
Applying the government’s methodology, the UCLA researchers found that nearly 7,500 naturalized citizens in the state were “highly likely” to be incorrectly flagged as ineligible.
The researchers noted that the administration apparently removed the voter identification number from the names, making it harder for election officials to determine whether the flagged individuals were already on their rolls or were duplicates in the Justice Department list. They described the voter ID number as the most crucial data point.
The Justice Department argues that there is just as much to lose if the ballots aren’t separated.
“Every ballot cast by an ineligible voter cancels out the vote of an American citizen,” Kiersten V. Pels, a spokesperson for the department, wrote in an email. “The Department makes no apology for protecting those votes.”
Josie Huang
is a reporter and Weekend Edition host who spotlights the people and places at the heart of our region.
Published November 1, 2026 5:00 AM
Jordan Delgado picked Lady Gaga's 'You and I' as her debut song with the L.A. Karaoke league.
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Josie Huang
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LAist
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Topline:
The LA Karaoke league turns singing into a team sport, where costumes, props and creativity matter more than hitting the right notes. For performers craving a creative outlet when auditions are harder to come by, the league offers a community to cheer them on.
The backstory: The L.A. league is part of United Karaoke, a national network of chapters that share a competition format, voting app and pledge to always keep the vibe friendly.
What's next: Teams compete for a spot in the finals. The public is welcome to watch and vote for their favorite performances.
For many of us, karaoke is a chance to sing our favorite shower song in public.
But at a North Hollywood bar every Wednesday night, it’s a team sport. And competitors in the L.A. Karaoke league are more serious about putting on an over-the-top production than hitting all the right notes.
At a social in late September, league manager Michelle Goff kicked off a new season of weekly themed showdowns, from dance-floor favorites to internet memes to songs inspired by birds.
Brittany Gates, the CEO of United Karaoke, who was visiting from D.C., did her rendition of 'Let's Hear It For The Boy' by Deniece Williams.
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"You are going to see numbers that people came up with in their crazy dreams maybe three years ago, and it's going to be amazing,” Goff told performers at the social. “And then they’re never going to be done again.”
Michelle Goff unveils the different themed weeks, from dance-floor favorites to internet memes to songs inspired by birds.
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Performances range from solos to group numbers, and the crowd votes for its favorites. Props and costumes are highly encouraged.
Here, dark wizards from Harry Potter duet to Taylor Swift. A singer tosses flowers to the crowd while belting Seal's “Kiss From a Rose.” Once, Goff danced around as an erupting Mount Vesuvius as her teammates sang Bastille's "Pompeii."
Like intramural sports but with microphones, teams compete over six weeks, followed by two weeks of playoffs, then the finals.
It all happens at the Good Nite bar, on a darkened stretch of Burbank Boulevard. Inside, there’s an inviting purple glow and warm conversation that can be hard to come by in a city as big as L.A.
“You know, the city, exciting as it is, still has so many strangers,” said Carlos Mulia.
A newcomer to the league, the chef-turned-actor already feels like he belongs.
Want to join the L.A. Karaoke league?
Where: The Good Nite, 10721 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood.
When: Wednesday nights during the season.
How: Check the chapter’s website or @WeSingLA on Instagram for season announcements. Fall season registration is closed. The next season will start in late January or early February.
Cost: Registration costs $65 to $80, depending on when you sign up and whether you use a discount code.
Can I go watch: Yes! League nights are open to the public, with no cover charge, and anyone can vote for their favorite performances.
“Sometimes you can go to a karaoke bar and everyone’s talking and no one’s paying attention to you — that can be a downer,” he said. “But here, everyone’s contributing, everyone’s cheering for each other.”
For Mulia, the league also offers a creative outlet during Hollywood’s production slowdown, when he says opportunities to perform are scarce.
Actor Carlos Mulia said competitive karaoke gives him a creative outlet and a place to find community in a big city.
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“There’s not that many auditions," he said. "They’re far and few between, and it can really affect your psyche. So this allows you to just let it all out.”
The L.A. league started in Santa Monica in 2014 before moving among venues around the region and finding its current home at the Good Nite in 2021.
It’s part of United Karaoke, a loose national network with chapters in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Chicago. The local leagues share a competition format, voting app and a pledge to keep the vibe welcoming.
In the league, friendships spark right away. Mulia hit it off with another actor, Jordan Delgado, who teaches children art at a studio.
They quickly figured out they’re both half-Filipino and grew up with karaoke, a fixture of Filipino social life.
“It is in our blood to do karaoke,” Delgado said. “So yeah, I’m honoring my ancestors in a way by being here tonight.”
Anybody is welcome on karaoke competition nights and invited to vote for their favorite performances.
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Delgado loves to perform but says the karaoke league promises more than that.
“It’s something to look forward to in the downtime of the part-time jobs,” Delgado said. “A reason to regularly meet up with people, where we could just be silly, without any judgment.”
For her league debut, Delgado is going with a tried and true crowd-pleaser.
“My go-to song that my friends and family have heard me sing a billion times is ‘You and I’ by Lady Gaga," Delgado said. "It really gets the crowd going.”
When it’s her turn, Delgado bounds onto the tiny stage up front with a big confident smile that matches a powerful voice.
“We got a whole lot of money, but still pay rent,” Delgado sings, striding across the tiny stage to whoops and cheers.
Several weeks after her league debut, Delgado would go on to win best performer during Graveyard Week, when the league revives songs so overdone they’re normally off-limits.
Her winning number? “Shallow,” with Delgado singing both the Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper parts.
And she brought the theatrical flair. Dressed as Gaga on one side of her body and Cooper on the other, she was her own duet partner.
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By Jeremiah Dobruck | Long Beach Post, Dañiel Andres Martinez
Published October 31, 2026 1:34 PM
A sign a Rosies Dog Beach in Long Beach warn visitors of the contaminated water. Photographed at Rosie's Dog Beach on Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022 in Long Beach, CA.
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Myung J. Chun
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Topline:
All coastal waters in Long Beach — including beaches, lagoons and bays — remain closed Sunday, after health officials say 29,000 gallons of sewage spilled out of a mainline pipe in Belmont Shore on Friday evening.
What happened: The spill happened around 6:30 p.m. near Livingston Drive and Second Street, according to a statement from the city’s Health Department.
The latest update: City crews tried to catch as much sewage as possible before it reached drainage systems that led to the ocean, but about 14,000 gallons ultimately reached the sea, forcing Long Beach to close its coastal waters.
All coastal waters in Long Beach — including beaches, lagoons and bays — remain closed Sunday after health officials say 29,000 gallons of sewage spilled out of a mainline pipe in Belmont Shore on Friday evening.
Joy Contreras, a public information officer with Long Beach Utilities, told LAist that emergency repairs to the sewer main were completed Saturday night.
"The Utilities Department will investigate the cause of the force main break, as a break of this magnitude is extremely rare," Contreras said Sunday.
Water quality testing, Contreras said, will resume on Monday. The Long Beach Health Department, she said, will determine when swimming areas will reopen once samples meet State water quality standards.
What happened
The spill happened around 6:30 p.m. on Friday near Livingston Drive and Second Street, according to a statement from the city’s health department.
“The spill was associated with a force main break, a pressurized pipe to convey wastewater,” according to the statement. There was no word on what caused the break.
Long Beach Utilities stopped the spill by rerouting sewage to bypass the line.
City crews tried to catch as much of the sewage as possible before it reached drainage systems that led to the ocean, but about 14,000 gallons ultimately reached the sea, forcing Long Beach to close its coastal waters.
History of sewage spills
Long Beach is no stranger to beach closures because of sewage spills, but it most commonly happens when sewage flows down the Los Angeles or San Gabriel rivers from upstream cities. Over one recent five-year span, local beaches were closed for 63 days because of upstream spills.
State law requires the closures any time sewage makes its way to the coast until testing shows the water meets quality standards. These rigorous rules don’t hold true for all types of spills.
