Every headline about Oregon’s plummeting test scores in reading is a fresh reminder that we need effective programs to improve the literacy skills of struggling readers.
What we don’t need is the $148,000 contract Portland Public Schools recently signed with Colin Kaepernick and Lumi Story AI, a start-up company that has no track record of improving child literacy.
The stated goal of the contract is to improve reading comprehension by training young readers, and their teachers, to use a generative AI program to write and publish comics and graphic novels. At the Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts, we get it. For the last two years, we’ve promoted literacy through comics creation in our summer workshops, “Reading, Writing, and Drawing Comics." Comics are a great aid for reading and writing and boosting creativity.
But the new PPS contract – conveniently set at $148,000, which falls below the threshold for public review by the school board – will, instead, teach our students to let a computer do the work for you, even if that means stealing the work of others. Generative AI software mines the work of artists and creators, who go uncredited and uncompensated. This is plagiarism, which is supposedly not tolerated in our schools.
The good news? PPS realizes comics can be a gateway to essential gains in literacy and reading independence.
The bad? PPS is choosing to teach literacy through unproven and unethical generative AI software.
We need a public discussion -- or outcry -- to remedy that.
Mike Rosen, Portland
Rosen, a former PPS board member, is director of the Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts.
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