Illinois Bans AI Use In Teacher Evaluations Under New Law - RiverBender.com

Illinois has bravely declared that AI shall not write teacher evaluations, because nothing says 'we're ahead of the curve' like banning a technology from a task nobody wanted automated anyway. Senate Bill 2909, championed by State Senator Christopher Belt, is a masterpiece of legislative precision: it prohibits AI from composing those glowing or damning paragraphs about your kid's geometry teacher, but—quelle surprise—allows 'limited administrative use with disclosure.' So the AI can still schedule the meeting and file the paperwork, just not touch the actual words. Presumably, the legislators were too busy patting themselves on the back to notice that the real problem isn't AI writing evaluations, but administrators who can't be bothered to read them.

Let's be honest: the teacher evaluation process is already a bureaucratic exercise in box-ticking and CYA statements. Introducing AI would at least have injected some consistency—or at least some entertaining hallucinated praise like 'Mr. Johnson's ability to levitate during fractions is unparalleled.' But no, we must preserve the sacred tradition of vague, legally cautious appraisals written by exhausted principals at 2 a.m. The 'limited administrative use' loophole is particularly delicious: you can do everything except the one thing that matters, which perfectly encapsulates how regulators approach AI—lots of hand-wringing about the margin while the floodgates creak open elsewhere.

Of course, this law won't stop teachers from using AI to write their own self-assessments, lesson plans, or angry emails to parents. And it certainly won't stop some underfunded district from quietly using an AI to flag 'problem' instructors before the human evaluator rubber-stamps a firing. But hey, we've got a law on the books! A law that says AI can't write evaluations. Now if only we could get one that says administrators have to read them. No—that would be too much progress.