Equity and Social Policy: Q&A with Jessica Welburn Paige

A growing number of school districts are using artificial intelligence to monitor students for suicide risk. It's a well-meaning attempt to address one of the leading causes of death among young people. But a recent RAND report warned that the programs could compromise student privacy and harm vulnerable students.

Jessica Welburn Paige was one of the lead authors of that report. Her work as a social scientist at RAND focuses on questions of race and inequality. She has shown that Black Americans are more likely to fall out of the middle class than White Americans; that disaster recovery too often overlooks low-income communities of color; and that suicide-risk algorithms may single out racial- and sexual-minority youth.

“I want answers to some of the most significant social problems that we face,” she said. “In particular, as someone who studies race and inequality, I really want answers and solutions for people who have been essentially deprived of the full rights of American citizenship. That's really what drives my work at RAND.”

Let's start with AI. You recently looked at how it's being used in schools to identify students at risk for suicide. What did you find?

These programs seem to be used in a majority of school districts across the country—yet most people probably don't know about them. Districts install them on school-issued student computers. The idea is that they can identify students who are experiencing mental health challenges or who may pose a safety risk to other students.

But there is limited systematic evidence that they work. And we identified a number of potential problems with them. There are concerns the algorithms may disproportionately target students of color and their computer activity. There are cases in which LGBTQ students searched for something and got flagged, and now they're outed—they have to go talk to school administrators about what they were searching for and why. We heard stories of alerts being used to discipline students, and some schools forward alerts to law enforcement. There are just a lot of ways for things to go wrong.

What's the message for parents?

Pay attention and ask questions. How is this software being used in your district? What type of data does it collect? What happens if something gets flagged? Who gets notified, does it become part of your student's record, and is there a potential that law enforcement will get involved? This is a whole new space, and local, state, and national policy has not kept up. So just ask as many questions as possible.

Stepping back a little, what experiences in your own life have shaped you as a researcher?

My daily life shapes my work as a researcher. As a woman of color in the U.S., I'm constantly existing in so many different spaces, and I'm constantly asking how the inequalities that exist in those spaces can be made better. I'm the parent of a child of color. I'm someone who grew up in one of the least diverse states in the country. I've had the chance to go to some great universities, where I was also very much in the minority. All of these things made me constantly think about the dynamics of inequality and how it operates and shapes opportunities and experiences.

You've looked at equity issues related to critical infrastructure, disaster recovery, home ownership. Is there one finding from your research that you wish more people knew about?

One thing we often lose sight of is that what people of color want is to just have the full rights of American citizenship. There are so many stereotypes and negative ideas that people of color are somehow operating in some completely different sphere, that they're asking for something different or special from society. It's not that at all. People just want the opportunity to go to school, go to work, own a home, and do the things that we associate with the American Dream.

There's also sometimes this idea that people of color, African Americans, think one way, have one background, one set of economic experiences. It's hard for some people to wrap their head around the fact that I had parents who went to college, who worked in professional jobs—that it was always planned that I would go to college. That has led me to want to make sure we have a more multidimensional understanding of the complexities of race and inequality in the U.S.

You've got a book coming out, Die Hard City. What's it about and what made you decide to write it?

It focuses on African Americans in Detroit, and what it was like to live in the city at a time when it had just filed for bankruptcy. This stereotype of Detroit as a doom-and-gloom Black city was pervasive. It was this image of American decline and deindustrialization. But the things that have gone wrong in Detroit are not only Detroit problems. They're national problems. Disinvestment in cities. Disinvestment in public education. Disinvestment in infrastructure. I wanted to dig into how people frame that experience, how they make sense of decline, and how they continue to promote ideas about success and mobility. It's about pursuing the American Dream. Despite all of the obstacles, that remains their main goal.