Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays
> Utah has been using AI as the primary scorer on its standardized tests for several years. “It was a major cost to our state to hand score, in addition to very time consuming,” said Cydnee Carter, the state’s assessment development coordinator. The automated process also allowed the state to give immediate feedback to students and teachers, she said.Yes, education takes time and costs money. Yes, not educating is both cheaper and faster. Note how the rationalizing ignores the needs of the students and the quality of the education.I live in Utah and my children have been subjected to this automated essay scoring here. One night I came home from work and my son and wife were both in tears, frustrated with each other and frustrated with the essay scoring which refused to give a high enough score to meet what the teacher said was required, no matter how good the essay was. My wife wrote versions herself from scratch and couldn’t get the required score. When I got involved, I did the same with the same results.Turns out the instructions said the essay would be scored on verbal efficiency; getting the point across clearly with the fewest words. I started playing around and realized that the more words I added, the higher the score, whether they were relevant or grammatical or not. Random unrelated sentences pasted in the middle would increase the score. We found a letter of petition online for banning automated scoring for the purposes of grades or student evaluation of any kind. It was very long, so it got a perfect score. I encouraged my son to submit it, and he did. Later I visited his teacher to explain and to urge her to not use automated scoring. She listened and then told me about how much time it saves and how fast students get feedback. :/