Texas Education Agency implements automated scoring engine for open-ended questions on STAAR exams, saving millions of dollars.
Sign up for The BriefStudents sitting for their STAAR exams this week will be part of a new method of evaluating Texas schools: Their written answers on the state’s standardized tests will be graded automatically by computers.
This spring, as students complete their tests, the computer will first grade all the constructed responses. Then, a quarter of the responses will be rescored by humans. TEA officials have been resistant to the suggestion that the scoring engine is artificial intelligence. It may use similar technology to chatbots such as GPT-4 or Google’s Gemini, but the agency has stressed that the process will have systematic oversight from humans. It won’t “learn” from one response to the next, but always defer to its original programming set up by the state.
The STAAR test results are a key part of the accountability system TEA uses to grade school districts and individual campuses on an A-F scale. Students take the test every year from third grade through high school. When campuses within a district are underperforming on the test, state law allows the Texas education commissioner to intervene.
A former teacher in the Austin Independent School District, Griffith added that even if the automated scoring engine works as intended, “it's not something parents or teachers are going to trust.”“The automation is only as good as what is programmed,” said Lori Rapp, superintendent at Lewisville ISD. School districts have not been given a detailed enough look at how the programming works, Rapp said.
The TEA also said that students who are retesting will perform at a different level than students taking the test for the first time. “Population difference is driving the difference in scores rather than the introduction of hybrid scoring,” a TEA spokesperson said in an email.
Texas Schools STAAR Exams Automated Scoring Standardized Tests Natural Language Processing Artificial Intelligence Cost Savings
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Texas A&M Aggies introduce Trev Alberts as athletic directorNew Aggies athletic director Trev Alberts said it wasn’t easy to leave Nebraska, but the opportunity at Texas A&M was too great to pass up.
Read more »
House Republicans to introduce bill ending federal funding for medical schools with DEI, 'race-based mandates'House Republicans are sponsoring the EDUCATE Act, which aims to eliminate federal funding, including student loans, for medical schools with DEI practices.
Read more »
Solar eclipse: Which North Texas schools are closed for the day?Here’s how schools are preparing ahead of the April 8 total solar eclipse.
Read more »
BlackRock calls Texas' divestment 'reckless,' bad for schoolsBlackRock has worked with the Texas Permanent School Fund for almost two decades and has produced strong investment performance with competitive fees.
Read more »
Here are the Central Texas schools that will be closed for the 2024 total solar eclipseSeveral school districts in our area are canceling classes because of the total solar eclipse.
Read more »
The high cost of principal turnover in Texas schoolsWhen a principal leaves, schools lose stability, teacher morale diminishes, teachers leave, and student achievement suffers. In 2022-23, over 20% of Texas...
Read more »