In my opinion, this year’s District Writing Assessment was unfairly graded because it was evaluated entirely by Artificial Intelligence rather than a human.
The D.W.A was on February 5 and 6 for all students attending MacArthur. Sixth graders wrote a narrative essay, seventh graders wrote an explanatory essay, and eighth graders wrote an argumentative essay. Students were expected to score at least 7 out of the 10 points possible. The rubric used was based on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium’s writing rubric used for the performance tasks on the annual California Annual Assessment of Student Performance and Progress.
Students were prepared by their teachers and given ample resources, including a hard copy and a digital copy of the prompt as well as audio files for the texts, too. The problem with the assessment is the fact that students are graded by A.I. and not human teachers.
This is unfair because the app strictly flags students who use A.I., but uses it as a way to grade. If we aren’t allowed to use it, then teachers shouldn’t be able to use it.
Another problem with using A.I. to grade is how A.I. might struggle to grade creativity and originality from students’ essays, instead of praising them for thinking differently, especially since sixth graders wrote a narrative essay, which is based on creativity.
Eighth-grade English teacher Mrs. Maria Vicario said, “What I don’t like about A.I. is that it leaves out the opportunity for what I believe would be a second score.”
A solution could be letting the students’ E.L.A. teachers grade the essays, though it could take weeks and possibly months to grade them, it is still better than using A.I. to grade.
Even though using A.I. to grade can be faster and possibly better at catching errors in the writing, it is still unfair and unjust to give consequences to students but see nothing wrong with using it for such a big and important assessment.
What you should do is support non-A.I. grading for any type of graded assignment, not only the D.W.A, and possibly teachers will hear, and possibly they can help us to be able to have humans grade the essays instead of the A.I. grading for them.