Texas will use computers to grade written answers on this year’s STAAR tests
The state will save more than $15 million by using technology similar to ChatGPT to give initial scores, reducing the number of human graders needed. The decision caught some educators by surprise.
APRIL 9, 20245 AM CENTRAL
Students 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.
The Texas Education Agency is rolling out an “automated scoring engine” for open-ended questions on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness for reading, writing, science and social studies. The technology, which uses natural language processing, a building block of artificial intelligence chatbots such as GPT-4, will save the state agency about $15 million to 20 million per year that it would otherwise have spent on hiring human scorers through a third-party contractor.
