Little Bobby Tables has a pretty good point here. Isn't it true that standardized testing has relied on computerized grading for at least 40 years? I recall taking the ITBS in Catholic School and, in those days, our digital overlords were so strict about the way we marked our sheets. We required special punch-card shaped forms. We absolutely required a #2 Pencil and this was drilled into our heads along with our parents who purchased #2 Pencils or we would be tarred and feathered. We were strictly forbidden from coloring outside the little ovals or boxes with our pencils. We were drilled on exactly how to erase and how to fix up mistakes in every case. We were instructed on whether guessing was encouraged or penalized.
It was not uncommon for a kindly, well-meaning Sister to slightly nudge a struggling student toward a correct answer, though it never happened to me personally. Yes that's right -- when you standardize testing, the teachers become the cheaters, because they have a vested interest in seeing students excel and driving up their institution's own rankings.
In fact my very recent student career was rather dismaying, because I encountered more than one teacher who was more than willing to cross a line and help a student into a better grade than what they could earn on their own. I didn't think it was fair, that I worked my ass off for grades and teachers would just basically join in the cheating. In fact, I tanked a grade in one class because I was incensed about the teacher's behavior. I blew up some important coursework and I directly, sternly told him not to fix up my grade. It was only a "B" but I was so pissed, at that point!
In the end, all our cards were sent off, literally to Iowa, I guess, and fed into giant A.I. machines and graded without human intervention. But our results were very human indeed. I have no reason to believe that our digital overlords failed to grade our S.A.T.s in the same manner, but the regime was slightly looser as we progressed through high school.
In a way, you can say that I lost my job to A.I. in 2024, because indeed I was tasked with grading student submissions, and by the time I was resigning about half of our workload was turned over to auto-testing multiple-choice quizzes and such that would be scored in the LMS itself.
While I personally rarely determined blatant A.I. usage to solve our homeworks, plagiarism was rampant and students were constantly copying from a very small pool of solved homeworks that were publicly posted. Some more savvy students paid a subscription for a cheating website that would provide even more content to them.
But indeed, if educators have relied so heavily on A.I. to produce and grade materials on our end, I suppose it was only a matter of time before turnabout is fair play.
There is no issue with computers grading multiple choice questions…
I have major reservations about the evaluation of student essays solely based on an overgrown pile of matrices that has no comprehension of creativity nor literary technique.
A digital FIR filter is not intelligence, even though it can adapt to changing conditions.
I went to a very small rural school. I was a huge nerd, so standardized tests were always a breeze to me. I don't think I ever scored under ~97th percentile. My dad taught agriculture there (will be important later).
My senior year of high school, I wanted to enroll at a community college as a concurrent student. My high school demanded that I stay until at least 1:45 every day; I wanted to take a class at 12:30, which would require me to leave high school before lunch at 11:45. They absolutely refused to budge on this.
I set up a meeting with the school principal and superintendent. I laid out my case for why I wanted to leave before lunch and tried to be persuasive. Once it was clear they weren't having it, I switched gears.
My senior class was 31 students. The mean scores on the state standardized test was used to determine funding status for the school and to identify schools to target for consolidation - and my school was on probation. If their scores fell more than a couple of points the state would revoke their accreditation and work toward merging them with a neighboring district.
On the other hand, I already had a college acceptance letter and a full scholarship. The test was completely irrelevant to me.
I looked my principal in the eye and told her that if she couldn't work with me, I understood, but "if you're not willing to work to help me meet my goals, why should I work to help you meet yours?" In short, I threatened to bomb the test if they couldn't find a way to let me leave campus for college classes at 11:45 every day.
To be clear, I wasn't saying I wouldn't try to do well; I was saying I was very confident that I could get a pure 0% on that test. It wouldn't impact my future in any way, but with 31 students in my class that 0 would mean a 1-2 percentile drop in the school's mean test scores for the year -- enough to go from "secure in funding for another year" to "50/50 chance the district would be dissolved".
I left every day that year at 11:45.
They didn't change the policy, but let me enroll in a math class that was far below my level. I got along well with the math teacher (who knew what was up) and she let me take the mid-term and final before class started so I never had to attend the class.
Well done. I wish I'd pushed back on more idiocy like that when I was in school. The "education system" has been screwed up for a long time, and keeps getting worse the more we spend on it. I'm not sure AI can make it worse; maybe it'll actually help by making more people aware of how bad it is.
It was a formative experience, that's for sure. I learned that there is a time and place to "play hardball". I learned that you don't have to be an asshole about it either, and that while it definitely harms your reputation it can also build respect and doesn't have to destroy your relationship with the person.
More importantly, it taught me to trust my kids, show them my perspective, and put my own interests on the line for them.
My dad was a teacher at that school; the people I threatened were his bosses. I talked to him before I did it - in fact, I had only made an offhand comment about being able to bomb that test in revenge. He's the one that pointed out that was leverage, and suggest that I consider explicitly using it.
I was terrified that he could have lost his job for that stunt. Much later, he told me that they never even brought it up to him. He retired from that school after outlasting both the principal and superintendent, so obviously it didn't hurt him that much.
As a result I make it a point to trust my kids when the stakes are bigger than they're comfortable with, and to highlight the potential effects when I think they may not be obvious to them.
Well done! I wish I had that level of understanding of the world at that age.
It’s kinda hilarious that a lesser student would actually be less capable of such a threat as missing every question is slightly challenging (might pick the right answer by luck/error).
