In case you haven't heard, #Texas schools are set to start using natural language processing tools—computers—to automatically score some standardised tests (STAAR).

But no worries, it also assigns itself a confidence score that might send it to humans to rescore if it's too low (how opaque will that scoring be?).

But surely the STAAR tests can't be that important? "The commissioner can appoint a conservator to oversee campuses and school districts. State law also allows the commissioner to suspend and replace elected school boards with an appointed board of managers. If a campus receives failing grades for five years in a row, the commissioner is required to appoint a board of managers or close that school."

Surely you can appeal?

"For $50, students and their parents can request a rescore if they think the computer or the human got it wrong. The fee is waived if the new score is higher than the initial score. "

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/09/staar-artificial-intelligence-computer-grading-texas/

cc: @pluralistic this shitshow might interest you

How Texas will use AI to grade 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.

^{Keaton Peters (The Texas Tribune)}