Texas Saves $20 Million Using AI To Grade The State's Written STAAR Exam

Teacher educating studentsPhoto byPexels photo by RDNE Stock project

Texas saves money using artificial intelligence, or AI to grade the State’s written STAAR Test. This will save time and also require fewer graders.

The STAAR test is designed to test a student’s knowledge of the State’s core curriculum. The test is also used to determine if the student moves on to the next grade level in addition to their grades in school.

Texas will save about $15 to $20 million by using AI. Fewer third-party contractors were needed according to Yahoo.

A year ago, the State required about 6,000 people to grade the STAAR test. This year, they will only need about 2,000 people to grade the test.

Jose Rios, director of student assessment at the Texas Education Agency said according to Yahoo News:

“We wanted to keep as many constructed open-ended responses as we can, but they take an incredible amount of time to score.”

Texas Education Agency revealed that humans and the AI system nearly matched when grading the student’s work according to Gizmodo.

A presentation by TEA downplayed the comparison of the AI tool with ChatGPT:

“This kind of technology is different from AI in that AI is a computer using progressive learning algorithms to adapt, allowing the data to do the programming and essentially teaching itself.”

“Instead, the automated scoring engine is a closed database with student response data accessible only by TEA and, with strict contractual privacy control, its assessment contractors, Cambium and Pearson.”

Last year, there was a lot of discussion about students using AI on their assignments according to Edweek. Now there is possibly a new problem.

With AI slowly making its way into the classroom, no one knows how long this could take away jobs in the education field.

You can hear more about Texas using AI in the STAAR test below:

Do you think AI could hurt workers in the education field?