CURMUDGUCATION: How Bad Is This Gates-Funded Essay Cyber-Scorer? This Bad.

CURMUDGUCATION: How Bad Is This Gates-Funded Essay Cyber-Scorer? This Bad.

How Bad Is This Gates-Funded Essay Cyber-Scorer? This Bad.

Software that can grade an essay is the great white whale of automating education. If software could actually score an essay effectively, data-mining personalized [sic] algorithm-delivered edu-product could work with more than just multiple choice and true or false questions. I've written a plenty about why this great white whale is not going to be landed any time soon. But let me give you a specific example of how bad one product really is, even though it's getting funding from the Gates Foundation.

Ecree was founded in 2014 and promises to use "artificial intelligence to replicate teacher-quality feedback on written assignments." It was founded by Jamey Holt and Robin Donaldson. Holt used to do a little college teaching, then became COO of Phronesis Health, Inc, a healthcare data mulching outfit. Donaldson is the computer guy.

The Gates Foundation is a big fan of this kind of software-driven edu-product, and have given  something like $3 million to companies working on the problem, including ETS, Vantage Learning, Measurement Incorporated, and the University of Michigan. Plus our new friends at Ecree. All five grants are "to validate the efficacy of Automated Essay Scoring software in improving the student outcomes in argumentative writing for students who are Black, Latino, and/or experiencing poverty."

First, I'm looking askance at the word "validate," which is a lot like "prove that this works" when it CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: How Bad Is This Gates-Funded Essay Cyber-Scorer? This Bad.