For the first time in at least five years, New Hampshire elementary and middle school students who take the state’s writing tests will have their essays scored by humans, rather than computers.
Cambium, the company that administers the statewide assessment, typically uses automated scoring — basically, artificial intelligence — to grade most students’ essays. A portion of the essays, usually between 15 and 25%, are routed to human scoring due to unusual responses or other reasons.
This hybrid approach, using a mix of automated and manual scoring, is becoming more common for standardized tests nationwide; the idea is that it’s cheaper, faster and as accurate as relying entirely on human scorers.
But this year, the Department of Education says it’s returning old-fashioned human grading. The reason? There’s a batch of new writing prompts, which were developed in consultation with New Hampshire teachers, and Cambium’s AI isn’t yet trained to score these.
Cambium directed questions about its scoring process to the New Hampshire Department of Education. State officials who are in charge of assessments say they’ve relied on computer-assisted essay scoring for at least the last five years. Tests are expected to be scored by hand just this year, and this year’s manual scoring process will be used to train the new automated scoring system for future years.
During the writing assessments, each student receives a randomly selected essay prompt. The new prompts are meant to include more variety, including a focus on testing different kinds of writing — for example, asking students to write a narrative piece instead of a persuasive one. The state encourages schools to require students to complete the essays in a single sitting, though it’s not mandatory.
Schools must administer the writing tests for grades three through eight by March 15.
