There was a recent NYT Op-Ed by a guy who is authoring a book on the standardized testing industry and his exploits as a “test grader.” For those not familiar with this aspect of the testing industry (or who don’t have school-aged kids), the standardized tests administered by schools often include “open ended” questions where students need to provide a written response.

In order to scoring, armies of temporary workers are hired to do the work. The author recounts some of the goings-on as well as his less-than-conscientious behavior in this work. His conclusion is that “scoring should be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education—rather than people like me.”

This brings a couple of thoughts to mind. The first is that one wonders if a work attitude assessment should be part of the hiring criteria for the essay graders. In this, as in all jobs, we want people who will carry out their work in a responsible and conscientiousness manner. Additionally, it also highlights why there is significant interest in the use of automated essay scoring systems where computers grade the written responses. There are now several years of research on these systems, and they tend to work well. The obvious benefits are that compared to human raters, they are not susceptible to either fatigue or poor work ethic. And unlike humans, they are 100% reliable because they will grade the same essay the same way every time.

Reid Klion