State Department of Education looking into an “Intelligent Essay Assessor”
By Sha’de Ray
Published: Jun. 5, 2025 at 7:16 PM EDT
Follow the link below to see the full report on automated TCAP scoring featuring JC Bowman on WVLT 8 News
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) is looking into an automated scoring system to help get test scores back faster.
The algorithm would grade Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) written tests, not just multiple choice.
It’s not really a new concept, though; the state has been looking into this algorithm for years now.
Assistant Commissioner of Assessment, Accountability and Research Dr. David Laird said it can only score essays in the Tennessee.
The program is a form of limited artificial intelligence, a machine learning system called Intelligent Essay Assessor.
Dr. Laird said the system can help get test results back faster. Parents and teachers are familiar with getting late TCAP test scores.
“Having to wait on those scores is kind of nerve wracking especially for students and parents,” Grand Oaks Elementary school Principal Jessica Conaster said. “Because they want to be able to make their summer plans and they need to know if their child is expected to be at summer school.”
Dr. Laird is hoping to fix that with this system. He said the technology has been around since 1998.
“It’s been used by states to produce high stakes standardized test scores since 2010 and is presently used in Texas, Utah, Ohio state and Massachusetts.”
Dr. Laird said the system will learn how to score by reading essays that expert human raters graded.
He said the department has been studying this system since 2002.
This past school year, administrators conducted a pilot test with the system, letting the algorithm grade some essays already scored by teachers.
“We’re having the algorithm do those second reads and so we want to be very clear with folks that still means every child in Tennessee this year received a human first read,” Dr. Laird said. “And any time there may have been a discrepancy between what the algorithm identified for the second read, that was always referred to a human expert rater to break the tie.”
Professional Educators of Tennessee CEO JC Bowman said he likes the idea of faster test scores, but he wants to make sure the system is being trained properly to give accurate grades to students.
“They did tell me they had no intent to do away completely with human involvement in this process so that’s good, because you’ve got to make sure that it is correct,” he said.
Conaster said the system could relieve teachers.
She said teachers need to be given information ahead of time to prepare themselves and students.
“So if they could give us some anchor papers or some examples so we that can see what this algorithm system thinks is the perfect score,” she said.
Right now, there’s no set timeline of when the automated system will be rolled out into schools.
Dr. Laird said the department is still testing algorithm.
There’s two options for next steps:
The department can increase the number of second reads the system does after the human grades the essays.
The second option is to have the system all the first reads, grading those essays then humans will grade a portion of those tests after that.
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