PSA: Our school's new grading algorithm flagged my son's essay as 'low effort' because of his dyslexia

My son, who's 12 and dyslexic, worked for three hours on an essay about Boston. The new automated system his school uses gave him a 40% for 'repetitive language and short sentences.' I printed the essay and showed his teacher the creative ideas he had about the Freedom Trail. She agreed the algorithm missed the point and manually overrode the score. Has anyone else seen these systems punish kids for learning differences instead of their actual work?

4 comments

4 Comments

ivan_murphy802mo ago

Honestly, does this just mean kids who write differently will always need a human to fight the system for them?

christopherw342mo ago

Had the same thing happen with my nephew. Told him to print his drafts and show his editing notes to the teacher. Proved the work was his.

reese_lee91mo ago

Wait, so the algorithm flagged a common phrase from a book report template? That's wild, that could catch so many kids who just follow the standard format for school assignments. Makes you wonder how many false flags those things actually throw out that never get caught.

jakewhite2mo ago

A friend's daughter got flagged for "plagiarism" by one of those systems because she used a common phrase from a book report template. The kid had actually cited her sources perfectly, but the algorithm just saw a string of words it recognized from somewhere else. The teacher had to step in and explain the whole thing was original work. It's scary how much trust we put in these automated tools.