ChatGPT has become a go-to tool for people to write just about anything these days, be it an award speech, a business email, or even a book report. And with AI on the rise, it’s really making us rethink how we teach and evaluate writing in schools.
Due to this, the folks who run the National Assessment of Educational Progress had a meeting recently and decided to push back their next writing test by a couple of years.
According to them, they want to take a bit more time to figure out how this whole AI thing might change the way we teach writing.
There’s news regarding the NAEP which is the big test that checks how well students in the U.S. are doing in school. They’re thinking of changing when they do the writing test. Usually, they do it on election years, but now they want to do it on non-election years so politics don’t get in the way.
This means the next writing test, which was supposed to be in 2030, might get pushed to 2032 or 2033 instead.
The last time they did the writing test was back in 2017, and students used tablets to take it. They usually test kids in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades.
Also, the folks who run the NAEP, the National Assessment Governing Board, decided to change up the schedule a bit. They’re going to make the 12th-grade reading and math tests, and the 8th-grade U.S. civics, history, and science tests give state-level results starting in 2028.
They’re also working on a new plan for the science test, deciding what it should cover and what skills it should test. And they’re talking about how artificial intelligence might play a role in the NAEP in the future.
The NAEP is really important because it’s the main test that helps us understand how students across the U.S. are doing in school, and it lets us compare how different states are doing.
The Shift from AI Awareness to Acceptance
When AI first popped up in the education scene, not everyone was thrilled. Take New York City public schools, for example – they even banned AI tools for a while before changing their minds.
But now, experts agree that AI isn’t going anywhere, and it’s important for students to learn how to use it to be successful in the future.
The tricky part is figuring out the best way to use AI in teaching writing. It’s a fast-moving field, and people can’t quite agree on how valuable it is. For the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), which plans NAEP tests way ahead of time, this makes things complicated.
Martin West, a member of the board and part of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, mentioned in an interview that there’s clear feedback about AI affecting teaching and assessing writing.
However, there’s no consensus on what those changes should be. This is mainly because AI technology is evolving so quickly. So, they decided it was not the right time to overhaul their framework, which they wanted to last for a long time.
Another interesting thing is how AI might change how the public uses NAEP data. The National Center for Education Statistics, which handles NAEP and analyzes its results, is thinking of teaming up with an AI chatbot service. This way, people can ask specific questions about the data. For example, someone could ask the chatbot to show how absenteeism affects 4th-grade reading scores in the NAEP, and the chatbot would provide that information. But it’ll only use publicly released data, said Ebony Walton, a statistician at NCES, during a meeting.