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West Clermont students say state AI scoring favors formula over personality; students seek testing changes
Summary
A West Clermont Middle School student team presented a project showing that the Ohio scoring AI penalizes personal voice and rewards formulaic responses; they have presented at state and national conferences and met an Ohio lawmaker who agreed to raise the issue with colleagues.
Students from West Clermont Middle School presented a student‑led investigation May 5 into how the Ohio State Test (OST) automated scoring favors formulaic writing over personal voice and creativity.
A video shown at the board meeting summarized the team's work: students fed essays into the OST scoring model, modified wording and features, and concluded the scoring system tended to penalize personality and first‑person usage. "Core issue is basically that the AI is very deprived of personality... The AI deducts points for using the pronouns like I, me, my, or you," a student presenter said in the video.
Student presenters described steps they took to replicate aspects of the OST scoring approach, including building a prototype website and learning some code. They said they presented findings at the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts conference and the National Council of Teachers of English Assembly for Research and recently discussed results with Ohio Representative Adam Bird. "They knocked it out of the park. I was so happy to hear, about how hard they've been working," Representative Adam Bird said, according to the meeting record, and he told the students he planned to raise the issue with colleagues.
Students and their teacher said the practical consequence is significant: training students to write to please an automated scorer could produce college and job applications that lack personality. Students urged that the state consider changing scoring models or develop new AI that better values creativity and voice. "Ideally, in a perfect world, we would basically like a new AI to be developed or at least started on... to save the art of writing," a student said in the presentation.
The classroom teacher said she has already adapted instruction to focus on genre, audience and purpose to help students develop authentic writing skills rather than formulaic responses. The board received the presentation; there was no formal board action connected to the project.
