Professor Les Perelman, who taught writing at MIT, recently was honored by the New South Wales Teachers Federation for his successful effort to stop the “robo-grading” of tests in Australia. He demonstrated how easy it was to deceive the machines grading thousands of tests in only seconds.
Perelman is notable as the inventor of the Babel Generator, in which he and his students showed that the “robo-graders” used by ETS and other manufacturers of standardized tests could be easily fooled by gibberish. These automated grading machines would give high scores to papers that were nonsense if the sentences were long enough and contained pretentious words.
If you open the Babel Generator, insert any three words and it will immediately produce an essay that can fool the robot grading machine and get a high score even though it is totally nonsensical.
I wrote about Perelman in SLAYING GOLIATH.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For those who don’t know. Noel Wilson is from New South Wales and was in charge of the testing for that state before writing his never refuted nor rebutted damning critique of the standards and testing malpractice regime.
I am not commenting on today’s posts because I see nothing of interest. Blame me if you think that is appropriate, but it would be better for me and others to receive some good news. Tell me that you and your family are still well or that you have found a way to enjoy being alone.
What, what? Do you understand where you are here?
🙂 🙂
Personally, I think Diane has done an admirable job of balancing uplifting stories and ideas with informing us of the things going on in education and politics that we still need to be aware of. I for one am glad she’s not just sugarcoating this dire situation with only “good news”, as that would be false.
Pick what works for you, ignore the rest.
Writer Joney was the first commenter to praise Bill Gates after a post at this site a few days ago.
Possibly, she’s part of the Gates PR Team or a paid minion of an apparatus with links to education oligarchs.
With an eye toward the obvious, a journalist should look into the Gates
Foundation’s self-assigned role in world public health as it relates to pandemics like Covid 19.
A small travel agency in a small town in Ohio stopped planning Wuhan area trips for its clients in late Nov. /early Dec. after hearing reports about illnesses in the area.
If the Gates organization, with its resources, lacked awareness of the pandemic in the early stages, better skills in gathering relevant info. may be advisable. If the organization was uninterested, it is important to correct society’s misperception about billionaire “philanthropists”. The government’s public health goals and priorities in protecting citizens may differ from the goals for the tax sheltered “charity” of the wealthy. Edubusiness reminds us of the difference.
“I am not commenting on today’s posts” is a comment.
The House of Babble
The House of Babble
That’s Deform
Deformer Scrabble
That’s the norm
On a similar theme, a blast from the past
“Jabbertalky” (from “Jabberwocky”,
by Lewis Carroll)
The billionaires with the usual names
Did lie and dissemble in the press:
All flimsy were Reformer claims,
And the charter rats did nest.
‘Beware the Jabbertalk, my son!
The laws that bite, the Cores that catch!
Beware the Coleman bird, and shun
The felonious charters, natch!’
He took the opt-out sword in hand:
Long time the testing foe he sought —
So rested he by the Knowledge Tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in dovish thought he stood,
The Jabbertalk, with test and VAM,
Came rifling through the teaching wood,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and
through
The Opt-out blade went snicker-snack!
He left test dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
‘And hast thou slain the Jabbertalk?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
He chortled in his joy.
The billionaires with the usual names
Did lie and dissemble in the press:
All flimsy were Reformer claims,
And the charter rats did nest.
How nice! A plaintive, jargon-free explanation of the forces destroying teaching and learning in the United States and elsewhere. Thank you Les Perelman.
Jargon free?
From MIT?
Thought by me
We’d never see
Dang, SomeDAM! You’ve done it again!!!
We have suffered for forty years with a rigged economy. The gap between working people and top tier has widened. The only way to change the social contract is to somehow or other figure out a way to get the money out of politics
Thank you, Professor Perelman, for being a warrior against the EduCon.
Edusaycon?
Babel Generator with Key Words: Trump loves lies. This is a short excerpt from the longer generated text.
Trump card at exiles will always be a component of human life. An aborigine will, still yet, be trite but not livid. Lie which is deliberately irrelevant or whines changes a plethora of lie. Love of agronomists by a trope has not, and likely never will be obtrusive, discrepant, and orotund. Consequently, trump card should engender disrupting juggernauts.
Thanks Les Perelman for this amazing and amusing tool with many uses. It is also a perfect example of why edtech is not substitute for human judgment and time to think about issues and problems, especially those where the answers are not known, or if known, not known to the person who is engaged in thinking about the problem.
This is great news IDK what Joney is talking about. This highlights the impossibility of simulating human interaction, yay! In conclusion, what is this person talking about?
Here, here!
Thank you for sharing!
Thanks Les and thanks Diane for sharing. AI in assessment and grading of student essays is not going away and will require constant vigilance. Accuplacer is used in so many colleges and is just one example of bad automatic writing assessments. As Les says, critical thinking is needed now more than ever. We see it every day.