by Greg Cunningham
New AI Essay Assessment Tool Unveiled and East Boston High School celebrated at MassCUE Conference
On May 31st and June 1st, JFYNetWorks joined educators from around the state at Polar Park, home of the Worcester Woo Sox, for a weekend of innovation, aspiration and inspiration at the Spring MassCUE Conference dubbed, “Leveling the Playing Field.” Demonstrations, presentations, and speakers discussed how technology can innovate education and improve the skills students need.
JFYNet’s new AI Essay Assessment tool was unveiled during the Innovation Fair after a successful pilot program at East Boston High School. The program can be used to upload a batch of student essays, and, within a few minutes, the essays can be downloaded with corrections, comments for improvement and a grade based on an uploaded rubric.
The tool provides feedback to students in a timely fashion and gives teachers more time to work with students on developing their essays and to enhance curriculum, which will help to increase student skills.
Essays can be on any topic, and the program can be instructed how to grade based on a rubric and example essays. It can also distinguish between a well-written essay, an essay that needs improvement and an essay that lacks development. Rich topic development, strong thesis statements and the use of evidence are just some elements the tool can address. Teachers can pass along substantial comments generated by the program to students, helping them to reach grade-level writing standards.
East Boston High School, in conjunction with JFY, also presented Empowering Every Student: Leveraging Inclusive Tools and Strategies for Diverse Learning Success, discussing the rise of MCAS scores by the diverse population of the school.
Using a variety of methods, including software provided by JFYNetWorks, East Boston was able to fully regain learning loss in 2022, matching pre-pandemic scores from 2019. While state education officials predicted it would take at least five years to return to the levels seen prior to the pandemic, East Boston was able to return to those levels after only two years.
East Boston was already on an upward swing before the pandemic, with scores increasing each year starting in 2015, going from a school in danger of a state takeover, to one of the jewels among the open enrollment high schools in the City of Boston.
JFY has supported the Math and ELA academic programs at East Boston High School since 2015 and developed a strong partnership with administrators and teachers. The partnership has become a model for other JFY partner schools, as schools with diverse school populations across the state work to emulate the results.
JFYNetWorks was proud to be both a vendor and presenter at the MassCUE Spring conference and looks forward to attending the Fall conference, held in October at Gillette Stadium.
