NoRedInk’s AI-Powered Grading Helps District Supercharge Feedback & Empower Teachers
“We immediately saw great value in the Grading Assistant. We knew that it would be a helpful tool for teachers and encourage them to assign more writing”
Jennifer Young, ELA Curriculum Specialist
How Paradise Valley Teachers Gave Students More Feedback While Reducing Grading Time by 40%
PVSchools is located in Northeast Phoenix and North Scottsdale. The district has been using NoRedInk’s comprehensive writing platform in all of its middle and high schools since December 2022.
Currently, every English language arts (ELA) teacher in grades 7–12 utilizes NoRedInk to engage students in adaptive practice and writing activities such as Quick Writes and Guided Drafts.
“We’d like students to do more writing, but the time it takes to grade writing has always been a struggle for ELA teachers,” said PVSchools’ ELA Curriculum Specialist Jennifer Young. “It can take a week or two to prepare written feedback and get it back to students. But if teachers only give a completion grade, they’re not providing the feedback students need.”
Amina Baruni, an English teacher and the English Department instructional division leader at Pinnacle High School in PVSchools, has first-hand experience with this challenge. “No matter how skilled a teacher you are, when you have 150 to 200 students every year, it’s hard to provide the amount of feedback they need to improve,” she said. “I want to provide feedback that’s specific and actionable, but I only have a limited amount of time in the day, and it’s a challenge to get it to them in a timely way.”
Assigning more writing with the Grading Assistant
In January 2024, PVSchools implemented NoRedInk’s Grading Assistant. “We immediately saw great value in the Grading Assistant. We knew that it would be a helpful tool for teachers and encourage them to assign more writing,” said Young. “From January to April, our students have already submitted more than 22,000 writing assignments—that’s a 71% increase from the same period last school year!”
Providing quick, actionable feedback
PVSchools teachers are using the Grading Assistant to provide scores and feedback to students on both pre-made and teacher-created argumentative paragraph prompts. “The Grading Assistant is intuitive and easy to use, and teachers love that they can create their own prompts for the Grading Assistant to evaluate,” said Young.
Each pre-made prompt comes with a set of Grading Assistant-supported rubric items that focus on the core elements of an argumentative paragraph. “We encourage teachers to go through the rubric with students so they know what the expectations are,” said Young.
After PVSchools students submit their writing, the Grading Assistant evaluates each submission against the rubric items and suggests scores and supportive, actionable feedback. Once the evaluation is complete, the student’s teacher can review it, edit rubric item-specific comments as they see fit, and provide additional comments. Students don’t see the written feedback from the Grading Assistant until their teacher has approved it.
“Teachers like having that control,” said Young. “The feedback that the Grading Assistant provides also helps reaffirm teachers’ thoughts about students’ writing and gives them confidence they’re on the right track. It’s even improving some teachers’ ability to give feedback because they can see good feedback modeled by the Grading Assistant.”
“I like that I can quickly glance at students’ writing and see if I agree with the feedback the Grading Assistant provides,” said Baruni. “Not having to type all that feedback is a big time-saver.”
Lightening teachers’ workloads and reducing grading time by 40%
In only four months, PVSchools teachers have reduced their Quick Write grading time by 40%.
“Being able to provide students with quick feedback has been a total game-changer,” said Young. “Teachers are assigning more writing and are able to give students more feedback because they aren’t having to take on the heavy load of grading every single assignment. We also know that research says that feedback is more valuable when it comes back to students right away. The Grading Assistant enables teachers to do that.”
Increasing the frequency of feedback on student writing
With the Grading Assistant, PVSchools students are now 2.3 times more likely to receive written feedback than with manual methods.
“Any feedback is going to help make the path to improvement clearer. So if students are now getting significantly more feedback, that’s going to help them improve more quickly,” said Young.
“It has definitely increased the frequency of feedback to my students,” said Baruni. “Providing just a sentence of feedback on a single paragraph of student writing takes so long. The fact that students now get written feedback on each of the rubric items means they’re getting much more guidance than they used to.”
According to Young, the feedback is now more consistent from classroom to classroom as well. “Grading writing can be so subjective,” she said. “With the Grading Assistant, students are all being assessed in the same way on the same traits of writing. It’s making grading less subjective.”
“It helps me keep myself in check and maintain consistency in my own grading,” said Baruni.
Delivering kid-friendly feedback
Both Young and Baruni point out that the Grading Assistant provides easy-to-understand feedback that is directly related to the content and skills being assessed. Based on their past experiences, other AI-powered grading tools aren’t always able to deliver this high quality of feedback.
“We had been using a platform that uses AI to grade writing for the past several years, but the kids didn’t really understand the feedback,” said Young.
“The feedback from our other platform wasn’t specific or actionable. Students said it often felt like a backhanded compliment. It would also highlight errors that weren’t relevant to what was being evaluated, which made it confusing and frustrating for them,” said Baruni. “NoRedInk’s Grading Assistant is much more explicit in terms of what students need to do to improve.”
Young agrees. “The feedback from the Grading Assistant is very kid-friendly. Students understand what they need to do. Teachers also feel that the grading is more accurate with the Grading Assistant.”
Building stronger, better writers
In May 2024, Young held a meeting with ELA department leaders from each school and asked them to share celebrations. “Many had to do with students growing in their writing,” she said. “NoRedInk’s writing activities and Grading Assistant have definitely played a part in the successes they’re seeing because students are getting more practice and more feedback.”
“My students are becoming more comfortable with writing and becoming better writers,” said Baruni. “This year, I’ve seen very tangible improvements. Their claims are clearer. Their ability to explain their reasoning and how their evidence supports their claim has improved. The structure and organization of their writing has improved, too.”
PVSchools educators plan to continue expanding their use of NoRedInk and look forward to the rollout of additional Grading Assistant-compatible genres of writing during the 2024–2025 school year.
“NoRedInk’s writing platform is helping our students become stronger writers. The Grading Assistant is a great tool, and I’m excited for it to expand in the future,” said Young. “I can’t see any reason why someone would not want to give the Grading Assistant a try. I know some people are a little hesitant about AI, but if we use AI to our advantage to help teaching and learning, it can be beneficial. There really aren’t any disadvantages. Just try it and see.”