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After six years of low scores for students learning English, Texas educators say it’s the test’s fault
(www.texastribune.org)
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I suspect that the human graders were the biased ones, and that this automated test is more accurate. Schools frequently inflate test results when given the opportunity (especially when low results reflect poorly on the school).
How do students known to be fluent in English do on it? Do they pass reliably?
Edit: Here's a discussion of a similar phenomenon in the context of high-school graduation rates. Graduation rates regularly go up by a very large amount when standardized tests stop being required, but that's not because otherwise-qualified students were doing poorly on standardized tests.
It's possible for both things to be true. Human reviewers might be biased towards awarding higher scores and the computer could be dog shit at scoring. I have no idea how this can meaningfully be grading fluency. Fluency in a spoken language consists of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
I have seen plenty of people who were very fluent who speak with an extremely noticeable accent who were none the less comprehensible. Software is extremely likely to perform poorly at recognizing speak by non-native speakers and fail individuals who are otherwise comprehensible. Because it wont even recognize the words its nearly entirely testing pronunciation and then denying such students access to electives that would allow them to further their education.
It's quite possible that you're right. I haven't been able to find any research that attempts to quantify how accurate the software is, and without that I can only speculate.