Quill.org, a nonprofit organization known for its AI-supported writing tools utilized by millions of students, has announced a partnership with Leanlab Education and Learning Commons to launch a $2.8 million initiative aimed at evaluating whether AI-generated literacy content meets established classroom standards. This initiative responds to concerns expressed by Quill’s CEO regarding the inconsistent quality of AI tools currently available to schools.
Quill.org provides free literacy and writing tools designed to assist educators in delivering extensive practice and feedback to students. Leanlab Education collaborates with schools to test educational technology in real-world settings, while Learning Commons, backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, focuses on creating open infrastructure that integrates learning science with AI development.
Peter Gault, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Quill.org, highlighted the motivation behind the partnership in a LinkedIn post, referencing ongoing disparities between the capabilities of AI tools and their actual performance. “Quill.org is partnering with Leanlab Education and CZI’s Learning Commons as part of a $2.8 million initiative to improve AI-powered learning tools,” he stated. Gault emphasized that although AI has the potential to lessen teachers’ workloads and enhance feedback frequency, the quality of these tools varies significantly, often lacking the rigor necessary for effective classroom use. “AI-powered tools can support teachers in providing more frequent and detailed feedback, but only if those tools are rigorously evaluated against high-quality standards,” he noted.
The funding will support three projects focused on developing shared evaluation tools for AI literacy products. According to Learning Commons, the initiative will concentrate on creating public datasets, assessment protocols, and evaluators to measure the effectiveness of AI-generated feedback and reading materials against established educational rubrics. Sandra Liu Huang, President of Learning Commons, stressed the importance of reliable classroom tools, stating, “Teachers deserve trustworthy classroom tools that provide high-quality, rigorous content. Tools should deliver content at the right grade level, tailored to each student’s needs, and based on solid learning science to help students grow.”
The initiative aims to tackle long-standing challenges in classrooms, including the time-consuming nature of providing detailed writing feedback and the difficulties in aligning reading materials with students’ developmental levels. The involved organizations contend that many AI tools produce generic or repetitive outputs that fail to meet instructional needs.
As part of this initiative, Quill and Leanlab Education will develop a research protocol along with a large, open dataset of anonymized student writing, which will be annotated by researchers to reflect effective feedback practices. This dataset is intended to help developers assess whether AI tools align with evidence-based writing instruction. Katie Boody Adorno, Founder and CEO of Leanlab Education, stated, “Our proximity to schools, students, and educators, paired with a rigorous R&D approach, allows us to ensure that tools of the future are being designed in partnership with school communities.”
A third component of the funding will enhance text complexity evaluators developed in collaboration with Student Achievement Partners. This will allow AI tools to determine if generated reading passages meet both qualitative and quantitative standards for students in grades three through twelve. Joy Delizo-Osborne, President and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, remarked, “This work turns the full qualitative text complexity rubric into a transparent, machine-scorable yardstick, so AI tools can be evaluated against research-backed expectations and teachers can trust that the passages and recommendations they receive will actually strengthen comprehension.”
All datasets, protocols, and evaluation tools created through this initiative will be made publicly available, aiming to foster transparency and promote higher educational standards in the rapidly evolving landscape of AI in education.
For more information, visit the official websites of Quill.org, Leanlab Education, and Learning Commons.
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