Should Teachers Use AI to Grade? Where It Helps, Where It Doesn't, and What to Tell Students

A secondary teacher with five sections can have 150 students, an essay or quiz from each of them, and one weekend to get through it. So it's fair to ask whether some of that stack can go to AI.

My answer: for practice work, it often can. For grades that count, AI can suggest a score or draft feedback, and you decide the grade.

Plenty of teachers are already trying it. About a quarter of public school teachers used AI to grade or give feedback in the 2024-25 school year, according to a Gallup and Walton Family Foundation survey of 2,232 teachers (fielded March 18 to April 11, 2025). Among teachers using AI for each task Gallup asked about, grading and feedback was where the fewest said it improved the quality of their work: 57%, against 74% for paperwork and email. Rules haven't caught up either. In Gallup's follow-up survey of 2,069 teachers in February and March 2026, 58% said they had no guidance at all on using AI for grading and feedback.

This post covers what the research says about accuracy, where the line sits, how it changes by subject, and what to tell students.

Should teachers use AI to grade?

For low-stakes practice, it makes sense for many teachers, and how much depends on how many students you have. For any grade that counts, use AI for a first pass or for feedback, then read the work and decide the grade yourself.

Teachers who already use AI lean the same way. In a fall 2024 EdWeek Research Center survey reported by Education Week, 13% of teachers who use AI said they used it to grade low-stakes assignments, and 3% used it on high-stakes ones.

How accurate is AI at grading essays?

It's inconsistent, and you can't predict which way it will miss.

ETS researchers Matt Johnson and Mo Zhang had GPT-4o score 13,121 argumentative essays written by students in grades 8 to 12, using the same 6-point scoring guide as the expert raters (preprint, September 2024). The Hechinger Report covered the results. GPT-4o's average was 2.8 and the humans' was 3.7. The humans gave 732 essays a perfect 6, and GPT-4o gave three. The gap was about 0.9 points for white, Black and Hispanic students and about 1.1 points for Asian American students, and the researchers couldn't explain why. The AI scored the essays without seeing any graded examples first, and Hechinger noted that a few samples might change the results.

Other studies miss in the other direction. A study published this year in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education had two versions of ChatGPT mark 50 undergraduate bioscience essays, and in all but one setup the AI's average was higher than the human markers', Inside Higher Ed reported on August 27, 2026. Weak essays got inflated marks, strong ones got lower marks, and one essay's AI mark was 40 points off on a 100-point scale. An earlier study from UC Irvine and Arizona State, which Hechinger also described, found AI grades were too high as often as too low.

AI feedback can still be useful. Treat a chatbot's score as a guess you check, especially on the strongest and weakest work in the pile. For more on why models treat some groups differently, see our glossary entry on AI bias.

Where AI helps with grading, and where it doesn't

Jen Roberts, who teaches 9th and 12th grade English at Point Loma High School in San Diego, described one version of this to Education Week. She scores short practice paragraphs herself first, then asks an AI tool to score them against the same criteria and uses its comments as a starting point for her feedback. "As an English teacher with 180 students … it's not the grading that takes time. It's the feedback," she said.

Chad Hemmelgarn, a high school English teacher in Ohio's Bexley schools, told the same reporter where his line is: having AI grade student work and posting the result straight to the gradebook is something he never does, because "that would be careless." He uses it on early drafts instead.

Is it OK to let AI grade practice quizzes and exit tickets?

It depends on your class load. If you have 30 students, reading every exit ticket might take ten minutes. If you have 150, grading can eat the time you'd otherwise spend with students, pulling a small group or talking to the kid who's been quiet all week. In that case, handing practice quizzes and exit tickets to AI makes sense.

A few habits keep it honest:

• Spot-check a handful each time, including at least one high score and one low one.
• Use the results to decide who needs help next, not as grades that add up to much.
• Tell students that practice work is scored by AI and that they can ask you to look again.

The time you get back is the point. In the 2025 Gallup survey, teachers said they put time saved by AI into things like more detailed student feedback and individualized lessons. Zach Richards, an ethics teacher at The Episcopal Academy, described an AI exit ticket to us in 2023: "After the [exit ticket] activity, I could see who scored well and who didn't. I can also see, via the transcript, where they may have gone wrong. In the past, I would have just seen an incorrect multiple-choice answer." (source)

Does AI grade the same way in every subject?

No. The research above is all about essays. The more a question has one right answer, the closer AI scoring gets to checking against a key. The more it rests on judgment, the more the essay findings apply.

If students hand in photos of handwritten work, try a few you've already graded before trusting the tool with the rest. For tools aimed at one kind of work, see our essay grader, worksheet grader and writing feedback pages.

What happened when AI misgraded an essay in Amity, Connecticut?

A senior in Connecticut's Amity Regional School District found that an AI grading tool had taken points off his AP Psychology essay that it shouldn't have, and he raised it with the school board. NBC New York reported on August 31, 2026 that his teacher adjusted the grade after learning about the error, and that the district changed its policy.

Amity now requires telling students whenever AI is used to help evaluate their work. Superintendent Jennifer Byars told NBC the grading policy "expressly states that AI may support grading and assessment practices but may not serve as the sole basis for evaluating student work or determining grades," and that "final responsibility remains with the educator."

That's a workable rule for any classroom, whether or not your district has written one yet.

What should you tell students about AI grading?

Tell them before they find out on their own. A line in your syllabus or on the assignment covers it:

In this class, I sometimes use AI to help score practice work and draft feedback. I read and decide every grade that goes in the gradebook. If you think a grade is wrong, tell me and I'll look at it again.

The last sentence matters most. In Amity, a grading error ended up in front of the school board. A standing offer to re-check means most mistakes get caught in a conversation with you.

Families ask about this too. Our post on what parents worry about with AI in school has a section on how schools can answer "Is the teacher still doing the teaching?"

What shouldn't you paste into an AI tool?

Student names, ID numbers, IEP and 504 details, and anything about a student's health or family. If you're using a general chatbot that your school hasn't approved, strip the work down to the writing itself, or better, use a tool your school has vetted. Your district's technology or data privacy office can tell you which ones those are.

Where Flint fits

I work at Flint, so weigh this section with that in mind. Flint is an AI learning platform where teachers create activities and students work through them with Sparky, Flint's AI tutor.

Grading in Flint is built around a rubric you control. You write the rubric, and when a student submits, Sparky assigns a grade for each category. You can change any category grade, override the overall grade, and edit the grading guidelines Sparky uses (help center: using rubrics in Flint). If you don't want AI grades on an activity at all, you can turn auto-grading off, and students still get strengths, areas to improve and follow-up ideas.

At Merion Mercy Academy, a grades 9-12 school in Pennsylvania, one of the first English teachers to try it put her rubric in and had students get feedback against it. Philip Vinogradov, the school's Director of Innovation, Teaching, and Learning, told us she said "the AI did in 20 seconds what would have taken her two weeks" (case study).

FAQ

Can teachers use AI to grade papers?

Yes, unless your school or district says otherwise. Most teachers have no guidance either way: 58% told Gallup in 2026 they had none on using AI for grading and feedback. Check your district's policy, use a school-approved tool, and keep the final decision on any grade that counts.

Is it ethical for teachers to use AI to grade?

It can be, if the teacher reviews and owns every grade that counts, tells students when AI is involved, and keeps student names and private details out of tools the school hasn't approved. Letting AI post grades nobody checked is where it stops being fair to students.

How accurate is AI at grading essays?

Not consistent enough to trust alone. In an ETS study of 13,121 essays from grades 8-12, GPT-4o averaged 2.8 on a 6-point scale where expert raters averaged 3.7. A 2026 study of university essays found the opposite: ChatGPT usually scored higher than human markers. Either way, individual scores can be far off.

Do teachers have to tell students when AI helps grade?

Some districts require it. After an AI tool misgraded a student's AP Psychology essay, Amity Regional School District in Connecticut changed its policy to require telling students whenever AI helps evaluate their work. Even where it isn't required, a one-line note in your syllabus builds trust.

Can AI grade math homework?

For final answers that match a key, it's close to checking against an answer key, and that is low risk. Partial credit on worked solutions is a judgment call, so read those yourself or spot-check what the AI gave. For more on using AI in your own work, see our free AI literacy course for teachers.