Incident 78: Meet the Secret Algorithm That's Keeping Students Out of College

Description: In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the International Baccalaureate final exams were replaced by a calculated score, prompting complaints of unfairness from teachers and students.

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Alleged: International Baccalaurette developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed International Baccalaureate students.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
78
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2020-07-06
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the foundation that grants the International Baccalaureate high school diploma decided to replace students' 2020 year-end exam scores with a calculated grade. The International Baccalaureate foundation used students’ prior grades and school to develop a statistical model to generate estimated test scores for each student. In several cases these grades were lower than students and teachers were expecting, which may impact their college admission or scholarship.

Short Description

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the International Baccalaureate final exams were replaced by a calculated score, prompting complaints of unfairness from teachers and students.

Severity

Minor

Harm Distribution Basis

Other:School attended

Harm Type

Harm to social or political systems

AI System Description

In 2020, International Baccalaureate developed a statistical model to calculate students' projected final exam grades.

System Developer

International Baccalaurette

Sector of Deployment

Education

Relevant AI functions

Cognition

AI Techniques

machine learning

AI Applications

statistical projection

Location

Global

Named Entities

International Baccalaureate

Technology Purveyor

International Baccalaureate

Beginning Date

2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Ending Date

2020-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Near Miss

Harm caused

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Data Inputs

Prior test and exam grades, school attended

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Incident OccurrenceMeet the Secret Algorithm That's Keeping Students Out of College
wired.com · 2020

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD ANAHITA NAGPAL fears her plans to start training this fall to be a doctor have been derailed by a statistical model.

Nagpal, who lives in Göttingen, Germany, had been offered a premed place and scholarship at NYU. Her acce…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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