ABSTRACT
The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) has been referred to in the Introduction to this volume, as well as in several chapters in this volume. This influential initiative is tied to a number of related initiatives in the area of national-level efforts at shifting education standards. The new standards will change the United States’ educational landscape in significant ways for the next decade, and will thus affect the demand for the sorts of tools and technologies created from natural language processing (NLP) technologies. While the focus of this volume is on automated essay evaluation, much of the NLP research and development that has come to fruition for use in that context might be used for additional innovation in education. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of this new policy landscape, its implications for educational practice, and for the need for NLP-supported tools. Readers should refer to the book Introduction and to Chapter 4 (The E-rater® Automated Essay Scoring System) for discussions of NLP and related technologies.
