ESL students getting flagged more often, anyone tracking the pattern at their school
ive started keeping informal records this year of which students get flagged by detection tools after a colleague mentioned it felt like a pattern. out of the eleven flags in our department last month, eight were esl students, several of whom have been in canada for less than three years. this tracks with research showing detection tools misread formal or template based writing common in esl instruction as ai generated. i dont think anyones doing this maliciously, i think the tools themselves are just bad at handling non native writing patterns. wondering if other schools are tracking this kind of data or if anyone has pushed back successfully against a flag specifically on esl grounds with admin.
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has anyone tried running native english speaking students formal or textbook style writing through the same tools to see if the flag rate is actually about esl status or just about formulaic writing in general regardless of background?
@Nicole Bergeron good question, i did test a few native speaking students with very formal writing styles and they got flagged too, just at a lower rate than the esl group. so its probably a mix of both, formulaic writing broadly and esl patterns specifically compounding each other.
this is exactly the kind of pattern admin needs presented with data like this, not just anecdotes. bring your numbers to your next staff meeting formally, ideally with a specific ask attached like the human review step sean's board adopted. we made a similar change after a parent almost took us to a human rights complaint over a flag on their child's esl writing, and having the policy in place now protects both students and staff.
my own experience with false flags as a native english speaker who writes formally backs up what holly found, its a broader pattern than just esl but it definitely compounds for esl students specifically.
our library department started collecting similar data last year after noticing the same skew. we ended up presenting it to our board's equity committee and it actually influenced a policy update requiring a human review step before any esl student gets a formal integrity meeting based on a detection flag alone.