The paper introduces THPT‑Ladder, a benchmark based on Vietnam’s 2025 National High School Graduation Examination’s convex grading scheme, which rewards partial credit non‑additively. It shows that standard accuracy metrics inflate model scores because they treat partial knowledge proportionally, whereas the official rubric penalizes incomplete correct sets. Using the benchmark, the authors demonstrate that this discrepancy can shift a model’s percentile ranking by up to 13 points among over 480,000 candidates.
By Nguyen Quoc Hung, Nguyen Dang Minh, Le Nhu Quynh, Tran Khanh Linh, Nguyen Kieu Linh
The study evaluates large language model (LLM) graders on two computer‑science exams, testing 171 configurations of closed‑ and open‑weights models. While the best LLM configuration achieved a mean absolute error of 1.64/35—better than the 2.61/35 error between two human graders—its performance was highly sensitive to the prompt. A short "strict grader" preamble caused most open‑weight models to exceed acceptable error thresholds or stop grading entirely, whereas fine‑tuning with a single LoRA adapter restored parity with human graders and reduced sensitivity to harsh prompts.
By Ali Habibullah, Yazan Alshoibi, Mohammad Alshiekh, Salman Khan, Naeemullah Khan
arXiv:2608. 07523v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Difficulty differences across parallel-class programming examinations affect the fairness of course assessment.
By Hongfei Yan, Jiangkai Xiong, Yiqing Li, Chong Chen
arXiv:2607. 01247v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Open-ended mathematics exams are valuable because they assess reasoning, proof construction, algorithmic thinking, and communication of intermediate steps.
By Aastha Sapkota, M. G. Sarwar Murshed
arXiv:2608.21601v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Benchmarks for scientific artificial intelligence are mostly written to be scored: multiple-choice questions, curated agent tasks with reference soluti...
By Aubrey Brueckner, Darshil Patel, Yuhuan He, Timothy Kassis
arXiv:2603. 00077v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Rubric-based LLM judges have become indispensable for evaluating and optimizing systems on non-verifiable tasks, where success cannot be reduced to exact programmatic checks.
By Delip Rao, Chris Callison-Burch
arXiv:2609.13824v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to evaluate the responses of other language models. This approach, known as LLM-as-a-Judge, is faste...
By Aakash Kumar Tiwari
The study evaluates zero‑shot essay scoring using sub‑3B open language models that run locally on a single 8 GB consumer GPU. Four instruction‑tuned models (Qwen2.5‑0.5B, 1.5B, 3B and SmolLM2‑1.7B) were tested on all eight ASAP‑AES prompts, comparing rubric‑decomposed versus holistic prompting, different aggregation methods, and trait‑mapping strategies. Results show rubric‑decomposed prompting consistently outperforms holistic prompting, trait‑mapping is sensitive to calibration, and longer essays reduce error, yet the best local configuration (macro QWK 0.388) still falls short of human agreement and a length‑only baseline, suggesting these models are best suited for formative, human‑supervised feedback.
By Nguyen Dung Son, Dang Quang Minh, Nguyen Huu Loi, Truong Viet Vu, Nguyen Thai Anh
arXiv:2606. 11477v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Correcting handwritten exams by hand is time-consuming and error-prone, particularly for large cohorts, while fully digital exams tend to force a didactic narrowing towards closed question formats.
By Hartwig Grabowski
The article examines how classical test theory statistics—Kuder‑Richardson coefficient, dependability index, and Livingston‑Lewis accuracy—can mislead when applied to large language model (LLM) judges that are evaluated with a single prompt and no gold labels. Using Claude Haiku 4.5 on 210 short‑answer items, the authors show that these metrics fail to isolate the judge’s performance because the judge’s single administration provides no variance component. They argue that reliable statements about an LLM judge require gold labels or varied scorer facets, and that bank design heavily influences reliability estimates.
By Louis Yiven Zhu
arXiv:2609.08797v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: The Potts model extends the Ising model to multinomial data. We introduce a Rater Ising-Potts model that uses agreement indicators between pa...
By Matthias von Davier
The study investigates whether Jev, a typed classifier that outputs probabilities over allowed answers without generating text, can replace large language model (LLM) rubric judges. Across nine panels from seven benchmarks, Jev’s accuracy differed significantly from LLM judges in only 8 of 27 paired comparisons, performing best on binary criteria and worse only on graded ones, while most other comparisons were inconclusive. In terms of cost and speed, Jev was 29 to 325 times cheaper and 30 to 220 times faster than the flash‑tier LLM judges, and a cascade approach that defers uncertain Jev verdicts to an LLM yielded only modest gains.
whyItMatters":"The findings suggest that a lightweight classifier like Jev can serve as an efficient first‑stage evaluator, potentially reducing the reliance on expensive and slow LLM judges in automated grading pipelines."
By Delip Rao, Chris Callison-Burch