C-rater is an automated scoringengine that has been developed to scoreresponses to content-based short answerquestions. It is not simply a stringmatching program – instead it uses predicateargument structure, pronominal reference,morphological analysis and synonyms to assignfull or partial credit to a short answerquestion. C-rater has been used in two studies:National Assessment for Educational Progress(NAEP) and a statewide assessment in Indiana.In both studies, c-rater agreed with humangraders about 84% of the time.