Subject Matter Knowledge

Evaluator last updated March 13, 2025.

Overview

The Subject Matter Knowledge evaluator assesses the subject-matter complexity of reading passages:

Evaluates how much prior knowledge a text relies on
Lists key concepts in the text
Evaluates whether students have likely encountered these concepts before

At a glance


Input type	Informational text
Supported grades	3-12
Rubric	SAP ↗‘s Qualitative Text Complexity Rubric for Informational Text ↗

The evaluator was built and validated using the model and temperature below (other configurations will produce different results and may have lower accuracy):


Model used	gemini-3-flash-preview
Temperature	0

Getting started

Follow the Quickstart to start using this evaluator:

Access method
Evaluators Playground	View in the Learning Commons Platform ↗
SDK	TypeScript ↗
Python notebook	View in GitHub ↗
Prompts	View in GitHub ↗

Inputs

Input	Description	Required
Target grade level	Enables grade context evaluation	Yes
Text type	Informational text Optimal length: 200-1,000 words	Yes

Output

Field	Description
Complexity rating	Slightly complex: Relies on everyday, practical knowledge; includes simple, concrete ideas Moderately complex: Relies on common practical knowledge and some discipline-specific content knowledge; includes a mix of simple and more complicated, abstract ideas Very complex: Relies on moderate levels of discipline-specific or theoretical knowledge; includes a mix of recognizable ideas and challenging abstract concepts Exceedingly complex: Relies on extensive levels of discipline-specific or theoretical knowledge; includes a range of challenging abstract concepts
Reasoning	Synthesized explanation of the decision
Identified topics	List of topics in the text
Curriculum check	Classification of topics as general or specialized
Assumptions and scaffolding	Analysis of assumed prior knowledge vs. explained content
Friction analysis	Analysis of the gap between concrete description and abstract meaning

Interpreting results

Output	How to use
Complexity rating	Slightly complex: Confirm text relies on everyday knowledge students likely have Moderately complex: Plan light scaffolding for discipline-specific terms Very complex: Pre-teach key concepts before independent reading Exceedingly complex: Flag texts that assume extensive prior knowledge
Identified topics + Assumptions and scaffolding	Match text to what students have already encountered Example: Use identified topics, curriculum check, and friction analysis to decide what to pre-teach or explain in the text

Accuracy and validation

This evaluator is provided as Early access. Comprehensive accuracy measures are not yet available. Validation testing is ongoing.

We assessed performance against an expert-annotated dataset of texts from the CLEAR Corpus ↗, rated by 3 experts, rather than traditional static benchmark metrics.

Metric	Description	Result
Complexity score accuracy	How accurately the evaluator determines text complexity compared to the expert annotated dataset.	87% based on agreement with 3 experts assessing ~30 texts
Expert agreement rate	The agreement rate between the evaluator and experts on a sample of 10 evaluated texts.	100%

For more information on our validation process, see Accuracy.

Evaluator release history

Date	Changed
March 13, 2026	First release

Understanding evaluators

Getting started

SDK API Reference

Literacy evaluators

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Datasets

Resources

Overview

At a glance

Getting started

Inputs

Output

Interpreting results

Accuracy and validation

Evaluator release history

​Overview

​At a glance

​Getting started

​Inputs

​Output

​Interpreting results

​Accuracy and validation

​Evaluator release history

Overview

At a glance

Getting started

Inputs

Output

Interpreting results

Accuracy and validation

Evaluator release history