A team of high-schoolers from the District of Columbia has won presidential recognition for their AI essay grader.
The students from DC took part in the 2026 National Presidential AI Challenge, which received thousands of proposals for AI-powered solutions to problems facing students across the country. The challenge, which sought to have students “solve real-world problems in their communities using AI-powered solutions,” concluded this summer, with state winners announced in early spring.
The challenge featured many different levels of competition or “tracks” for students to compete in, with the most notable being Track II, where students were tasked with not only identifying an issue in their community but also actually creating an AI tool to help solve it.
The challenge was established after President Trump signed an executive order in April 2025 calling for expanded AI education for the country's students, and is run with the backing of the White House and the US Department of Energy. Submissions moved through state, regional, and national rounds, with finalists from across the country showcased in Washington, D.C., in June.
Among the few state winners for Track II submissions was FRQuick, a completely free AI-powered essay grading platform built by a team of high-schoolers from Washington, D.C. “When asked to find a solution, we were initially drawn to the issue of under-resourced school systems, not just in DC but across the country,” says Jack Schmidt, one of the founders of FRQuick. The team traced that problem to a specific source: access to feedback. “Students who attend such schools cannot access the feedback necessary to learn and improve, which contributes to a widening wealth-based achievement gap.” FRQuick was recognized for its ability to help these students by providing a high-quality, free online service for quick feedback on students’ writing.
The win carries weight beyond the recognition itself. High-quality feedback on essay writing has long functioned as a luxury that not all students can access, with many AI study services placing their most premium models behind steep paywalls. This trend is reflected in low literacy rates for students both in DC (32 percent) and across the country (37 percent).
FRQuick's selection as DC's top Track II project reflects the platform's core premise: that rubric-based, high-quality feedback shouldn't be limited to students who can pay for it. Rather than automating grading for its own sake, FRQuick was built to put that level of feedback in front of any student who needs it, at no cost, on the same essay a student might otherwise wait days to have reviewed.
That distinction is what the recognition is ultimately about. A free tool that grades free-response essays with the same rigor and consistency as a trained reviewer has real-world implications for how, and how quickly, students improve as writers, particularly in classrooms where individual feedback has always been locked behind paywalls.
FRQuick is not affiliated with the College Board or Advanced Placement. AP is a registered trademark of the College Board.
