Aaron Swartz and a Slower Road to Open Access

Aaron Swartz (CC BY)

All day I've been awash in articles and postings about Aaron Swartz's death. If you haven't heard of Aaron Swartz until now, you're probably not alone. Too often we only learn about great and interesting people after they're gone.

If you're subscribed to this blog -- or any blog -- you're benefiting from Aaron's work. At the age of 14, Aaron helped create the original specification for RSS, the code that makes things like Google Reader and podcasting work. This blog is also licensed with a Creative Commons license, and Aaron helped with some of the code that makes CC licenses machine-readable. Aaron was also a pioneer blogger, a co-creator of Reddit, Markdown designer, Wikipedia editor, and more. But perhaps most importantly, and now tragically, Aaron was passionate about the freedom of information. Open access to research is something I've written about before (e.g., "Open Access Publishing in Mathematics Education" and "The Publication Paradox"), and Aaron's passing serves as a reminder that I should be doing even more to expose the results of academic research to the wider public.

A little backstory: Aaron's "hacktivism" got the attention of the FBI in 2009 when he downloaded 18 million public legal documents which were then posted to the web. While the documents themselves were public, the government website typically charged 8 cents per page as an access fee -- fees that add up to tens of millions of dollars annually for the federal judiciary. Aaron had worked around the paywall by installing a Perl script on a computer in a public library that was exempt from the fees. The script didn't really "hack" in an illegal way, but it made the gathering of documents faster than Aaron could accomplish clicking around with the mouse. Okay, a lot faster. Aaron was investigated, but no charges were made.

Larry Lessig and a young Aaron Swartz (CC BY by Rich Gibson)

In January of 2011 Aaron found himself in a similar situation. By planting a laptop in a utility closet at MIT, he used a set of scripts to download over 4 million academic articles from JSTOR. Unlike the prior incident, many of those articles weren't in the public domain. Prosecutors alleged that Aaron intended to release all the articles to the public, a conclusion they may have reached after reading Aaron's Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Perhaps Aaron was only going to release the JSTOR content that was in the public domain, which JSTOR did themselves in September 2011. Although Aaron returned the articles and JSTOR and MIT backed down from the case, federal prosecutors pushed on. He was eventually charged with 13 felonies, ranging from wire fraud, computer fraud, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. The indictment said Aaron stole and did thousands of dollars worth of damage; David Segal of Demand Progress (which Aaron founded) said "it's like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library."

Aaron was facing a million-dollar trial which, if he lost and received the maximum penalties, might have sent him to prison for 35 years. For an activist prone to bouts of severe depression, this must have been very difficult to face. We can only speculate all the reasons Aaron decided to take his own life, but Aaron's family and partner blame the overreach of the justice system for his death.

Despite my advocacy for access to academic research, I can't quite see myself carrying out Aaron's actions. I tend to agree with Larry Lessig, who commented on Aaron's case in July of 2011:

Nonetheless, if the facts are true, even if the law is not clear, I, of course, believe the behavior is ethically wrong. I am a big supporter of changing the law. As my repeated injunctions against illegal file sharing attest, however, I am not a believer in breaking bad laws. I am not even convinced that laws that protect entities like JSTOR are bad. And even if sometimes civil disobedience is appropriate, even then the disobedient disobeys the law and accepts the punishment.

My individual ability to change laws is limited, but I try to help the cause by informing others of open access issues, taking pledges like The Cost of Knowledge, and making (admittedly small) monetary contributions to organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, Wikimedia, the Free Software Foundation, and Rootstrikers.

My ability to help make information publicly available, however, is less limited. The express purpose of my "Research You Should Know" (RYSK) series is to unlock some of the knowledge that I find in academic publications. As much as I'd like to just copy and paste big chunks of articles, I have a better-than-average knowledge of copyright and fair use that keeps me from doing so. Instead, I take the slow road, summarizing articles and putting things in my own words. I have some ideas for how to scale this effort, but it would take the help of others and I don't think the time and conditions are right just yet. So, for now, I'll try to keep doing what Aaron Swartz wanted to do, only I'll do it one summarized article at a time.

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Related Articles and Quotes

(The list will be updated as I read more)

Aaron's family and partner grieve:

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more. ("Official Statement from the Family and Partner of Aaron Swartz")

Cory Doctorow eulogized Aaron on BoingBoing:

Aaron had powerful, deeply felt ideals, but he was also always an impressionable young man, someone who often found himself moved by new passions. He always seemed somehow in search of mentors, and none of those mentors ever seemed to match the impossible standards he held them (and himself) to.

This was cause for real pain and distress for Aaron, and it was the root of his really unfortunate pattern of making high-profile, public denunciations of his friends and mentors. And it's a testament to Aaron's intellect, heart, and friendship that he was always forgiven for this. Many of us "grown ups" in Aaron's life have, over the years, sat down to talk about this, and about our protective feelings for him, and to check in with one another and make sure that no one was too stung by Aaron's disappointment in us. I think we all knew that, whatever the disappointment that Aaron expressed about us, it also reflected a disappointment in himself and the world. (RIP, Aaron Swartz)

Larry Lessig, expressing his anger at the prosecution for Aaron's trial, laments what we lost:

Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you. ("Prosecutor as bully")

Alex Stamos, Aaron's expert witness in his upcoming trial, said:

If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong”, I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate”. In the same way it is inconsiderate to write a check at the supermarket while a dozen people queue up behind you or to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi or to spider Wikipedia too quickly, but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35 year sentence. ("The Truth about Aaron Swartz's "Crime"")

Quinn Norton, a friend and former lover wrote a heart-wrenching post on her blog, including:

He loved my daughter so much it filled the room like a mist. He was transported playing with her, and she bored right into his heart. In his darkest moments, which I couldn’t reach him, Ada could still touch him, even if only for a moment. And when he was in the light, my god. I couldn’t keep up with either of them. I would hang back and watch them spring and play and laugh, and be so grateful for them both. ("My Aaron Swartz, whom I loved")

Tim Berners-Lee expressed himself with a poem:

Aaron is dead.

Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.

Hackers for right, we are one down,
we have lost one of our own.

Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders,
parents all,
we have lost a child.

Let us all weep.

Peter Eckersley writes for the Electric Frontier Foundation:

Moreover, the situation Aaron found himself in highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, and particularly their punishment regimes. Aaron's act was undoubtedly political activism, and taking such an act in the physical world would, at most, have a meant he faced light penalties akin to trespassing as part of a political protest. Because he used a computer, he instead faced long-term incarceration. This is a disparity that EFF has fought against for years. Yesterday, it had tragic consequences. Lawrence Lessig has called for this tragedy to be a basis for reform of computer crime laws, and the overzealous prosecutors who use them. We agree. ("Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist")

Brewster Khale, founder of the Internet Archive, writes:

If there is a sin in the open world it is locking up the public domain. Aaron took selfless action.

When he was downloading a large number of old journal articles, he was arrested at MIT. I was shocked by this. When I was at MIT, if someone went to hack the system, say by downloading databases to play with them, we might be a hero, get a degree, and start a company– but they called the cops on him. Cops. MIT used to protect us when we transgressed the traditional. Despite many of us supporting the lawyers for Aaron, he was still hounded by prosecutors. ("Aaron Swartz, hero of the open world, dies")

Rick Perlstein at The Nation writes:

I do remember, though, the time he told me the story about when he decided to quit college at Stanford. Imagine a college professor offhandedly saying the reason United States fought the Vietnam War was anti-communism, and imagine this freshman—Aaron—vociferously nailing the poor prof to the wall (was this the first day of class? maybe) by citing an infamous March 24, 1965 memo published in the Pentagon Papers stating that only 20 percent of the reason America was in Vietnam was"to keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands" and that 70 percent of the reason was "To avoid a humiliating defeat." ("Aaron Swartz")

 Jason Hoyt of PeerJ and formerly of Mendeley, writes how Aaron's case led him to creat PeerJ:

Something had to be done. I wanted to turn Aaron’s technically illegal, but moral, act into something that could not be so easily thwarted by incumbent publishers, agendas or governments. Over the next few months I let that desire build up inside, until one day the answer came in the Fall of 2011. ("Aaron Swartz found dead, but lives on with Open Access")

Doc Searls writes on his blog:

We haven’t just lost a good man, but the better world he was helping to make. ("Losing Aaron Swartz")

Jeff Jarvis, reflecting on Aaron's life, is rethinking the value of content itself:

And Aaron Swartz has taught me that content must not be the end game for knowledge. Why does knowledge become an article in a journal—or that which fills a book or a publication—except for people to use it? And only when they use it does content become the tool it should be. Not using knowledge is an offense to it. If it cannot fly free beyond the confines of content, knowledge cannot reach its full value through collaboration, correction, inspiration, and use. ("Learning the true value of content from Aaron Swartz")

Dan Gillmor says we should save some of our anger over Aaron's death for activism:

Shame on all of us, and shame on me, at least in this way: When Aaron was indicted, I didn’t do nearly enough to help. Some, like Larry Lessig, tried hard. Most of us, if we did anything, tweeted our outrage, sent emails of moral support, and went on with our lives.

It’s too late for Aaron, but not for the rest of us. ("Remember Aaron Swartz by working for open society and against government abuses")

A statement about Aaron's death by JSTOR:

We have had inquiries about JSTOR’s view of this sad event given the charges against Aaron and the trial scheduled for April. The case is one that we ourselves had regretted being drawn into from the outset, since JSTOR’s mission is to foster widespread access to the world’s body of scholarly knowledge. At the same time, as one of the largest archives of scholarly literature in the world, we must be careful stewards of the information entrusted to us by the owners and creators of that content. To that end, Aaron returned the data he had in his possession and JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011. ("Aaron Swartz")

Declan McCullagh explored some of the details of Aaron's case on Google+:

Perhaps Aaron should have been punished for trespassing, which he did do if the DOJ has its facts right. But last fall the Feds instead slapped him with a superseding indictment featuring 13 felony counts that would mean a worst-case scenario of $4M in fines and possible life in prison (I think we can safely say that 50+ years in prison for someone in their late 20s is life)

Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, writes on Google+:

In September 2008, I criticized Aaron <http://goo.gl/kaczl> for recommending illegal tactics in his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto <http://goo.gl/HKxjd>. But that didn't stop us from meeting in Cambridge (post-manifesto, pre-arrest) for a friendly coffee and catch-up. If my public criticism was a break, it didn't feel like one. We had a very enjoyable, very intense, very long conversation about our home town, open access, my repository project, and a few other geeky common interests. When he was arrested in July 2011 for mass-downloading JSTOR articles from MIT <http://goo.gl/pPkLC>, and carrying out some of the steps he urged in his manifesto, I had nothing new to say <http://goo.gl/DvYHL>. I could not join those who praised his action, and I didn't want to pile on by repeating a criticism I'd already made public. I was sad that this whip-smart, forward-thinking guy took that turn and now faced prison. I'm sad now for a much bigger reason.

Alex Howard's Storify story:  http://storify.com/digiphile/the-internet-mourns-the-death-of-aaron-swartz

Mathew Ingram's collection of web reactions: http://gigaom.com/2013/01/12/the-web-responds-to-the-death-of-hacker-activist-aaron-swartz/

Remembrance site from Aaron's family and partner: Remember Aaron Swartz

A 2007 interview with Aaron Swartz: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-05-07-n78.html

The New York Times obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html

(January 16th: Even more stories added below)

JSTOR's press release about Aaron's case from July 19, 2011, which clearly stated "It was the government's decision whether to to prosecute, not JSTOR's.": http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-criminal-case

A well-written 2011 account of Aaron from The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Rogue-Downloaders-Arrest/128439/

Jonathan Eisen's collection of Aaron Swartz news stories: http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2013/01/rip-aaron-swartz-collection-of-news.html

Tim Lee writes in the Washington Post Wonkblog:

I worry that Swartz’s prosecution is a sign that America is gradually losing the sense of humor that has made it the home of the world’s innovators and misfits. A generation ago, we hailed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg as a hero. Today, our government throws the book at whistleblowers for leaking much less consequential information.

Our nation’s growing humorlessness won’t just mean that insubordinate idealists like Swartz lose their freedom or their lives. As our culture becomes steadily less accepting of people with Swartz’s irreverant attitude toward authority, we’ll all be poorer as a result. Revolutionary new technologies and ideas don’t come from people with a reverence for following the rules. They come from iconoclasts like Jobs, Wozniak, and Swartz. It’s a bad idea to lock them up and throw away the key. ("Aaron Swartz, American Hero")

Glenn Greenwald writes on The Guardian:

He could have easily opted for a life of great personal wealth, status, prestige and comfort. He chose instead to fight - selflessly, with conviction and purpose, and at great risk to himself - for noble causes to which he was passionately devoted. That, to me, isn't an example of heroism; it's the embodiment of it, its purest expression. It's the attribute our country has been most lacking. ("The inspiring heroism of Aaron Swartz")

Micah Sifry writes at TechPresident:

If coders are the unacknowledged legislators of our new digital age, then Aaron was our Thomas Paine--an alpha geek who didn't use his skills just to get more people to click on ads, but tried to figure out how to change the system at the deepest levels available to him. He accomplished much in his 26 years, but he had so much more promise. ("Democratic Promise: Aaron Swartz, 1986-2013")

Ethan Zuckerman wrote, "I'm so sorry for Aaron, and sorry about Aaron.": http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2013/01/12/goodbye-aaron/

David Weinberger writes on his blog:

The mainstream media know that their non-technical audience will hear the term “hacker” in its black hat sense. We need to work against this, not only for the sake of Aaron’s memory, but so that his work is celebrated, encouraged, and continued. ("Aaron Swartz was not a hacker. He was a builder.")

Audrey Watters wrote at her blog, "I scribbled a tear-stained note yesterday as I thought of all we've lost: 'Revolutionaries burn at a heat that is often not sustainable for the human heart.'"

NPR's story with Larry Lessig: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/13/169264447/at-a-young-age-aaron-swartz-did-a-lifetime-of-work

A solid update from the NYT, "A Data Crusader, a Defendant and Now, a Cause"

Steven Musil at CNET documents #pdftribute: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57563701-93/researchers-honor-swartzs-memory-with-pdf-protest/

danah boyd's touching thoughts reflected on a more complex Aaron:

There’s no doubt in my mind that depression was a factor. I adored Aaron because he was an emotional whirlwind – a cranky bastard and a manic savant. Our conversations had an ethereal sense to them and he pushed me hard to think through complex issues as we debated. He had an intellectual range that awed me and a kitten’s sense of curiosity. But when he was feeling destructive, he used his astute understandings of people to find their weak spots and poke them where it hurt. Especially the people he loved the most. He saw himself as an amateur sociologist because he was enamored with how people worked and we argued over the need for rigor, the need for formal training. He had no patience for people who were intellectually slower than him and he failed to appreciate what could be gained by a university setting. Instead, he wanted to mainline books and live in the world of the mind. ("processing the loss of Aaron Swartz")

A letter from MIT's president, L. Rafael Reif, announcing an internal investigation led by Hal Abelson: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/letter-on-death-of-aaron-swartz.html

The Verge reports about MIT's investigation and hacked website: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/13/3873352/mit-announces-internal-investigation-into-its-role-in-aaron-swartz

Derek Willis writes, "I hugely admired him for the clarity he had, and the desire to live out his ideals. We need people like that to remind us that what may seem impossible is not.": http://dwillis.net/post/40483840271/on-aaron-swartz

Stuart Shieber writes at The Occasional Pamphlet, comparing the zealotry in prosecuting Aaron to that of Alan Turing: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2013/01/13/aaron-swartzs-legacy/

For reasons I'm not sure I understand, the investigation of Aaron involved the Secret Service: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/13/two-days-before-cambridge-cops-arrested-aaron-swartz-secret-service-took-over-the-investigation/

Larry Lessig's appearance on Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers



A special report on Wikipedia's The Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-01-14/Special_report

Coverage from Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/14/academe-reacts-aaron-swartzs-suicide

A post on the Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: http://blog.okfn.org/2013/01/14/goodbye-aaron-swartz-and-long-live-your-legacy/

Law professor Tim Wu writes in The New Yorker:

The act was harmless—not in the sense of hypothetical damages or the circular logic of deterrence theory (that’s lawyerly logic), but in John Stuart Mill’s sense, meaning that there was no actual physical harm, nor actual economic harm. The leak was found and plugged; JSTOR suffered no actual economic loss. It did not press charges. Like a pie in the face, Swartz’s act was annoying to its victim, but of no lasting consequence.

In this sense, Swartz must be compared to two other eccentric geniuses, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who, in the nineteen-seventies, committed crimes similar to, but more economically damaging than, Swartz’s. Those two men hacked A.T. & T.’s telephone system to make free long-distance calls, and actually sold the illegal devices (blue boxes) to make cash. Their mentor, John Draper, did go to jail for a few months (where he wrote one of the world’s first word processors), but Jobs and Wozniak were never prosecuted. Instead, they got bored of phreaking and built a computer. The great ones almost always operate at the edge. ("How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz -- And Us")

With no one left to prosecute, the US government dropped the charges against Aaron: http://boingboing.net/2013/01/14/doj-drops-charges-against-aaro.html

James Allworth writes about the lack of prosecutorial proportionality at the Harvard Business Review:

It seems you can get away with laundering money for the drug cartels, so long as you've been generous with the those responsible for appointing district attorneys; or better yet, if your industry has paid to undo all the regulation that prevents you from getting too big to fail. Similarly, when your lobby has been helping Congress draft the laws that govern food, drugs, and cosmetics, you can make sure that the federal sentencing guidelines are only six months should you breach the responsible corporate officer doctrine. This in turn means you can inject unsafe cement into people's spines with relative impunity (apparently, those in the healthcare industry were actually surprised when the officers were sentenced to jail, even if it was for only a few months. One of the convicted executives went so far as to ask the judge to delay the beginning of his sentence until after the holidays). But woe betide you if, in the name of openness and sharing human knowledge, you decide to download academic journals. Because that sounds a lot like piracy — and we all know how much has been spent to stamp that scourge out. ("Aaron Swart's "Crime" and the Business of Breaking the Law")

An excellent longer read from Matt Stoller talks about Aaron's political activity at Naked Capitalism:

Aaron knew life would always be unfair, but that was no reason not to try to make society better. He had no illusions about power but maintained hope for our society if, I suppose, not always for himself. This is a very difficult way to approach the world, but it’s why he was so heroic in how he acted. I want people to understand that Aaron sought not open information systems, but justice. Aaron believed passionately in the scientific method as a guide for organizing our society, and in that open-minded but powerful critique, he was a technocratic liberal. His leanings sometimes moved him towards more radical postures because he recognized that our governing institutions had become malevolent, but he was not an anarchist.

and

As we think about what happened to Aaron, we need to recognize that it was not just prosecutorial overreach that killed him. That’s too easy, because that implies it’s one bad apple. We know that’s not true. What killed him was corruption. Corruption isn’t just people profiting from betraying the public interest. It’s also people being punished for upholding the public interest. In our institutions of power, when you do the right thing and challenge abusive power, you end up destroying a job prospect, an economic opportunity, a political or social connection, or an opportunity for media. Or if you are truly dangerous and brilliantly subversive, as Aaron was, you are bankrupted and destroyed. ("Aaron Swartz's Politics")

The Aaron Swartz Collection at the Internet Archive: http://archive.org/details/aaronsw

Aaron was remembered by Michael Morisy of MuckRock, a site he helped in making Freedom of Information requests: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/jan/14/aaron-swartz-1986-2013/

The Aaron Swartz Memorial JSTOR Liberator uploads JSTOR downloads (which I do not plan to use, as I'd rather rely on means of doing this I'm confident are legal): http://aaronsw.archiveteam.org/

Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, writes:

These are, of course, top-level strategies that represent scores of individual actions that must be taken, regularly, by a critical mass of our community.  We’re operating under no illusions - we’ve all known from the get-go that there is no shortcut to implementing the full vision of Open Access.  For the past 8 years, our strategy at SPARC has been to move forward, putting one foot in front of the other, in a steady, inexorable progression towards our end goal.  To me, Aaron’s death doesn’t change this. It just makes me want to reaffirm my commitment to Open Access, pick up the ball, and run like hell to get there faster. ("Honoring an "Open" Activist by Taking Action")

Thank you, Anonymous, for helping keep the Westboro Baptist Church away from Aaron's funeral: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/01/anonymous-westboro-baptist-church-aaron-swartz-funeral/61036/

A thread started by Dave Winer: http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/january/aaronSwartz

An 2009 email email exchange between Aaron and Ronaldo Lemos of Creative Commons Brasil: http://www.fastcompany.com/3004769/my-email-exchange-aaron-swartz-shows-original-thinker

"Look at Yourself Objectively," written by Aaron in August of 2012: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis

Reflections of Multicultural Education

It’s the day after the last day of what has been a very busy semester. Being busy is good, and being awash in new information every day is something I relish. But there comes a time when we must pause and reflect, and too often this semester I have not given myself that time. Admittedly, just keeping up with the flood of new information proved to be too much, and the student-to-student whispers of “You can’t read everything, you know” proved too regularly to be true. But finally, now, I can take a few hours and think about the last core course of my doctoral program: Multicultural Education (MCED), taught by Linda Mizell.

Assessing the value of this class has been difficult, as there were plenty of moments during the semester when I felt I wasn’t making much scholarly progress. One reason for that feeling – and a reason I appreciate – is that prior coursework had left me better prepared for MCED than I expected. (Or so I thought.) Rarely were the issues we explored in MCED not ones I’d considered in prior courses like Culture and Ethnography, Ethics in Education, Policy Issues, Education Research and Policy, and Perspectives on Classrooms, Teaching, and Learning. It is a credit to my institution that attention to multiculturalism and equity permeates into most corners of the school, although I admit there are times where I still sense it as artificially layered on to a lesson or, even worse, uncomfortably absent. A second reason for that lack-of-progress feeling stemmed from not being able to keep up with all the reading and assignments for the semester. As I finished the last of my papers last night, I thought back to what remained unfinished and one reading in particular stood out: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism Without Racists.

So after submitting my last final paper, I pulled Bonilla-Silva back off the shelf and picked up where I’d left off. I had read all but the last two chapters, but it was in those last two chapters where things appeared to get most interesting. In this, the third edition of Racism Without Racists, Bonilla-Silva added a new chapter at the end addressing the “Obama Phenomenon.” I started reading and almost immediately I was taken back to what I thought made this book so interesting, engaging, and challenging to begin with: Bonilla-Silva’s outspoken criticism of a system that perpetuates racism and inequality. In general, I do not disagree with Bonilla-Silva’s message. But the style with which the message was delivered came as a bit of an uncomfortable shock.

In his detailed analysis of interviews with both white and minority students, Bonilla-Silva exposed the racism found in peoples’ language. For example, in an interview with a white girl named Jill who claimed, “One of my best friends is black” (p. 58), Bonilla-Silva asks her to go into more detail. Jill then describes her friend as “bright” but with “terrible GMAT scores,” and then says, “What he lacks in intellect he makes up for in…he works so hard and he’s always trying to improve himself.” In his analysis, Bonilla-Silva addresses the contradiction about intelligence and points out that Jill never mentions this friend by name. This example by itself might seem lacking in evidence, but it is far from an isolated incident in the text. The dissection of racism in peoples’ speech happens on page after page. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes less so, and I remember feeling during my first reading that I’m glad Bonilla-Silva wasn’t interviewing me, because he seemed to make everybody sound racist!

Now, reflecting exactly on that thought, I see how that thinking exposes how I largely missed Bonilla-Silva’s greater point (even though it’s the title of the book): the kind of racism we’re dealing with now is less about the individual and more about a system. Bonilla-Silva wasn’t after Jill to make her sound like a racist – at least not the kind of racist most people imagine when they hear that label. Bonilla-Silva was instead exposing how Jill, along with most of the other interviewees in the book, demonstrates the systems and structures of racism and how they exist in what we all say, do, and believe. In other words, it’s not about Jill. For the same reason, I shouldn’t have worried about Bonilla-Silva interviewing me, as the interview would have only helped me understand how my actions, behaviors, and attitudes are being affected by the subtle yet significant culture of racism that still exists in our society. And until we are forced to recognize it, there is very little we can or will do about it.

It’s also this same system that allowed much of the country to endorse President Obama, and how that endorsement gives us a false sense of accomplishment that we’ve somehow reached a “post-racial” society. (We haven’t.) As an educator I wonder how we can have policies like NCLB which are so bold to declare a school a failure when achievement gaps persist, yet our greater society and government doesn’t always extend that same failure judgment to the enormous gaps in achievement, income, wealth, health, etc. that we see in our society. Sure, the #Occupy protesters have their message, but it’s unfortunate that so few were shouting until the perils of inequity reached beyond minorities.

The system that Bonilla-Silva describes should not have been an “uncomfortable shock” to me. From where I now stand, I can see how other readings described much of the same system, yet somehow by using more academic or less forceful language I was led to think I understood when I didn’t. Perhaps the best example of this is Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” I remember thinking as I read it, “I really like Beverly Daniel Tatum because she’s making me feel comfortable about a difficult topic.” Where I feared an interview with Bonilla-Silva, I would have welcomed the opportunity to speak with Beverly Daniel Tatum.

But somehow, disguised by my initial affection for the authors, I didn’t immediately see how in many ways Bonilla-Silva and Tatum were largely describing the same system of racism. I’m glad I read Tatum first and then Bonilla-Silva, because now as I reflect I can see how Tatum’s message didn’t really sink in for me; if it had, I wouldn’t have been so challenged by Bonilla-Silva. The lesson for me is not that I need to keep reading more critical work (although that would certainly help), but that it’s going to take more effort to make myself feel uncomfortable about issues of culture, race, class, power, etc., before somebody else gets the chance to do it for me.

For me, the simple title to this post has a double meaning. First is the more obvious, that I’m finally taking some time to think about a class I experienced over the past semester. Second, and more importantly, is the idea that multicultural education has a reflective property like a mirror bouncing light around a corner. As an educator who had a relatively monocultural upbringing in the rural Midwest, and who apparently can still be surprised by the injustices in the world around me, I need to use what I’ve learned about multicultural education to shine some light not only around corners, but back on myself. There’s so much more for me to see, most of which is hidden by its largeness, not its smallness. As an educator this is what we do: we help students explore and understand the world around them, and our reward for doing so comes both in our students’ growth and our own.

Review: Race to Nowhere

Tonight I had the pleasure of viewing a screening of the documentary Race to Nowhere at the Shepherd Valley Waldorf School. With other education films such as Waiting for Superman and The Lottery, Nowhere provides a very different, yet very important perspective on American education. Check out the trailer:


People need to see this movie -- especially people who see Waiting for Superman. (Are you hearing me, Oprah?) Where Superman wants you to point fingers at a school, a teacher, or a union, Nowhere doesn't try to assign blame. Nowhere wants you to understand our educational culture and our roles in it, and use that understanding to change the way we as a society view school. Instead of over-scheduling, over-working, and over-stressing our students, Nowhere advocates for children, letting kids be kids and fostering their creativity and happiness to make them (or let them be) accomplished learners. Nowhere paints a powerful picture of accountability-based, high-stakes reform, and we begin to see how easily we fall into the traps of our system even while we understand its failings. Where Superman demands anger as the impetus for social change, Nowhere is a plea for compassion. Anger generally trumps compassion when it comes to getting people's attention, so I have doubts that Nowhere will be getting the attention it deserves alongside Superman. But we don't always make our best decisions when we're angry.

I'll admit it: for most of my life I scoffed at the idea that student self-esteem was a prerequisite for student achievement. I always thought it should be the other way around. After a year or so of grad school, with sufficient guidance and time for reflection and self-enlightenment, I now realize that my opinions were far too grounded in my own experience as a relatively stress-free, high-achieving student. This movie isn't about the warm and fuzzy student self-esteem I may have discredited in the past; the students in this movie are being harmed both psychologically and physically in ways that are hard to watch, and students who don't want that stress are giving up altogether. Nowhere seeks a balance, a reciprocity between student welfare and achievement that we must desire as an educational outcome. High standardized test scores always look good, but not if they come with higher incidents of student sickness, headaches, sleepless nights, caffiene and stimulant abuse, eating disorders, and suicides. (The film contains a heartbreaking story of a 13-year-old girl who killed herself, essentially, because a bad test in 8th grade algebra was going to prevent her from getting straight As.) The most powerful voices in Nowhere are the students. They are bright, well-spoken, driven students who want to do well as much or more than any parent, teacher, administrator, or policymaker wants for them. They are the stars of this movie and they deserve not only our attention, but our action. Where should you start? Go see the movie and watch for the answers to that question at the end of the film.

Teaching as a "Moral Craft"

I recently read The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers by David F. Labaree, and was particularly struck by this paragraph:

The main reason for [teaching as a moral craft] is that, unlike most professionals, teachers do not apply their expertise toward ends that are set by the client. A lawyer, doctor, or accountant is a hired mind who helps clients pursue goals that they themselves establish, such as to gain a divorce, halt an infection, or minimize taxes. But teachers are in the business of instilling behaviors and skills and knowledge in students who do not ask for this intervention in their lives and who are considered too young to make that kind of choice anyway. By setting out to change people rather than to serve their wishes, teachers take on an enormous moral responsibility to make sure that they changes they introduce are truly in the best interest of the student and not merely a matter of individual whim or personal convenience. And this reponsibility is exacerbated by the fact that they student's presence in the teacher's classroom is compulsory. Not only are teachers imposing a particular curriculum on students, then, but they are also denying them the liberty to do something else. The moral implications are clear: If you are going to restrict student liberty, it has to be for very good reasons; you had better be able to show that the student ultimately benefits and that these benefits are large enough to justify the coercive means used to produce them (Cohen, 1988; Fenstermacher, 1990; Tom, 1984).

I've heard other people argue that the teaching profession doesn't compare well to other professions, like being a doctor or lawyer. After reading this, I'm happy they don't - teachers have good reason to feel like they're doing something special.

References
Labaree, D. F. (2003). The peculiar problems of preparing educational researchers. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 13-22. Retrieved from http://edr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/13.

Boulder Valley Students "Earn" Zeros on Mis-administered CSAP

According to a story in Boulder's Daily Camera this afternoon:

"Sixty-seven students at Superior's Eldorado K-8 School will receive zeros on the writing portion of this year's CSAP test after an eighth-grade teacher broke the rules by having students practice on writing topics copied from a previous year's test."

Two years ago, the exact same situation happened at Runyon Elementary in Littleton. In both cases, the schools realized what happened soon after the test was administered and contacted CDE to report their concerns. In both cases, it appears CDE will give a score of zero to every affected student. This situation upset lawmakers enough in 2008 to include a provision for it in their CAP4K, more officially known as Senate Bill 08-212. It amended Colorado Revised Statute 22-7-604(3) to read:

"...the department shall identify and implement alterations in the calculation method, or other appropriate measures, to ensure that, to the fullest extent practicable, a public school is not penalized in the calculation of the school's CSAP-area standardized, weighted total score by inadvertent errors committed in the administration of an assessment."

So why doesn't that law apply to this new case in Boulder? Simple: it was repealed last year by Senate Bill 09-163, for reasons I never heard discussed. Assuming this is as honest of a mistake as BVSD claims, it doesn't seem fair to give kids zeros. After all, I'm sure the kids know more than nothing. I hope we hear an explanation from CDE and the Colorado legislature about the repeal of the CAP4K provision, and I won't be surprised to find it back in the law soon.

Cases in the Ethics of Grading: Jodi Warren and Mr. Kennedy

The following is my fourth and final (as far as I know) in a series of hypothetical cases meant to raise questions about grading practices. I'd like to recognize Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis for their book "The Ethics of Teaching," which inspired the style and structure of this case. Enjoy and discuss!

Louis Kennedy and Jodi Warren are two teachers within the Metro City School District. Louis is a popular fifth grade teacher at Worthington Elementary and Jodi is a new, 23-year-old sixth grade English teacher at Carter Middle School. Most of the students at Worthington Elementary matriculate to Carter Middle, and many of Jodi's students had Mr. Kennedy as their fifth grade teacher.

At her very first day at the school, Jodi Warren listened to her principal preach some of the reforms they were instituting that year at Carter Middle. The biggest change was the enforcement of course requirements and credits that must be earned before being moved on to high school. "No more social promotion!" the principal cried. "We will teach these kids to be responsible and prepare them for high school!" Jodi wanted to be tough her first year of teaching, so this was a philosophy she was willing to get behind, even at the sixth grade level. She'd heard horror stories of teachers who were pushovers and let the kids run the classroom, and she was determined to not be one of those teachers.

Several months passed and Jodi stuck to her plans of holding kids responsible and grading rigorously but fairly. Many students were earning grades of C or lower, but Jodi did not seem too concerned, as she had always viewed a C as an average grade. At the end of October, she faced her first parent teacher conferences. Parents were not happy. Conference after conference, Jodi listened to parents make comments like, "This is the worst grade my student has ever gotten," and "My son was doing much better in Mr. Kennedy's class last year." Jodi tried to explain the new expectations at Carter Middle, and how it was part of a plan to better prepare students for the rigor of high school. "Well, my daughter has As and Bs in all of her other classes," some would reply. Jodi also learned that a number of the parents had already complained to the principal about her ineffectiveness as a teacher, and it did not appear that her principal gave her much support. Jodi left school that night with serious doubts about her future as a teacher, wondering if her teaching really had been so poor despite her best efforts.

The next day Jodi attended a district workshop where she had an opportunity to work with other teachers, including Louis Kennedy. Jodi was curious to hear if Louis had experienced problems similar to those she was having with students Louis had taught the year before. Maybe she could gain some insight as to what she was doing wrong, or pick up advice from a popular fellow teacher. When Jodi asked about trying to be a tough grader, Louis gave her a surprising reply. "We give A-F grades in fifth grade, but I never take it too seriously. They don't count for anything. They don't end up on a transcript for college or factor into a GPA. A few years ago I had given a couple students Ds and Fs, and I found out that it only created animosity between myself and the students. They weren't happy in class anymore and parents assumed I was doing a bad job. Now I never give a grade below a C, everyone seems to be happier, and I have an easier job connecting with struggling students."

Jodi is now unsure what she should do. If she suddenly raises her students' grades, she'll become the easy pushover she did not want to be. If she keeps grading the way she is, parents will think she is not a good teacher and that could put her future as a teacher at risk. If she complains about Mr. Kennedy's easy grading practices she'll be seen as whiny and a tattle-tale, a trait she despises in her students.

Questions

1. Does it make a difference that Jodi is a new teacher, and has several years of teaching before she receives tenure?
2. Given Jodi's choices (raise grades and be a pushover, be firm on grades and risk her career, or complain about Mr. Kennedy) which would you choose and why?

Cases in the Ethics of Grading: Mrs. Lemon and Troy Mann

The following is my third in a series of hypothetical cases meant to raise questions about grading practices. I'd like to recognize Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis for their book "The Ethics of Teaching," which inspired the style and structure of this case. Enjoy and discuss!

Troy Mann is a struggling student in Mrs. Lemon's Algebra 2 class. By all accounts from Troy's previous two math teachers, he barely passed Algebra 1 and Geometry, and his Geometry grade might have been artificially inflated to compensate for his weak skills coming out of Algebra 1 and suspicions of a possible undiagnosed learning difficulty. Still, in both classes, Troy's modus operandi was the same: "coast" through as much of the semester as possible, do as little work as possible, and then apply just enough sincere effort to avoid being ineligible for sports. Troy understood if he failed Mrs. Lemon's Algebra 2 class he would be ineligible for the beginning of the second semester, meaning he would miss most of basketball season. Troy expected to start on the varsity team, and Mrs. Lemon happened to be one of the biggest basketball boosters at the school.

Using athletic participation as a motivator, Mrs. Lemon and Troy began to meet almost every day after school to improve his math grade. Unfortunately for Troy, his lack of effort earlier in the semester and in previous classes left him unprepared for the rigors of Algebra 2, and most of his time with Mrs. Lemon was spent relearning skills from Algebra 1. After six weeks Troy was showing great improvement on his Algebra 1 skills, but was running out of time in the semester to master Algebra 2 skills well enough for the final exam. Unable to fully catch up, Troy badly failed the final exam and received an F for the course.

When school resumed after winter vacation, Mrs. Lemon was called to the principal's office to meet with Troy's parents. This was the first time Mrs. Lemon had met Troy's father, but had talked previously on several occasions with Troy's mother, who worked in the school district administration office. The principal explained to everyone that a failing grade would mean Troy would be ineligible for basketball. Both of Troy's parents emphasized how important sports are to Troy, and without sports he may not have any motivation to be successful in school. Troy's parents also expressed their difficulty in understanding how Troy could spend all those hours after school, learning and showing steady improvement, and still fail the course.

Mrs. Lemon explained that to pass the course students must show mastery of Algebra 2 objectives, and while Troy should be commended for remediation of his weak math skills, it was not worthy of Algebra 2 credit. When the principal asked if there was any way of making Troy eligible for the second semester (implying Mrs. Lemon should change the grade to passing), Mrs. Lemon bluntly suggested that he ask the athletic director to ease the eligibility standards instead of compromising her own academic credibility. With that, the meeting ended and Troy's parents left.

Before letting Mrs. Lemon go back to class, the principal stopped her and said, "I want to tell you a little story. When I was in college, I really struggled in some of my classes and for one class I failed the final and was going to fail the class. The professor for that class, instead of sticking me with that grade, brought me over to his house, made me dinner, and went over the test item-by-item. I didn't retake the test – he was just helping me understand the material. He changed my final exam grade and I passed the class. Think about sitting down with Troy and doing him the same favor."

Questions:

1. State content standards are meant to guide curricula, but should mastery of that content be the sole determinant of a student's grades? Should Troy's grade reflect his effort and skill improvement?
2. Was it ethical for the principal to ask Mrs. Lemon to consider changing Troy's grade in the presence of Troy's parents? What's more important, the perception of a principal's fairness and neutrality or his/her willingness to be open and helpful to students and parents?
3. What do you think was the principal's intent of telling the personal story after the meeting?
4. If you were Mrs. Lemon, would you change Troy's grade?

Cases in the Ethics of Grading: Mr. Green and Tracked Classes

The following is my second in a series of hypothetical cases meant to raise questions about grading practices. I'd like to recognize Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis for their book "The Ethics of Teaching," which inspired the style and structure of this case. Enjoy and discuss!

Mr. Green is the sole history teacher at a small high school. Last year the school experimented with having an honors science class and feedback from teachers, parents, and students was generally positive. This year the school has decided to expand its selection of honors courses and Mr. Green will be responsible for teaching the school's first section of Honors World History. The class is designed for 10th and 11th graders, almost all of whom Mr. Green has already taught in lower-level courses.

Because of the school's size, there are only enough students to warrant two sections of World History: one honors and one regular. Mr. Green is responsible for selecting which students are to be placed in the honors section, and he overwhelmingly and sensibly chooses students who have earned grades of A or B in his previous courses. That naturally leaves almost entirely C or below students for the non-honors section of World History. Mr. Green is fully aware that the creation of Honors World History amounts to tracking, a controversial subject thought by some to be outdated and unethical. To ease his own concerns, Mr. Green ensures that both classes receive the same curriculum, the same textbooks and materials, and the same styles of instruction. To make the honors section worthy of its title, he skips the chapter review day before each test, thereby slightly speeding up the class, and makes the grading scale marginally more challenging.

The first semester of the two sections of World History seems to go smoothly. Mr. Green's plan to teach both classes using the same materials and methods appears to have avoided controversy. Having not heard any complaints from students, parents, or administrators, he proceeds into the second semester using the same class policies and procedures.

Three weeks into the second semester, the Mr. Green's principal, Mary Williams, checks the grades for both honors and regular World History. She is upset to find that while there are plenty of students earning As and Bs in the honors class, not a single student in the regular World History class has a grade above a C. Ms. Williams calls Mr. Green into her office, accuses him of grading unfairly, and demands to know why the regular World History class doesn't have "its own As and Bs." Mr. Green offers several reasons, including: A) Tests usually help students raise their grades, but it's early in the semester and they haven't taken a test yet, B) The regular World History class doesn't have students with a previous record of earning As and Bs, so the lower grades should be expected; and C) It would be unfair to arbitrarily give As and Bs to students in regular World History if they weren't mastering the content at levels similar to the honors students, and doing so would take away the incentive for students to take Honors World History.

Ms. Williams is not swayed and flatly tells him that he "needs to give higher grades." When Mr. Green asks, "Does that mean I should give higher grades without regard to ability or achievement?" the she only responds by repeating herself: "You need to give higher grades."

Questions:

1. Is it reasonable for Ms. Williams to expect each class to have a distribution of grades A through F?
2. Suppose you raised some of the grades in the regular World History class, believing the class does deserve a broader distribution of grades. Would it be hypocritical to do this unless you also lowered some of the grades in Honors World History to include more Ds and Fs?
3. Did Mr. Green trap himself in this dilemma by trying to make the two sections so similar? In other words, do you think he would have been more comfortable assigning each class "its own As and Bs" if the two classes were drastically different by design?
4. Schools use grades and GPA to measure and sort students. For honors vs. regular scenarios such as this, whose responsibility is it to ensure the sorting is done fairly? Is it Mr. Green's duty to sort the students across both sections, as he was attempting to do, or should the district handle that burden through policy? (Example: Districts often choose to weight honors courses on a 5-point scale to reflect their increased difficulty over regular courses.)
5. If you were Mr. Green, would you raise the grades? If so, why? If not, why not?

Cases in the Ethics of Grading: Dr. Jones and Tara Hightower

The following is a hypothetical case meant to raise questions about grading practices. I'd like to recognize Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis for their book "The Ethics of Teaching," which inspired the style and structure of this case. Enjoy and discuss!

Dr. Susan Jones, an assistant professor in her first year at Central State University, is teaching a molecular biology course to a class of about twenty undergraduates, most in their second or third year of college. The content of the class comes easy to Dr. Jones, but showing up on-time at 8:00 three days a week is not. Most of the class is struggling with the material and disliking the class, so to make the class more enjoyable she occasionally interrupts lecture with some "fun" activities, such as watching cartoons or playing games. Dr. Jones's primary suggestion to those struggling in the class is for them to see her during her office hours for individualized help. She is very generous with her time and has helped many students make improved progress with the coursework.

Tara Hightower is an honors student at Central State and is one of Dr. Jones's struggling students. Tara is proud and independent, and somewhat stubbornly chooses to not see Dr. Jones for individualized help. Tara attends every class, is always on time, and studies both the text and her notes for hours each week in order to keep up with the material. This has always been a successful strategy for Tara in the past, and she resents the idea that she should have to see Dr. Jones individually, especially since some class time is already being wasted on fun, games, and Dr. Jones's tardiness. Tara's scholarship and status in the honors program is dependent on her maintaining a 3.5 GPA, and she received a notice at midterm that she had a D in the class. If Tara can not substantially improve this grade, she'll be given a warning by the honors program and risks losing her scholarship.

At the end of the semester, Dr. Jones asks Tara to come see her about her final exam and grade for the course. At the meeting, Dr. Jones explains to Tara that while she passed both the homework and the final exam, she did not perform up to expectations and should take the course again. To ensure Tara retakes the course, Dr. Jones assigns her a failing grade. Tara feels that receiving an F for passing work isn't fair, but agrees that her performance was sub-par and knows she needs to retake the course, regardless if her grade was a D or an F. After meeting with her advisor, Tara changed her schedule so she could retake the course with a different professor the next semester. Tara received an A on the retaken course and regained a positive standing in the honors program.

Questions:

1. Can the extra hours Dr. Jones spends working with students individually make up for misused class time?
2. Should Tara's refusal of any out-of-class individual help influence the grade she receives from Dr. Jones?
3. Should the fact that Tara must retake the class, regardless of earning a D or F, matter to Dr. Jones?
4. Teachers typically retain autonomy over their own grading practices. If Tara were to choose to protest the failing grade, who should have the power to change it? What are the ethical implications for Dr. Jones if her grades can be overturned?

Grading and Teacher Autonomy

I've known some teachers that probably wish they had the freedoms teachers enjoyed in the one-room schoolhouse days, but in the modern context of standards-based education that just isn't a reality. Standards, for better or worse, shape our curriculum, choice of texts, long and short-term unit/lesson planning, instruction, and seemingly every level of assessment. Could there possibly be a significant daily teacher practice not guided by standards?

Sure there is: grading.

There are no national or state standards to tell you what a "B" means, no standards to tell you if you should use a weighted grading system, and no standards to tell you if habitual tardiness to class should result in a grading penalty. I know of no set of classroom grading standards published by any major educational organization at any level. Teachers are left to figure out grading for themselves. As a math teacher I put extra pressure on myself to develop the best possible grading system, and over six years I tried all sorts of variations, none of them perfect.

My general philosophy was to grade on the mastery of the content described by the standards, and leave out as much extraneous stuff as possible. (Like deducting points for tardiness, for example.) Even on that task I know I failed, because the vast majority of student homework was graded for completion, not correctness. Still, I felt I had a principle for grading and I tried to stick to it. I actively resisted meaningless grade inflation and expected grades to usefully measure what students knew and could do. I felt it was reasonable in Colorado, where more than 60% of high school students score partially proficient or below on the CSAP, for Cs and lower scores to be an acceptable reality. Also, I hoped my students' grades would have a strong positive correlation to their CSAP scores. (Sadly, I never tested this.) Grades that failed to correlate would have indicated problems with my grading system and been a disservice to my students. I was miles away from having this vision be true for all students all the time, but it was a goal nonetheless.

I hope you can get a feeling for the amount of thought I invested in my grading, and realize that teachers all do this to some degree as a result of the autonomy we have over grading. The autonomy isn't total, however. If I had given 95% of my students As and Bs, I probably wouldn't have had much reason to continually re-examine my grading practices. In most schools, a teacher who gives that many high scores will certainly avoid negative attention, or perhaps even be praised for being such a good teacher. Low grades, on the other hand, attract plenty of attention from students, parents, and administrators. You can get many interesting suggestions from all involved, including grade curving (which means raising in this context, trust me), extra credit, and throwing out low test scores. Most of this is based on appeasing students and parents, not the development of intelligence, but it happens in schools large and small.

So, with no grading standards, to whom does a teacher surrender their grading autonomy and to what degree? The ethical quandaries can build extremely quickly, and several such cases will be topics here on this site in the near future. One of those cases will present a situation where some might argue the teacher got total autonomy and used it to be purposely unfair to a student. Another will present a teacher being pressured to change a grade for non-academic reasons. Hopefully these cases will challenge you to think about your own classroom, and good reasons to either defend or change your own grading practices.

Lastly, I want to pose a question about a possible influence on our grading systems. This is not a who, but a what: How does your gradebook itself influence your grading? Most schools use a system like Powerschool or Infinite Campus. (I've used Goedustar and Integrade Pro.) How do the capabilities of the program, including calculation methods and input limitations, affect the way you grade? Do you find technical limitations an acceptable influence on your grading practices? Also, how do you feel about parents essentially having real-time, 24/7 access to their child's grades? Is this an unreasonable or unhealthy demand? I'd love to hear your thoughts!