This assumes a certain positionality with respect to authority. How badly do you need your job? What happens to you if you lose it? How easily will you find another? Who suffers, and from what, if you can't? "Full ahead and damn the torpedoes" is a stirring attitude in the face of authoritarian roadblocks, but it presupposes racial and socioeconomic and even gendered facts about the agent, none of which can be assumed.

I love Speed Grader. It lets me see a student's work and provide involved commentary, even threaded discussions, without having to shuffle a bunch of papers. Ungrading Speed Grader is easy - just set it to "no score" or given them a stock score and then focus on comments and dialog. For me the most relevant piece is that I can do all of this engagement without having to pass papers back and forth. I've always put comments on students' work, but now the students can put comments on my comments and so on.

I spent over a decade teaching a course in advanced argumentation without a grade book. Kids' learning was off the charts, and we had dozens of competitive championships at the local, regional, and national level. Then an admin noticed that I wasn't assigning standards-normed grades and I got called in and put on an "Improvement Plan." Nearly lost my damn job.

Whiteness is highly adaptive - if it is ontological, radical transformation is a prerequisite to an alternative future; efforts at reform will all be subverted.

My experience with professional development does not make me optimistic about its role in developing racial literacy. After Iowa State identified my high school as suffering from profound structural racial inequities, we spent a few years going through a purchased development curriculum designed to improve our racial literacy. It largely involved our school's almost exclusively white teachers spending early-out Wednesday afternoons watching videos featuring white guys talking about improving racial literacy. Things have not improved.

I'm interested to see what, if any, alternative the authors suggest. A criticism without an alt is kind of an empty argument. I'm not looking for cruel optimism or manufactured hope, but a finely grained critique like this is pretty grim if there's no conception of what an alternative future might look like.

At the same time, though, policies that push schools to simply refrain from addressing students' expressions of trauma are another form of colorblindness that only pushes this problem in a different direction, alienating teachers and leaving students of color to fend for themselves. Simply resolving not to punish students of color is not the same as developing systems to address racial trauma.

See Teach For America - if you want an example of where young white liberals fail to understand collective action, I challenge you to find a better.

Frank Wilderson notably suggests that Whiteness is not a feature of western society, but the foundational architecture on which western culture is built. This article provides evidence for that thesis: Whiteness is structurally inherent in culture; it is ontologically innate, and can't be removed, ameliorated, or eliminated though reform. That practices designed to address white supremacy tend to reinforce white supremacy is a powerful warrant for that claim.

This is interesting considered in the light of 3-7, "Creating mathematical futures." The structure of the argument there passively invisibilizes structural racism by suggesting that gaps in achievement are the result of failures at the classroom level, ie "schools that teach math as Railside does eradicate the achievement gap in 2 years" -- indicating that the solution is not revising a structural or systemic failure to support schools, but a matter of rethinking instruction practices within the existing (presumably equitable) system.

These observations need to be explained to the voting public

The Iowa legislature would howl in fury if they learned that I was earning relicensure credit for taking a class that involved reading this. The white supremacist structure of American culture expresses itself most insidiously in those institutions that manifest as race-neutral, to the point where suggesting that white supremacy remains at work is viewed as ipso facto evidence of racism. And while the reactionary conservatives' performances on this stage are by far the most explicitly troubling, white self-identified liberals probably cause more harm at the point of contact in schools.

Interesting counterpoint to that is the kid who reacted angrily - "what a waste of effort" - with the implication that the course was supposed to be strictly teacher-graded, with the student's effort aimed at producing results that would earn, from the teacher, a high score. In that student's mind, the introduction of the self-assessment element obviated the need for the effort that had been put forth -- I see similar reactions from some students if ever I decide to eliminate a planned assessment. Some kids are relieved; some kids are angry because they worked hard to prepare for the assessment and are upset that that work will no longer "count." The relationship between teacher and student in these kids' minds is hierarchical, and part of the value of the educational experience is earning the endorsement of the teacher, who is understood to be the expert. Several of the students' responses here suggest similar perspectives -- like the kid who said that they take pride in good grades or that they like being told by the prof that they've done well. I struggle with this. On the one hand, liberatory education is a goal; on the other hand, if I don't have a privileged perspective on the content, what am I doing being a tacher?

Perhaps they had a premonition that you were setting them up

"Development" - of something as subjective and ideological as a "pedagogy" - how does one measure that? The article starts out talking about how only students can really understand their own performance, but this contradicts that attitude almost violently: The student thought that they had development sufficient to receive an "A" but the prof had enough of a better understanding of the student's lack of development that they felt the need to, and were able to, talk the student down to a B?

If as a prof you recognize that you have the wherewithal to assign grades from a position of authority - both formal authority and epistemic authority - then why would you go through this sham exercise? Just grade the kids, for heaven's sake.

What are the psychic consequences of being invited to self-assign a grade, going through it, giving yourself an A, only to be told in a post-conference that no, you actually get a B?

This isn't un-grading -- it's very clearly grading, and it seems kind of cruel, to boot. The professor asks the student to do a bunch of introspection and come to a conclusion about their performance as measured against a set of criteria, then tell them that they've over-estimated themselves. I am trying, but I cannot imagine a more disempowering pedagogical move.

This argument is circular. The issue under discussion is, "Who can best assess the performance of a student in a course"? The assertion that only the student can know how well the student is learning, as an element of the argument for self-assessment, begs the question.

The paradox of relativism - if evaluation models are all subjective and meaningless, what is there to "get"?

The inculcation of democratic thinking in children in a modern public classroom poses some interesting challenges. I've experienced on many occasions students pointing out, correctly, that it is (minimally) ironic that I advocate revolutionary ideas while operating within a rigid hierarchy that organizes my position relative to the students, and my administration's position relative to me, in clear and certain terms. Trying to transmit the value of liberatory ideology in a modern classroom is an instance of trying to destroy the master's house with the master's tools, and as you point out, the reactionary class has taken notice and is, increasingly, coming for teachers with the backing of both state and extrajudicial violence.

I don't mean to be a pessimist. But any discussion of transformative action in the classroom has to be couched in an understanding that our social context is broadly regressive.

In "Theory as Liberatory Practice," hooks talks about her experience engaging theory as a child - specifically, that confronting the patriarchy in her home with criticism resulted in being told by her mother that she was "losing her mind" and in line for punishment. There's an analog here: educators aren't children, but the capitalist power structures in education infantilize us, and put us in a position similar to the one hooks describes. And capitalism makes our position all the more precarious. Anyone who has been probationary, or who works in a "right to work" state, has experienced the anxiety that comes from realizing that your job is entirely dependent upon the school and district administration being, at least, agnostic regarding your existence and continued employment. Finding space for liberatory practice can be challenging, and being right isn't always a protection.

Your bio (Nick) says you were in the classroom for ten years, if I'm remembering correctly. For context, what kind of classroom did you teach in? Public or private? Are you still in the classroom?