Colleagues who have been involved in Teach For America have written powerfully and elegantly about the harm done to learning by insistence on prioritizing summary evaluation above more important aspects of teaching. See, for example, AjGarciaSecondPaper. People who have been through both sides of this experience will recognize how stupid and harmful to serious educational effort the forces of occupation are.

I have been working, with great interest and satisfaction, on editing your writing. You have been writing, actively, and to the purpose. Over the last ten days alone, more than 30% of you have done some editing of your work.

Nonetheless, the schedule of law review selection, preparations for EIP, and other completely non-educational activity, joined to the current madness for avoiding real engagement with student work by substituting prompt grading of true/false and multiple-choice exams, imperatively demands that I turn in a grade, summarizing your performance in the course so far. For almost a quarter of you, that means turning in a grade before I have published the first edit on your second essay. In order to submit grades now, I have spent most of this week rereading every essay in the wiki, to provide a snapshot evaluation of how matters stood as of Thursday night, June 21.

• Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = TWikiAdminGroup

Statement on Interim Grades

These grades should not, in my professional opinion, be coming out now. Many people are still actively revising their work, and I have not yet pushed into the wiki my editorial comments on work done or revised since the end of the term. Your collective engagement with this work remains high: I have been reading with great interest the writing that has been done here on summer work experience, the Supreme Court nomination, and other subjects. In my view, at least another three weeks of commenting and revision should now occur. They will occur, at least on my side, but some peoples' motivation will inevitably slacken once they have received what they consider either a "good enough" or an "unfairly bad" grade.

My professional judgment as your teacher is being overruled in the interests of the law review selection process. Later, at the appropriate time, I will be happy to explain more fully who has said what, and in what tone of voice I answered. For now, it's enough to say that the interests of students who have applied to be members of certain law reviews will be harmed more by my insistence on the right way of teaching than you will be harmed by receiving "interim grades." Or so it appears to me, after several conversations with relevant parties.

The grades you are receiving are likely to change. I don't mean that every grade will change. In many cases, the revisions you have done since I last reviewed your contributions to the wiki will not alter my calculations of your effort, commitment and improvement. But in many they will. I expect to submit a comprehensive round of grade changes reflecting all the work done in the wiki through July 10, on or by July 25. Work done after that point will be reflected in later individual adjustments.

All grades should be ignored. These grades should be even more ignored than most. I'm going to keep reading and commenting, and I hope you will keep thinking, reading and writing. Fools who keep score will do what they do, but it should concern us as little as possible.

-- EbenMoglen - 23 Jun 2010