American University in Washington, D.C., is sponsoring a multisession\u00a0seminar<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0next month aimed at getting faculty to battle against “white language supremacy” and consider “alternative” grading standards for students’ writing \u2014 such as “labor-based grading contracts.”<\/span><\/p>\n “Grading Ain’t Just Grading: Rethinking Writing Assessment Ecologies Towards [sic] Antiracist Ends” is scheduled for Feb. 1 and will be led by Asao B. Inoue, a professor from the University of Washington, Tacoma.<\/span><\/p>\n The seminar’s main session \u2014 “The Language Standards That Kill Our Students: Grading Ain’t Just Grading” \u2014 argues against “conventional standards in college courses that grade student writing by single standards.” Inoue will discuss how “white language supremacy is perpetuated in college classrooms despite the better intentions of faculty, particularly through the practices of grading writing.”<\/span><\/p>\n Three additional sessions will follow in succession:<\/span><\/p>\n The second-to-last session will look at “redesigning writing courses’ assessment ecologies in ways that reduce the negative effects of a single standard of writing” and “offer an alternative to such grading practices, labor-based grading contracts,” and other ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n The final session will include an activity that can be used with students that shows “how judgements [sic] are formed and how those judgements [sic] use a set of white racial habits of language, no matter who the reader is.”<\/span><\/p>\n Inoue is a professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences and director of university writing and UW’s Writing Center.<\/span><\/p>\n More about him from the\u00a0College Fix<\/a><\/strong><\/span>:<\/span><\/p>\n Inoue’s publications on writing assessments suggest that he sees subconscious racism in standards, due to white students consistently outperforming black and Latino students.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n “We must rethink how we assess writing, if we want to address the racism,” Inoue wrote in his\u00a02015 book<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0“Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future.”<\/span><\/p>\n In another\u00a0paper<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, “A Grade-less Writing Course that Focuses on Labor and Assessing,” Inoue argues that writing teachers should “calculate course grades by labor completed and dispense almost completely with judgements [sic] of quality when producing course grades.”<\/span><\/p>\n The College Fix said Inoue declined interview requests before and after Christmas, citing the holidays. American University also didn’t respond to requests for comment on the seminar, the outlet added.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat are the details?<\/h3>\n
\n
What did a national scholarly organization have to say?<\/h3>\n