Please note: you cannot annotate the grading agreement image below, but you can annotate the Grading Agreement Questions and Answers section with questions, comments, or requests for clarification.

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You can make your own copy of the checklist above which can help you to keep track of which assignments you’ve turned in by clicking here. You can edit this copy and no one will be able to see your edits (including me).

Grading Agreement Questions and Answers

What is a “grading agreement,” and what am I “agreeing” to, exactly?

Many courses in college use point systems or percentages to determine your final grade. Each assignment might count for a certain number of points (i.e. 20 points out of 100), or a certain percentage of the total grade (i.e. 15% of your grade). Instructors might additionally use rubrics (or scoring guides) to spell out the expectations of quality attached to a particular assignment, and then grade the assignment according to those expectations.

This class takes a different approach to grading. Rather than assigning a certain point value to each assignment or making each assignment worth a particular portion of your grade and then scoring your work based on my assessment of its quality, you earn your grade by turning in work and meeting verifiable minimum qualifications (i.e. word count, MLA format, the presence of additional sources, etc.). These minimum qualifications are not based on my assessment of the quality of your writing.

You are “agreeing” to choose a grade, and then to meet the requirements in that category to earn the grade that you select.

Why don’t you just grade like a normal professor?

There are a few reasons that I prefer to grade based on the verifiable labor that you do rather than my assessment of the quality of your writing:

• We live in a society where the impact of things like systemic racism and wealth inequality give students very uneven access to opportunities, mental and physical healthcare, and other resources that are important to meet basic human needs. Assessment researchers like Asao Inoue write about how labor-based grading systems like the one that I’m using can help to close some of the equity and opportunity gaps that other forms of grading can exacerbate. Work like this has led me to conclude that if I grade the quality of writing that you do in my class, I am partially grading the quality of opportunities that you had before my class.
• Educational researchers like Alfie Kohn discuss how grades tend to force students into favoring an easier task over a task that might be better for learning. This is very understandable to me. The whole “if at first you don’t succeed” thing is all fine and good, but some students need to maintain a certain GPA to do things like maintain their financial aid. I hope that a system like this encourages you to try hard stuff and know that you’re still going to achieve the grade that you want or need even if it doesn’t turn out the way that you expected.
• Lots of schools—generally, schools with a lot of wealthy students—don’t have grades, or they have more “narrative” evaluation processes (i.e. you still get feedback, but not letter grades). More and more medical schools are moving toward a pass / fail model. CUNY gave a pass / fail option to students during the pandemic last spring. This leads me to believe that grades are more of a gatekeeping practice than a practice with some kind of inherent meaning and value.
• When I was an undergraduate, college life was full of norms and values that I didn’t understand and that no one explained (this is sometimes called “the hidden curriculum”). I didn’t know that if I went to my professors’ office hours and asked for help a lot, this might positively impact my grade. But even if someone had told me this, I might not have never felt empowered to take up space like that as a first-year student. I hope that a labor-based system like this makes this class more transparent rather than conferring additional benefits to students who already understand unwritten rules that never get explained.

If you hate grades so much, why grade at all?

My ideal circumstance would be that you come to class because you really want to be here, and we work together on stuff that you care about, and you all help each other to see things about your writing that none of us can see on our own. Unfortunately, we live in a world where first-year composition is a required class, and I have to turn in a grade for your transcript at the end of the semester. This is a compromise.

What happens if I want to make an A, but I don’t satisfy every requirement in the column?

The Grading Agreement Checklist above breaks down exactly how many assignments you have to complete to earn a grade in a particular category. To keep track, you can make your own copy (which only you will be able to see) by clicking here. We will check in at the midterm and before the final to confirm your grade together, and you can also check in with me at any time if you’re confused about where you stand. But if you’re turning in work and it meets the minimum requirements (I’ll tell you if it doesn’t), you should know exactly what you’re on track to make at all times.

Does this mean that you’re not going to give me any feedback?

Nope, it definitely doesn’t mean that. You should expect to get a bit of feedback on each reflective journal entry. I will tell you if you haven’t met requirements for the discussion captain assignment. I will read every single thing that you write, and I will sometimes respond to annotations. I will give you more extensive feedback on the Critical Essay because this is a project that you’ll be working on throughout several drafts You’ll be hearing from me a lot, because engaging closely with your writing is a part of my job that I take really seriously (and that I also enjoy!).

I think that this system helps me to give you more honest feedback without needing to use it to “justify” your grade. That said, I’m not going to go through each of your essays with a fine-toothed comb and tear them apart for “grammar mistakes” (and doing the reading for this class should tell you why this is the case!) According to lots of research, grading this way is a bad idea about writing assessment that doesn’t help your writing to improve.

How is this whole “peer review” thing going to work? Can I do that asynchronously?

Yep. I would love it if you can come to class for peer reviews, but I get that that’s not going to work for some of us. So to do this, you’ll just have to submit a form on the website (I will link to them in the reading schedule). A copy will go to me (so I can read it and give you credit), and then I’ll send it to your peer(s). You’ll have a week to do this, so if you miss class, you can complete it on your own time when it works for you as long as you do it sometime during that week so that your feedback can be useful to your peer partners. If you’re very ill or there’s some other kind of bad circumstance, just be in touch with me. We’ll figure something out.

I’m worried / confused / scared / anxious / etc…

We will be addressing your questions a lot in the first few weeks of class, and I will update this policy and this page to reflect any changes and challenges that come up (as well as talking to you about them in class).

Please let me know what your concerns are (I won’t be offended!) When I have graded like this in the past, I inevitably miss something that students point out to me. It’s a weird way to grade, I know.

Plus, while I’ve taught a lot of writing before, and while I’ve also taught online, I am new to teaching during a global pandemic (aren’t we all new to that????) I am flexible about how to make this work for all of us in an unprecedented and extremely stressful moment. I mostly just want you to stay on track with this class, to practice, to come to class prepared, and to give your best effort to the work that you decide to complete for the grade you want to earn. I want to enjoy reading and engaging with writing that you hopefully actually enjoyed doing! If you’re doing those things, there should be absolutely no reason that you don’t make the grade that you’re targeting.