The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Real fairness in assessment ecologies is constructed with students and does not need extra things to make up for the fairness that the ecology already lacks. What labor-based contracts assume is that all labor counts and all labor is equal when it comes to calculating course grades.
Asao Inoue
Collage of James Baldwin and Black Lives Matter protestors
Labor-based contract grading seeks to level power dynamics among academic hierarchies and to create a relationship of mutuality that disrupts white supremacist logics that position students and teachers within the schema of an efficient transaction. On the contrary, labor-based grading makes space for, and values, the particularities of student experience by refusing the standardized one-size-fits-all rubric of white supremacy.
Ryan Ikeda