A unilateral grading contract guarantees students a course grade of B based solely on completion of specified activities, not on judged writing quality¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r1 · q1
Currency · newest study 2009 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person
Evidence quality · No study behind this claim is a peer-reviewed article with a DOI: it rests on a source with no registered publication record (a web page, book or unpublished report). It is kept because 2 design pages cite it; treat it as a lead to check, not an established finding.

Subclaims¶

q1 i? Students earn a B entirely on conscientious effort and participation in the contract's listed activities, with the grade independent of the teacher's judgment of writing quality. → Danielewicz 2009

Evidence¶

Danielewicz 2009¶

Danielewicz, Jane and Peter Elbow. (2009). A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching. College Composition and Communication 61(2). https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/23309

q1 · i? · design · r1

The authors' description of the central provision of the contract they use in first-year writing courses: "you earn the grade of B entirely on the basis of what you do", with higher grades resting on judged quality. No empirical data are reported; this is the authors' account of their own practice.

"Thus you earn the grade of B entirely on the basis of what you do—on your conscientious effort and participation. The grade of B does not derive from my judgment about the quality of your writing."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The authors report that fourteen weeks of contract-required work improves writing quality enough to warrant a B — related
• The hybrid grading contract helps resist grade inflation by reserving grades above B for exceptionally high quality — related
• Two writing teachers report that decoupling evaluation from grades under a grading contract lets them give blunter feedback that students can weigh, an account with no data reported — related
• Contract grading yields more total work from students, especially skilled writers who previously skipped learning tasks — related
• Transcript grades are a blurred currency of performance information, partly due to grade inflation driven by student pressure — related