Community-based and contract grading superficially have a similar purpose: to diminish the role of traditional, performance based assessment in the classroom, along with students' attendant stress. However, I feel that they actually have quite opposite effects. While community-based grading uses an alternative method - peer review - to establish a benchmark of what "good writing" is, contract grading keeps the authority where it has always been, in the teacher. Within a community-based assessment actual letter grades are almost an afterthought. What counts is the work, and students seem to care about the work for its own sake. Contract grading, by contrast, puts all of its stress on letter grades (or, on one letter grade, the much-sought-after B). It seems to me that this creates less work for the teacher and less enthusiasm in the students. A telling moment in Elbow's article is when he says he must "badger and cajole" students to do the minimum amount of work for a B. Inoue's students, far from being badgered, seem to enjoy participating.
Another positive aspect of Inoue's community-based model is the extent to which the syllabus is built into it. It connects the process of assessment with the work of writing on a one-to-one level, which allows students entry into the process. While contract grading certainly demystifies the process of grading, it changes nothing in terms of the standard set-up of a syllabus: a list of assignments that must be completed for credit (with the student's involvement limited to the "completion" portion of the process).
Ultimately, I feel that the community model sets up a relatively radical dynamic in which everyone can participate in the classroom, while contract grading merely tweaks traditional methods enough to clarify the process without actually changing the classroom functionally.
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