Learning to grade

What I find most troubling about teaching writing is in fact the fact that I must assign a concrete score to the student's paper, and that it is completely subjective. While there are several different methods of doing so, I still think the entire process is terribly unsettling.

After reading Inoue's article in which he states he feels similarly, I felt more comfortable with the method he suggests. Allowing for students to assess themselves as writers and become more involved in their education of writing would certainly create a less traditional classroom setting, but how would it work in a real life situation? I have to wonder whether this almost gives students too much credit for what they should be learning, after all, aren't we the ones who are supposed to be doing the teaching? It is our jobs as instructors to give the best guidance we can for each student to achieve his or her own goals for their writing. This is where I feel I align with Inoue and his pedagogy. It is indeed up to the student to set goals for him or herself in order to get the most out of the writing experience. However, in the same line of thought, I find myself disagreeing with Inoue as he states it is not his job to grade, because he has already asked his students to do so. And that the idea that he should grade, as the instructor, is the traditional way for teaching, period. There's something off about his logic regarding this traditional system. And so I find myself aligning and disagreeing with Inoue and his communitative pedagogy.

I have to say that I was completely blown away by the idea of contract grading. While it reminded me of rubric grading (in that you as a student begin a paper with 100 points, and for each category your paper satisfies you get so many points), but seemed a bit careless. To day that every student could receive the same grade across the board, without regard to individual writing or background, seems insensitive. This particular method lacks the ability to evolve for the need of the student, as the community-based method does. In a way contract grading is more for the sake of the grader, rather than those being graded. While there are those who modify the contract as per student's request, it still seems like it has been invented for the ease of the instructor.

While I have issues with both, I think the overall criticism I have of each method is that they both wish to define what "good" writing is. Students evaluating each other's work might struggle with the ability to make this definition in the community-based method, while students in the contract method only wish to fulfill the basic requirements to get a passing grade with "good" writing, relative to whatever letter grade they are shooting for.