Is there fairness in assessment?

I felt drawn towards Inoue's community-based assessment practices as I read through his article. Assessment in his class becomes an organic part of students’ writing and learning. Students arrive at the criteria for “good” writings through discussions, negotiations, and consensus, so they can claim the ownership of the criteria and are more willingly to abide by them as they assess their peer’s writings and their own. It seems to have clear advantage over conventional assessment that a teacher for the most part imposes a standard upon the students and the students write to please the teacher in order to get a good grade.

My main question initially was how Inoue’s practice assesses activities that are not directly related to writing, but nevertheless need to be taken into consideration while grading-- activities such as class participation, absence, tardiness, etc. Inoue didn’t address those issues in his article. Does he also let his students assess those elements? I doubt that is doable.

Reading Elbow’s response to Inoue, I also started to be skeptical about the “group value” that Inoue’s assessment method seems to be based upon. While a group value appears to be more progressive and democratic than a single person’s value, it in many cases does not prove to be more right than a singular value. A student in Inoue’s class who does not agree with the majority will probably be forced into silence and will either conform or get a bad grade.

Elbow’s “contract grading,” combined with a class voting for excellence, seems to be a good solution. It grades both students’ effort and the quality of their writing. The effort part is based on set class policies and shouldn’t be too controversial. The voting involves multidimensional values and is arguably more fair than if the final grade is based on the teacher’s single judgement.