Another strategy for redefining the purpose of grades is to hand over the function of grading to the students themselves, as often as is practical.

Self-evaluation has a powerful effect on student well-being and performance. 

Simply having a voice in such an important matter as grades boosts student self-confidence and stature.  It increases the sense of ownership the student has in her own learning process. Furthermore, the experience of being trusted to determine her own grade trains her in how to be trustworthy; it encourages a sense of purpose and responsibility, which makes the learning process more meaningful.

Self-evaluation teaches students to internalize the nature of excellence. 

Rather than expecting a teacher to tell her “good job” or “this needs improvement”, a student who regularly self-assesses begins to know what a good job looks like without any external prompts.  The internalized ownership of what excellence looks like is an essential aspect of being a responsible and self-directed student.

Self-evaluation boosts student metacognition.

By assessing her own work, a student starts to become more self-aware, more conscious of what she has and has not yet mastered.

This is true for both curricular goals and the cultivation of desired character traits.  Having a student reflect on and evaluate intangibles like self-directedness and how well she collaborates and engages in the classroom boosts her self-awareness of those traits.  These self-evaluations, in turn, can lead to powerful conversations, particularly during grade conferences.

There are some aspects of a student’s performance that she knows better than you do.  Allowing a student to express how well she thinks she did in areas such as participation in a study group, self-directedness, or engagement in discussions gives her the power to describe how well she is doing at the job of being a student.  It also gives you insights into her experience and provides valuable information in helping her to improve her performance.

Student self-evaluation frees up teacher time for other, more productive activities. 

If students can effectively assess their own work, much of the time teachers spend grading can be used to better purpose.  Giving feedback can become much more focussed and dramatically less time-consuming when it is divorced from evaluating every aspect of the students’ work.

Self-evaluation improves the relationship between student and teacher. 

Giving students the responsibility of evaluating themselves rearranges the unspoken power structure in a healthy way.  You are no longer doling out points, a process that is fraught with real and perceived injustices and abuses of power. This can reduce the students’ pervasive sense of powerlessness, which, in turn, reduces the power struggles that often result.  Instead, students see themselves as more self-reliant and responsible, and grades evolve into more natural consequences of the work they are doing. A result of this shift is that there are dramatically fewer legalistic arguments about grades.

The idea that students are capable of evaluating their own work and having a say in their own grades is a difficult one for many teachers to accept.  They believe that students will game the system and be dishonest in their assessments. And, to be fair, unless the classroom culture changes so that self-directed learning replaces doing school, students will continue to game the system.  The goal is to change the classroom culture and foster the ability to self-evaluate honestly and effectively as an integral part of the learning process.