Motivation: While it’s true that many students, after a few years of traditional schooling, could be described as motivated by grades, what counts is the nature of their motivation. Extrinsic motivation, which includes a desire to get better grades, is not only different from, but often undermines, intrinsic motivation, a desire to learn for its own sake (Kohn 1999a). Many assessment specialists talk about motivation as though it were a single entity — and their recommended practices just put a finer gloss on a system of rewards and punishments that leads students to chase marks and become less interested in the learning itself. If nourishing their desire to learn is a primary goal for us, then grading is problematic by its very nature.
Not all high-achieving students actually have a passion for learning in a sense that ungrading really only works if a pre-existing drive to want to learn and grow in a holistic sense exists. If not all the classes are ungraded and the ungraded class allows the student to assign themselves a grade, they will put less effort towards the class with the self-assigned grade because they know its not being directly measured to a high benchmark in the way that other traditionally graded classes are.