It is not unusual to conflate assessment of learners, but this is something very important for me as a teacher.  Learner’s assessment is more than just categorizing. Assessment associate’s learners performance to specific learning objectives in order to provide useful information and instructors about learning and teaching, respectively. Assessing learners, on the other hand, merely involves attaching a number or letter to an assignment, giving students only the most minimal scoring of their performance relative to a point of criteria or to their peers: “Because scores don’t tell you about student performance on individual (or specific) learning goals or outcomes, they shared little information on the maximum success of your course in helping learners to attain the specific and definite learning objectives of interest.  Scores are only the point of values of achievement or status, and as such may not provide very meaningful information about learners knowledge or skills, on how they have developed, and what still needs to improve.

Moreover, despite the small scores provide learners about their learning, grades do provide students with significant of their status – their academic rank, their credits towards graduation, their post-graduation opportunities, their eligibility for grants and aid, etc. – which can divert students from the primary goal of assessment: learning.

But of course, the change in the focus of assessment away from grades and towards more meaningful understandings of intellectual growth can encourage learners to attend to the primary aim of education.