I have tended to be a hard you-know-what when it comes to grading, although perhaps this is unfair of me since I did always do pretty well in school (and sometimes without huge amounts of effort, although I'd like to think that I worked pretty hard). Still, I have always tended to associate grades with performance rather than effort, and I think that watered down grades are actually worse for the self esteem in the long run. I feel best about the A's that I earned from hard work and a high quality performance, rather than those I received in courses that were relatively easier for me than for others or from teacher/professors who were widely known to give out A's rather liberally. Plus of you raise a child's grade purely for their self-esteem, you run the risk of them coming across a stricter grader/judge later, and them being crushed by feedback that is less "friendly".

That being said, I also feel that certain obstacles, such as severe learning disabilities, should be taken into consideration when grading, and that coming up with a grade for an individual student is particularly difficult. I had this issue as a TA for elementary French 1, which was taught entirely in French and started at Bonjour. Certain assignments were then, by default, next to impossible for a student to be 95% accurate on, and yet could still be outstanding for their level of competency. This is why I had to do some adjustments at the end of the semester,once all the grades were in, in order for letter grades to not be too skewed by number grades that were less than stellar.

For that reason, I am a fan of curving when there are enough students to do so. Your case is trickier, however, and if I were you I would try to see if I could find a specific standard to go by (ie what constitutes an A for a student with autism in such and such a subject). Perhaps there are some special education training materials that can give you some guidance?

I'd also be interested in seeing others' responses.

FC

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I did a little research on the ADDitude website and came across this book 100 Ideas for Supporting Pupils with ADHD .

I hope this helps.

Dena

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