Qualitative methods for defining and assigning letter grades on classroom tests were studied. A hierarchical letter-grade scale is described that combines teachers' judgments of the importance of subject matter concepts and their classification of assessment tasks as reflecting cognitive processing skills identified from recent research. Using this grade assignment procedure shifts teachers' thinking so that grades on summative classroom assessments reflect quality levels of student thinking instead of simply the number of points students attain. The model incorporates a teacher's perception of the level of thinking that a student must use to perform a task and the value a teacher places on successful performance. Combining the thinking skills and importance factors can be done by crossing the factors in a two-way table, which can then be used to organize tasks into testlets or subtests. Four possible teacher-specific grading models can be derived from the ways teachers associate grades with thinking skills and subject content. The method was tested with 5 statistics instructors using an existing test and with 2 instructors whose 48 students took an examination designed for the grading method. This approach to grading provides an interesting rationale and merits further investigation. Four tables present study findings, and six figures illustrate the discussion. (SLD)