Communicating the Purpose of Grades

The grades you collect today…are they measuring academic content knowledge gained? Behavior compliance? Or something else?
What do you tell your students the grades measure? Do you tell them anything at all or do you assume they know?

The grades that are served as a final judgement of success in the class…how much of that grade is based on content acquisition and how much is it based on behavior compliance? Does the recipient know the difference? Should they?

If it matters for future causes, how can you help to make the difference more clear and the final grades more useful?

Or do the final reports even matter?