I teach a couple master's level courses as an adjunct one semester a year and I've used ungrading before. The author is so busy virtue signaling that she makes it sound as bad as possible. She also handles it differently than I do.

I usually only use it on one or two of the biggest assignments of the semester. I ask the students to submit what they think their grade should be and their rationale to back it up. students can then resubmit their assignment and I'll take a second look and adjust the grade if they've put in the effort and improved it based on the feedback they've received. Oftentimes I find that students grade themselves harder than I would. There's always a couple jackasses that try to take advantage of the situation, though, but they ultimately get the grade they deserve with an explanation as to why they got that grade, and every assignment is graded and students know what grades they get after the assignment is graded.

Having students grade themselves is essentially an extra assignment, forcing them to reflect on their work and grapple with the concepts.

This works well for me but for the instructor who wrote this article it's a different story--she teaches undergrad English. Most kids in undergrad English are there because they're required to fill an English Lit credit. The students in my courses are working professionals who fork over cash because they genuinely want to be there and further their careers.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this teacher is that she tries to play therapist and decide how peoples backgrounds, which she knows nothing about, should play a role in what grade they get. That's absolute commie bullshit and is sadly par for the course in most of education right now. Ungrading can actually be an effective strategy in the right setting.