Bahrick (1992) argued that Conway, Cohen, and Stanhope's (1991) failure to find a strong relation between grade and very-long-term retention may, in part, be due to the learning schedules underlying knowledge acquisition in different types of knowledge domains. As an alternative it is proposed that grade is a multicomponent measure that is sensitive to both the amount of knowledge acquired and a learner's ability to use that knowledge-the learner's understanding of the acquired knowledge. A new analysis shows that the course-work component of grade reliably predicts very-long-term retention of knowledge, whereas the final examination component does not. Course-work marks are more sensitive to knowledge acquired and are therefore more closely related to the kind of tests used by Conway et al. to assess long-term retention. Examination marks, by contrast, are more sensitive to the ability to use knowledge, which was not assessed by Conway et al.
