Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've found that in adulthood, I've still been judged on results, not effort, and unless we're going to drastically reduce student:teacher ratios, I don't see how you even could judge on effort. Some kids are going to learn more quickly than others, and for them, no effort will be required. At best you might assign them busywork, but that doesn't take effort just as it wouldn't take effort for an adult to do the work.
I also don't think effort can be recognised in some spaces; as a programmer, I often produce results that in the end, result in very few lines of code written, looking at the end result alone doesn't indicate much. It's like looking at a hand carved match-stick judging the result as low effort, not knowing that they started with a seed.
But yes, I don’t know how clear must I be about it—this is learning (for very young humans still psychologically immature), that’s exactly why it has to be spelled out that evaluation must be on the effort, precisely because it is never on the effort in any other activity in adulthood.