Students and teachers alike can benefit from rubrics
1/13/00
Joyce Kasman Valenza
Back at school, did you ever wonder why your own paper got an 85 when Suzie’s got a 94? Did you ever ask your teacher exactly why? Was the answer a little vague? And did that grading process really help you understand how you might improve your work next time around?
Around five years ago, if you asked me what a rubric was, I would have been puzzled.
Now it seems I talk about rubrics all day long.
What is a rubric? Rubrics are scoring tools built on graduated scales for each of the various, measurable subtasks or behaviors that really count in a student project. Rubrics unravel the mysteries of grading by laying out the specific criteria clearly and objectively. In a multimedia project, for example, students may be assessed on their use of media to convey a message, as well as their grammar and spelling, thesis, evidence, conclusion and the depth of their research. Rubrics help teachers move away from subjective grading by allowing them and others, including students themselves, to assess work based on consistent, often agreed upon, and objective criteria.
“Rubrics improve communication between teachers and students,” said Andi Stix, an educational consultant whose book A Rubric Bank for Teachers, will be published by Teacher Created Materials this summer. Stix noted that rubrics helps students understand exactly “what is expected of them when they are writing a paper or designing project. When the criteria are laid out and negotiated, students perform to a higher level.” In the past when a paper said “good job” the student had to wonder, “Good job of what?” What exactly does that mean? Why did I get a 94?”
Stix advises that when designing rubrics, the communication should flow both ways. “Once the project has been explained in the great detail, it is essential that the teacher turns the focus off himself and on the students,” said Stix. “Ask the students, ‘What elements do you think I will be looking for to give you a grade?’ One student might say, organization, another might say that we did a good job on our research. And another might say, well this is a persuasive essay. Did we use good persuasive language, did it grab and hold the class’ interests?” This process is called negotiable contracting. After the negotiation, says Stix, “the teacher examines the negotiated criteria and may say, ‘Well, we’ve generated eight points, lets circle and use our favorite four or five. I like all these points, but there is one more point I want to add as a teacher.’”
Stix notes that the process of bringing out the “essential criteria” results in greater understanding of the assessment process and joint ownership. “Clear expectations have been discussed, allowing students to perform at a higher level,” said Stix.
If rubrics produce such good results in learners, why didn’t we use them years ago?
“We have finally decided that we have to educate all kids,” said Doug Johnson, Director of Media and Technology at the Mankato (MN) School District. “And kids progress at different rates.” Johnson explained that rubrics are tools for assessment rather than traditional evaluation. “Assessment is a process in which you help people move along. In an evaluation you’d tell a student you are a “b” student and you’ll likely always be a “b” student.” This was convenient back in the days of sorting people into categories. But society now expects us all to have good problem solving skills. “Instead of doing an evaluation,” said Johnson, “which merely gives us a snap shot of all kids with an instrument like a bell curve, now we try to give all kids a level of confidence. With rubrics we give them a path to travel. They can start at zero and see how to move to levels 1,2, 3 or 4. Rubrics, with their graduated performance indicators, give students tools to help them grow to become more proficient at the task.”
And rubrics are not only for students. Johnson is the author of the Mankato Scale, a set of rubrics designed to help students and teachers assess and improve their technology skills in such areas as word processing, telecommunications, presentation, video production and technology integration.
“The greatest professional development experience I’ve had was developing rubrics with a group of my colleagues,” said Joanne Troutner, Director of Media/Technology at the Tippecanoe School Corporation in Lafayette, IN. Troutner believes that the popularity of rubrics is related to the push for meeting standards in the content areas. “It forced us to spend time thinking about what we think is important when we teach and what is important in the project that the students learn. What do we want them to take away? Are we assessing that? And if we think that it’s important, how do we know it when we see it?”
Troutner says that one of the skills she looks for in 7th graders is their ability to work in cooperative groups. “We never actually assessed the group piece of their projects until we started writing it into our rubrics,” said Troutner. “When we specifically wrote in such criteria as no bickering, no whining, or brings materials to class, it was like a light bulb for our students.” Troutner observed that rubrics help students developed their own peer and self-evaluation skills. With objective criteria laid out in front of them, they were no longer looking at the work “as my best friend’s project.”
Not all rubrics are good rubrics. “The best rubrics,” said Johnson, “are co-designed between student and teachers. We want students and teachers to become self-assessors. We want to get people to look for self-actualization-- to work to please themselves. We want everyone to ask, “how can I reach level 4?’”
Teachers need good samples to guide them in developing rubrics for their classes and the Web is a rubric gold mine. But when examining model rubrics on the Web, Johnson advises teachers to avoid “tools that use meaningless terms like substandard or exemplary, rather than real observable, quantifiable criteria. For example, if the assessment is for word processing, observable criteria might include: Can they cut and paste? Can they format a document? “ Troutner agrees that the Web hosts examples of both good and bad rubrics and recommends that teachers new to the process of writing rubrics examine the rubrics attached to WebQuests.
Though the experts are generally against using prefabricated rubrics for tasks, examining Web models can be a great help in seeing how other teachers and school districts have broken down criteria for various types of student products. Of course, these models should be adapted to the particular needs of particular students. These Web sites offer a variety of approaches, from the rubric banks of large school districts like Chicago or Fairfax County Public Schools, to rubrics for teacher self-assessment, to checklists students can use independently when writing essays. And yes there are even rubrics for assessing rubrics.
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