Rubrics
Educational rubrics provide students with a set of guidelines by which they can measure their progress toward proficiency on specific, standards-based tasks. A typical rubric contains a scoring scale; states all the different major traits or elements to be examined; and provides criteria for deciding what score to assign to student responses or performances. Scales may be quantitative (for example, a score from 1 to 6) or qualitative (for example, adequate performance or minimal competency) or a combination of the two.
Rubrics provide students with important information about their progress based on specific criteria. The California Standards Tests—Teacher Guide for the California Writing Standards Tests at Grades 4 and 7, includes a sample rubric for seventh grade on pages 54-55. It also provides exemplars and teacher commentaries about how sample student work was scored relative to each level on the rubric.
However, rubrics are not useful in all cases and are used most often for grading writing samples or research projects, as noted in the Grades and effective standards-based reporting section in Recommendation 1—Rigor. On those assignments, rubrics provide students with specific criteria to meet at each score level but still allow room for subjectivity in the final grading. For example, a score of 4 on a writing rubric might include the following requirement: “Build a strong case supporting the thesis statement.” However, two different teachers could disagree on whether or not the supporting statements used by the student truly built a strong case. For this reason, it is important for departmental teams to practice using a rubric while grading sample student work together so they can calibrate their scoring practices and develop consistency school wide.
Rubrics are not used for most mathematics assignments, although they would be useful for projects that involve math. Similarly, science and history projects or research papers can be graded using standards-based rubrics, but should be developed by departmental teams and used school wide for fairness and consistency.
Related Links
- 6+1 Trait® Rubrics (aka Scoring Guides), Education Northwest, (Outside Source)
- California Standards Tests—Teacher Guide for the California Writing Standards Tests at Grades 4 and 7, (PDF; 390KB, 56pp.)
- Education Northwest: Creating Strong Schools & Communities, (Outside Source)
- Four-Point Scoring Guides, Document Library, TCSII.
- Grades and effective standards-based reporting, Recommendation 1—Rigor, TSCII.
- Rubrics and Evaluation Resources, (Outside Source), MidLink Magazine.
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