Rubrics

A rubric is a scoring guide. It organizes criteria that describe what students need to complete for an assignment, and it measures the levels of proficiency of student work. Rubrics can be used in any content area. They are time consuming to create, but they allow students and parents to know exactly how a teacher will grade an assignment.

Rubrics can be used by teachers for:
1. Student self-evaluation
2. Peer evaluation
3. Teacher assessment

When teachers design specific performance criteria, students know how they will be evaluated. Rubrics allow students to better understand the meaning behind their grade. If students know exactly how their work will be evaluated, they are more likely to produce higher quality work. Rubrics allow students and parents to see specifically how a teacher arrived at a specific score. In addition, rubrics give teachers well-defined criteria for areas in an assignment that are subjective, such as artwork or style.

For educators the best part is that once a rubric is created, grading goes much faster. Fewer written comments are needed on products because the rubric's descriptors can be circled. Circling comments takes much less time than writing them.

There are several types of grading rubrics. They include:
1. Scales
2. Checklists
3. Analytic Rubrics
4. Holistic Rubric
5. Generic Rubrics and
6. Task-Specific Ruberics.
Two of the six rubrics are explained as:
Holistic Rubrics list the expectations and rate different levels of proficiency. The student work receives a single rating. This rating is an “overall ranking” for the quality of his/her work. Many state writing tests use a holistic rubric and assign a number for the quality of a student writing prompt.

Analytic Rubrics list the criteria on a grid. It has a rating scale that clearly shows the level of proficiency at the top. Each criterion, usually on the left column, tells what the teacher focusing on to assess the product. Each criterion has a descriptor for each rating scale level.

Rubrics are designed to be fair and to allow both the student and parent fully understand how a educator is assessing a test or homework assignment.