Note:  Last week I received a copy of the In Transition journal while attending the New York State Middle School Conference in Watkins Glen, New York.  I came across a great article about rubrics that I would like to share with everyone.  

-Paul Richmond
 E.T.C.

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I have the privilege of having experiential moments in both middle-level theory and practice, all within a matter of hours.  Prior to teaching my evening undergraduate Middle Level Education Theories and Practice section at a local college, I tutor two seventh grade students, working on everything from writing organization to cleaning out chaotic book bags.  Besides being a rewarding experience, I would be lying if I also didn’t admit that I enjoy the endless anecdotal fodder these students bring to my undergraduate class.

I have one theme in my classes, which I imagine is quite common in most education professor repertoires.  Regardless of the issue, I always ask students to attempt to find a meshing of the theory and actual daily practice.  A critique of many educational programs is that they are taught in isolation from actual American public classrooms, leaving many education students and current educators to dismiss educational theory and research with a simple, trite line:  that might be great on paper, but it certainly wouldn’t work in MY classroom.

I mention this issue because I was fortunate enough to have a very enlightening experience occur during my final session this semester, having met with one of my seventh grade students a mere hour before the class.  This was a seemingly basic session in which we practiced organizing an introductory paragraph, and then proceeded to numerically place handouts in a binder for the looming “binder check” that was occurring the following day.  Before leaving, I asked “Nick” if he had received his science research paper back from his teacher, as we had spent significant time during our sessions working to research, write, and format a 3-5 page cited document on the Whooping Crane (an endangered species).  This had been a joint English-science project orchestrated between two team teachers and certainly was a wonderful interdisciplinary approach to research.  With a grimace, Nick produced from his backpack the paper, with a two page grading rubric stapled to the front.  Flipping right to the end to see the final grade, I was quickly aware of why Nick was apprehensive to share his score.  Nick scored a 73% on the paper (which counted in two classes, twice in each grade book).  Each point was accounted for, as I quickly scanned to ensure there was not an error in point tabulation. 

This is a good time to note that Nick is dyslexic and has recently been diagnosed with dyspraxia, both of which certainly impede his writing abilities.  He has a very thorough IEP document and teachers that work very well together to implement Nick’s services, but to say that Nick struggles with writing is an understatement.  He has access to a laptop and relies quite heavily upon it for even the smallest writing assignments.  It is also important to note that Nick is an extremely hard working, diligent student who wants to succeed and will devote hours to formulating a short answer question.  As you can imagine, he spent exponentially more time researching and writing this paper, both with me, his resource room teacher, his classroom teacher, and working at home.  Nick’s disabilities, coupled with the onset of adolescent apathy, have severely decreased his motivation to write.  However, when he was working on this assignment and following the detailed directions given to him, there was an indefinable spark that kept him motivated.  He seemed quite proud of his writing and research and took extreme pride in producing a four-page paper at the end of this process, at one point even stating, “I feel like I’m in college.” 

Flashing forward to see this grade and his defeated disposition, I couldn’t help but take this personally.  After all, isn’t the purpose of my services to prevent such disappointments?  I asked Nick if I could take the rubric with me, intending to look at it more closely during a break in my evening class.  Having arrived early, I perused the document and could feel my blood pressure rising as I noticed the various points that were taken off of the final score.  Some examples:

Paper was wrinkled:   -1 point

Non capitalization of Whooping Crane:  6 times missed= -6 points

Name in wrong location:   -1 point

Citation page poorly spaced/improper citation:  -4 points

Granted, these were all clearly stated as objectives in the original document given to students before writing this paper (5 pages in total, I might add).  I would be hypocritical if I didn’t mention that while I was very proud of Nick’s accomplishment in writing the paper, the document was by no means perfect and certainly showed difficulties in syntax , organization, and sentence transitions.  Having taught ELA for many years, I roughly scored the paper to be in the low to mid “B” range, without even glancing at the extensive, detailed rubric.  But, the above point deductions lowered this paper to the aforementioned 73%.  Regardless of the grade, I now had a student who saw himself as a failure, despite his extensive hard work and dedication of time and resources.

Blacking out the name, I placed this rubric on the projector and solicited my students for unprompted feedback.    What was seemingly an anticipatory set for the lesson turned into a full blown discussion, complete with rage and pity.  Once I disclosed the background behind this student, the more immediate innocuous comments regarding the petty nature of this rubric were suddenly transformed to anger that a middle-level teacher would decimate a student’s motivation in the name of “following directions.”  Such begins the rubric debate.

Obviously, the purpose of rubrics (and detailed rubrics) is to ensure that students are assessed and graded fairly on the objectives of the assignment, without fear of a biased grader.  We all have distinct memories of a teacher giving us a grade, and our seat mate who the teacher clearly “preferred” always had a few more points.   Also, the rubric (especially when provided to students prior to handing in the assignment) allowed students to double check accuracy before submitting their “best work.”

Some of you might be reading this article and wondering why this would spark any conversation.  This teacher was clear in his/her expectations, provided a document outlining such, and is just following through on expectations that the student did not seriously take into consideration.  In this case, you might feel the teacher is being slighted in this article in that he/she is teaching the students the importance of double checking their work and following directions.  To this response, I return the rhetorical question:  What Exactly Are We Assessing When We Create a Rubric?  If the purpose of this paper was to see whether Nick could follow directions, his score certainly reflects that.  But, if the purpose of this culminating project was to see if research could be conducted and placed into a readable research paper format, I think the student certainly succeeded far beyond what his grade reflects.  If completing such an assignment at the middle level was also to build student confidence and a love of writing, I would say this assignment certainly failed.  Plus, I’m not sure if there is a great deal of carryover between smaller mistakes made in a paper and their reoccurrence in future assignments.  I assume this is debatable and depends upon this student.

Again, the interface of theory (detailed rubrics) and practice (what they actually assess and do for our students) is quite difficult.  But, I do believe that if the following parameters generated by my class are upheld, rubric grading will not pigeon hole our students and make such meticulous grading and expectations purely a number game.

Clear Objectives (and only a few!):  Rubrics should clearly be distributed to students prior to the completion of the assignment and should certainly indicate what they are looking to assess.  However, as a teacher, it is important to ask yourself what you are looking to assess.  Is it following directions?  Is it creativity?  Is it both?  If so, are there other things you can be more flexible on so that students can concentrate their energies on satisfying these requirements?  Can a future assignment then assess the remaining objectives?

Flexibility Even Within the Point Game:  Obviously, if something is worth two points, you can’t suddenly award more points than allotted. But, is there flexibility so that a student who wrote a wonderful paper but didn’t format correctly is not penalized more than a student who wrote a poor document, but could successfully manipulate paper margins? 

Provide Constructive, Useful Feedback (both positive and negative):  Will the student take anything away from your hard work and effort in grading besides the grade?  Can your thoughts be clearly stated (both positive and negative) so that there IS carryover between assignments?  Meaning, will the student remember to capitalize proper nouns in future documents, or simply see this as an isolated incident and repeat the mistake in a different class.

Certainly, there is not a solution for making 100% accurate assessment tools, but I do believe that by keeping our objectives simple and the success of the student at heart, we stand a better chance of using rubrics as a true teaching tool, rather than a detractor.

Thomas B. Reardon, MS
Elementary Dean/Adjunct Education Lecturer
Bethlehem Central School District (Delmar, New York)
The College of St. Rose (Albany, New York)

Thomasbreardon@yahoo.com