Working with Rubrics

Posted by Tammy Andrew Jan 7, 2009

When I first took education courses, back in 1996, I was fascinated by rubrics. They made so much sense to use, but a challenge to create. I played around with them once I began my first teaching position and soon found several other teachers in the building who also wanted to use them but were struggling with how.

The more we played around with rubrics the better we became at creating and use them. Around 1999 or 2000 I learned that there were actually two types of rubrics, analytical and holistic, each with a different focus. What I was using were holistic rubrics which are easy to create and conveniently produce a traditional grade. Analytical rubrics are wonderful for skills assessment, which is now a state requirement for my technology courses, but are not typically designed to produce a meaningful percentage or letter grade.

My school district is now using analytical rubrics for school wide expectations for learning. Problem is that reporting the quality of a student's performance in a class is not easily handled by our grading software. I'd love to know if other districts are encountering this and how they are trying to solve the problem.