Why are rubrics important?

Rubrics are important because they clarify for students the qualities their work should have. This point is often expressed in terms of students understanding the learning target and criteria for success. For this reason, rubrics help teachers teach, they help coordinate instruction and assessment, and they help students learn.

Rubrics help teachers teach

To write or select rubrics, teachers need to focus on the criteria by which learning will be assessed. This focus on what you intend students to learn rather than what you intend to teach actually helps improve instruction. The common approach of "teaching things," as in "I taught the American Revolution" or "I taught factoring quadratic equations," is clear on content but not so clear on outcomes. Without clarity on outcomes, it's hard to know how much of various aspects of the content to teach. Rubrics help with clarity of both content and outcomes.

Really good rubrics help teachers avoid confusing the task or activity with the learning goal, and therefore confusing completion of the task with learning. Rubrics help maintain a focus on criteria, not tasks.

Rubrics help coordinate instruction and assessment

Most rubrics should be designed for repeated use, over time, on several tasks. Students are given a rubric at the beginning of a unit of instruction or an episode of work. They tackle the work, receive feedback, practice, revise or do another task, continue to practice, and ultimately receive a grade—all using the same rubric as their description of the criteria and the quality levels that will demonstrate learning. This path to learning may be much more cohesive than a string of assignments with related but different criteria.

Rubrics help students learn

The criteria and performance-level descriptions in rubrics help students understand what the desired performance is and what it looks like. Effective rubrics show students how they will know to what extent their performance passes muster on each criterion of importance, and if used formatively can also show students what their next steps should be to enhance the quality of their performance. This claim is backed by research at all grade levels and in different disciplines.

Resources:

P. Black, D. Wiliam, (1998), Assessment and classroom learning, Assessment in Education, 5 (1998), pp. 7–74

O.C. Hafner, P. Hafner, (2003) Quantitative analysis of the rubric as an assessment tool: An empirical study of student peer-group rating; International Journal of Science Education, 25 (12) (2003), pp. 1509–1528 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950069022000038268

E. Panadero, A. Jonsson, (2013) The use of scoring rubrics for formative assessment purposes revisited: A review, doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2013.01.002