Creating and Recognizing Quality Rubrics

Rubrics are a powerful tool in the quest for greater student learning. Rubrics help everyone engaged in education–teachers, students, parents and others–define in detail what it looks like when students are proficient. Teachers can use rubrics to plan instruction, provide feedback to students, and determine how students are progressing toward mastery. Students can use rubrics to develop a vision of quality, assess their own strengths and areas needing improvement, and revise their own work to meet standards of quality, all of which give them the power to take control of their own learning.

But rubrics have to be good ones to have these effects. This book helps teachers choose or develop sound instructional rubrics, use rubrics effectively with students to maximize learning, convert rubric scores to grades, and communicate with parents about the use of rubrics in the classroom. It also includes a description of what a quality performance task looks like, because without a good task, even a good rubric will not produce desired results.

The authors, Judy Arter and Jan Chappuis, speak from direct experience in examining hundreds of rubrics for classroom use, developing rubrics for classroom use and state assessments, using rubrics in the classroom to help students learn, and speaking with teachers, parents and students about rubrics.

This book aligns with and supplements two Educational Testing Serviceresources: the video Designing Performance Assessments for Learning and the book Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right–Using It Well, Judy and Jan are co-authors of these products.

Judy Arter brings a national reputation for assessment expertise and more than 30 years of experience in professional development to this interactive training. She has developed state and district assessments, directed large-scale writing assessments, developed numerous assessment training materials, and conducted hundreds of training sessions for educators across the country.

A former elementary school teacher, Jan Chappuis has worked at the district, regional and state levels to develop curriculum and strengthen teaching and assessment practices. She currently works with ETS, developing materials and offering training in the field of student-involved classroom assessment.