History of Rubrics Handouts

1. Rubric
Etymology
In education
terminology, scoring
rubric means "a
standard of
performance for a
defined population".
The traditional
meanings of the
word rubric stem from "a heading on a document
(often written in red — from Latin, rubrica), or a
direction for conducting church services".
Root: Red, red ochre, red ink. Usage: Rubric refers
to decorative text or instructions in medieval
documents that were penned in red ink. In modern
education circles, rubrics have recently (and
misleadingly) come to refer to an assessment tool.
The first usage of the term in this new sense is from
the mid-1990s, but scholarly articles from that time
do not explain why the term was co-opted.
 As shown in the 1977 introduction to the
International Classification of Diseases-9, the
term has long been used as medical labels for
diseases and procedures.
 The bridge from medicine to education
occurred through the construction of
"Standardized Developmental Ratings. "
These were first defined for writing
assessment in the mid-1970s and used to train
raters for New York State's Regents Exam in
Writing by the late 1970s.
 That exam required raters to use
multidimensional standardized
developmental ratings to determine a holist ic
score.
 The term "rubrics" was applied to such ratings
by Grubb, 1981 in a book advocating holist ic
scoring rather than developmental rubrics.
 Developmental rubrics return to the original
intent of standardized developmental ratings,
which was to support student self-reflec t ion
and self-assessment as well as
communication between an assessor and
those being assessed.
 In this new sense, a scoring rubric is a set of
criteria and standards typically linked to
learning objectives. It is used to assess or
communicate about product, performance, or
process tasks.
Scoring Rubrics
 Descriptive scoring schemes developed by
teachers or other evaluators to guide the
analysis of the products or processes of
student’s effort (Brookhart, 1999 as cited by
Moskal, 2000)
 Teachers can determine what level of
proficiency a student is able to perform a task
knowledge of a concept you can define the
different levels of proficiency for each
criterion (Airasian, 2000)
Several common features of scoring rubrics can be
distinguished, according to Bernie Dodge and Nancy
Pickett:
1. focus on measuring a stated objective
(performance, behavior, or quality)
2. use a range to rate performance
3. Contain specific performance characterist ics
arranged in levels indicating either the
developmental sophistication of the strategy
used or the degree to which a standard has
been met.
4. allow assessment to be more objective and
consistent
5. focus the teacher to clarify his/her criteria in
specific terms
6. clearly show the student how their work will
be evaluated and what is expected
7. promote student awareness of about the
criteria to use in assessing peer performance
8. provide useful feedback regarding the
effectiveness of the instruction
9. provide benchmarks against which to
measure and document progress
References:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/rubrics/weblessons.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubric_(academic)