The Trouble with Rubrics

In his article, The Trouble with Rubrics, Alfie Kohn writes:

Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they're doing is exact and objective. Frankly, I'm amazed by the number of educators whose opposition to standardized tests and standardized curricula mysteriously fails to extend to standardized in-class assessments.

My take on rubrics is similar to Kohn's. I take my objections a step further and argue that rubrics tend to 'dumb down' education by creating a condition of establishing minimum criterion for success, a condition leading to minimum effort and performance at the level of desired achievement. The rubric suggests that all one needs to do to achieve is what is listed on the rubric for performance rather than working to extend one's own engagement in an inquiry to untried, challenging levels. Addressing this point, Kohn writes:

Just as standardizing assessment for teachers may compromise the quality of teaching, so standardizing assessment for learners may compromise the learning. Mindy Nathan, a Michigan teacher and former school board member told me that she began "resisting the rubric temptation" the day "one particularly uninterested student raised his hand and asked if I was going to give the class a rubric for this assignment." She realized that her students, presumably grown accustomed to rubrics in other classrooms, now seemed "unable to function unless every required item is spelled out for them in a grid and assigned a point value. Worse than that," she added, "they do not have confidence in their thinking or writing skills and seem unwilling to really take risks."

In the end we are quickly becoming a society that requires instructions for everything. Is this the result of trying too hard to make education "scientific?"

Zoundry

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