Why Use Instructional Rubrics?
Rubrics have become very popular, a recognizable trend in education. Experienced teachers, however, have seen numerous trends rise and fall over the years and quite reasonably ask, “Why bother with this one?” My research and experience provide several answers. Instructional rubrics are easy to use and to explain. Rubrics make sense to people at a glance; they’re concise and digestible. For these reasons, teachers like to use them to assess student work, parents appreciate them when helping their children with homework, and students often request them when given a new assignment. After using a rubric for one project, a student remarked when assigned a second project, “You know, one of those things with the little boxes would be handy right now.” This is not an uncommon request from students experienced with rubrics. Instructional rubrics make teachers’ expectations very clear. Traditionally, we educators have kept our criteria and standards to ourselves. The answers to the test were sec
