Creating & Recognizing Quality Rubrics

Rubrics are no longer a new idea. Their capacity to assist students in acquiring complex reasoning proficiencies and skills has been repeatedly studied and well documented through research. However, rubrics can only have this effect if constructed well and used judiciously, and it is Judith and Jan's intent to help teachers do just that. Creating & Recognizing Quality Rubrics and accompanying CD-ROM draws from over 20 years of the author's direct experiences with developing rubrics and performance tasks, devising interesting ways to use rubrics as teaching tools in the classroom, employing rubrics to score thousands of pieces of student work for classroom and large-scale assessments, and working with teachers to make their rubrics more instructionally powerful. The world of performance assessment and rubrics has changed significantly in a short time. Research on the effects of using rubrics instructionally in the classroom has led to increased emphasis on a variety of formative assessment practices. More teachers are actively using performance assessments in the classroom in an effort to evaluate important content standards. And, most significantly, especially for students, the education community is beginning to balance its reliance on external assessment systems with an understanding of classroom assessment's instructional power. This book and CD-ROM help teachers sift through all available rubrics to find those that will work best; explain how to create a rubric; and include chapters on related topics necessary to maximizing student success: recognizing quality performance tasks, using rubrics instructionally, and communicating with parents about rubrics.