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Using Rubrics to Guide Evaluation

A rubric is a scoring guide that describes the requirements for various levels of proficiency when students respond to a learning task, open-ended question, or stated criteria.  The purpose is to answer the question, "What are the conditions of success and to what degree are those conditions met by the student involved in the task?" Thus, a rubric enables teachers to clarify to students what is expected in a learning experience and what to do to reach higher levels of achievement.

Characteristics of Rubrics

Effective Rubrics:

• Reflect the most significant elements related to success in a learning task.

• Enable students and teachers to accurately and consistently identify the level of competency or stage of development.

• Help teachers grade students' work more accurately and fairly.

• Encourage students' self-evaluation and higher expectations.

• Are shared with students prior to beginning the task so they know the characteristics of quality work.

• Provide more information than just a narrow checklist of skills and attributes.

Guidelines for Tasks and Scoring Rubrics for Gifted Students

• The task and rubric should provide the opportunity and even demand that students transform and apply knowledge, skills, and dispositions.

• They must not just apply knowledge and skills as demonstrated or regurgitate information from class or resources.

• The task and the rubric should require more sophisticated and abstract thinking that might be required of average or struggling learners. Does the task require the student to move beyond a specific incidence, to see beyond concrete examples and illustrations?
  ~Concepts, principles, and generalizations should reflect the highest level of understanding and application possible for these students.

• The product required should reflect greater complexity.
  ~ The product should reflect the use of more complex resources
  ~ It should reflect thinking about more complex issues.
  ~ It should reflect more complex issues.

• The task and the rubric should call for integration of many ideas.

• The task and the rubric should reflect the integration of concepts and skills across disciplines.
  ~ It should also be multifaceted.

• The task and the rubric should require gifted students to make greater leaps in their thinking.
  ~ The products should reflect the students' success in making less obvious connections between ideas.
  ~ The task should lead them to see relationships between concepts and across disciplines.
  ~ The products should encourage the students to translate and transfer ideas from one situation to another.

• The tasks should present "fuzzier" problems with the process of solution open to determination by the student.

• The tasks should give students greater independence in planning, designing, monitoring, and evaluation of the product.

• Scoring rubrics should evaluate the student's ability to design, monitor, and evaluate.

• The tasks for gifted students should be more open-ended, allowing students more freedom in formulation of the problem.
  ~ The tasks should provide more opportunity to develop criteria for appropriate solution or resolution.
  ~ The tasks should give greater decision-making, planning and implementation freedom.
  ~ The tasks should encourage multiple approaches to the solution.

Rubrics to Use with Gifted Students

Rubric for Deductive Reasoning Evaluation
Creative Thinking Skills Evaluation Rubric
Goal Setting Evaluation
High Order Thinking Skills Evaluation Rubric
Divergent Thinking Evaluation Rubric

All italicized text is from  "Effective Practices for Gifted Education in Kansas" manual.  You will be able to access the document in its entirety at the Kansas State Department of Education (www.kansped.org-available October 2008)

Permission granted for use by Bruce Passman, State Director, Kansas State Department of Education 120 S.E. 10th Avenue, Topeka, Kansas 66612

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Nancy Bosch

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Last update 01/13/07 04:54 PM
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