Performance Assessment and Rubrics

Assessing Student Performance

After giving students a real-world problem or task to perform, how do you evaluate it?
With fact-based assessment, you can objectively score students' responses: They either selected the correct response, or they didn't. With performance assessment, however,
your subjectivity becomes a key issue in scoring students' responses. To overcome this subjectivity, many educators develop a set of guidelines that they can use to evaluate the quality of students' work. These guidelines, or rubrics, help to increase the objectivity with which students' performance is evaluated, making the assessment fairer for students.

Let’s define a rubric as an evaluation tool, or scale, used in performance assessment to evaluate students’ abilities in performing a real world, or authentic, problem. It is similar
to the performance checklists that have been used in business and marketing classrooms
and by student organizations for competitive purposes for many years; however, a rubric provides much more information than a “Yes or No” checklist or a scale with Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor ratings. It qualifies what constitutes an excellent or poor performance by providing descriptions of observable actions or attitudes demonstrated by students.

Teachers who have worked with and used rubrics in the classroom on an ongoing basis have found that they are excellent communication tools. Rubrics spell out the critical components of a task for teachers and students; they identify specifically what students
must do for successful performance. Teachers can then tailor their instruction to focus on what is important to know and be able to do, and students know in advance what factors
will be evaluated on the test and what standards they must meet. Everyone can be working towards the same goal.

The performance activity and evaluation scale have to be carefully designed so that they complement, or reinforce, each other. The real-world problem that is presented cannot exceed the factors addressed in the evaluation scale and vice versa. Both must focus on
the primary, or key, elements of a skill. Let's look at an example.

A teacher provides instruction about how to write business letters that are informative in nature. For evaluation, the teacher will give students a task for which they must write an informative business letter. To grade the letter, the teacher will rate it according to a predetermined scale that describes the criteria, or qualities, that are expected to be included in informative business letters. The teacher would not ask students to write persuasive letters or evaluate the informative letter using a scale for persuasive business letters.

Rubrics should be introduced to students at the beginning of instruction for a performance indicator so that students have a clear understanding of what you expect them to do to earn an A. Also at this time, you could review examples of exemplary performance—video of an oral presentation, an outstanding job interview, or last year's winning written project—so that students have a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes excellent performance. The goal is to lead students toward outstanding performance rather than pushing them away from poor work.

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