While rubrics are quite valuable when they are custom tailored to individual assignments, projects and items, they can be equally — though differently — valuable when they are reused over time, across assignment and even across grades (i.e., multiple simultaneous use). That clarifying value of rubrics (i.e., making criteria and performance levels more transparent) can guide both teachers and self-aware learners to focus their efforts on the most important lessons or KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities), over time. Growth in performance and learning can have greater and clearer meaning when the criteria are clear and consistent.
However, there are potential dangers in multiple use and reuse of rubrics. The more they are used, the greater those dangers, and the more important it becomes to anticipate them and prevent them.
When rubrics are reused over time or simultaneously across grades, they may be used for different assignments and that product different work products — to varying degrees. Thus, the traits listed in the rubric might apply to some assignments better than to others.
When rubrics are reused over time or simultaneously across grades, they may be used for different assignments and that produce different work products — to varying degrees. Thus, the performance descriptions of the traits listed in the rubric might apply to some assignments better than to others.
When rubrics are reused over time or simultaneously across grades, students may grow beyond performance levels described in the rubric (i.e., a ceiling effect). While this can help to show proficiency or mastery, it comes at the cost of providing direction to teachers or students about where they might best focus their efforts, next.
Alternatively, avoiding the ceiling effect might come at the expense of the earlier uses of the rubric (and/or use at lower grades). That is, students may fall short of any of the performance descriptors in the rubrics (i.e., floor effect), thus failing to earn any credit for the work they have done.
These issues are not limited to classroom use of rubrics. They also can occur when rubrics are used to score standardized assessments. While the benefits or rubrics are a bit different in these contexts, they are no less valuable, overall. In fact, rubrics are quite necessary in scoring standardized assessments. Clearly, communications to educators about the rubrics used to score student/test taker work product can itself be quite valuable, helping to align instruction and assessment. However, rubrics are necessary to score constructed response items because they are the mechanism for consistent scoring across the entire test population.
Of course, the obvious way to address these issues is to anticipate them and simply write better rubrics in the first place. Duh! Those among us who can see the future clearly have an enormous advantage in doing this well. But even that special group sometimes must use a rubric that was handed to them, fait accompli. Furthermore, making rubrics generalized enough to handle a broader range of assignments and work product can lead to vague rubrics that are difficult to use. Rubrics that can be used across longer spans of time — even years — can have unfortunate or inconsistent effects on how those scores are weighted relative to other scores, due to ceiling and floor effects. This can particularly be problem when rubrics are used simultaneously across grades.
One might simply be careful to construct new new assignments that match those previously scored with the rubric, but this limits flexibility to the point that it can even stymie the kind of continuous improvement the we all want our teachers, schools and tests to engage in — even when it is possible. Often, we want (or need) the benefits of a consistent rubric, even as the nature of the students and their work are developing over time. When rubrics are used simultaneously across grades, it is often simply necessary to for tasks to be different at different grade levels. These sorts of flexibility in rubric use require the rubrics to be a bit vaguer or more generic, so that they might apply to these broader uses. But that lesser specificity makes it harder to use the rubric well or consistently.
This leads to the necessity of supplementing rubrics with additional materials, so that they can be used consistently. This is particularly important when multiple teachers or scorers are using the same same rubrics.
Exemplars. The most common supplementary material is a group of exemplars. That is, authentic or simulated student/test taker work products that demonstrate what different performance levels look like for this particular task. Teachers and other scorers gain better — and more consistent — understanding of the rubric in this context by examining it in light of those exemplars.
Interpretative Guidance. More narrative or explanatory support can help teachers and other scorers to understand the thinking and/or appropriate shifts in thinking required to apply the rubric to different level of students learning (and/or development) or a new context. This is especially important when rubrics are reused across longer periods of student learning (e.g., years) or a new context or simultaneously across grades.
In the absence of supplementary materials, teachers and other scorers are often left to their own devices, and can respond inconsistently. Some may simply accept extraordinarily low or high scorers across the board. Some may simply ignore the traits/dimensions that seem less relevant. And some may substitute their own judgment (e.g., new traits) for what strikes them as an inappropriate rubrics — entirely undermining the rubric, itself. While some of these outcomes might seem acceptable, the fact that — without supplementary materials — they will happen unpredictably violates the fundamental purposes of rubric use.
In classroom use, this can demoralize students and/or leave them without direction. It can do the same for their teachers, who so often are invested in their students’ engagement in their classrooms. In the context standardized assessment, it can prevent the kind of scoring consistency that is necessary for standardized test scores to have any reliable meaning.