Have you heard the joke about the four teachers who walk into a rubrics bar? The first teacher asks the bartender for a holistic rubric with a four-point scale. “That’s a popular choice,” says the bartender. The second teacher orders an analytic rubric with five traits. “One of our favorites,” replies the bartender. The third teacher says, “Make mine a developmental rubric with six colored shot glasses.” “My pleasure,” comes the reply. When it's the fourth teacher’s turn to order, she says, “I’d like a single-point rubric, please.” The bartender looks perplexed. “I'm sorry ma'am,” he replies, “but you can't order that here. This is a rubrics bar.”
While the joke may or may not evoke a chuckle, we use it to make a serious point about rubrics. Let us explain.
What’s a Rubric?
A rubric is an assessment tool consisting of three essential elements: 1) a set of criteria aligned to learning goals; 2) a performance scale typically consisting of three or four levels, and 3) descriptors that differentiate the levels of performance on the scale (Andrade, 2000; Brookhart, 2013; McTighe & Frontier, 2022). As suggested by the joke, there are three main types of rubrics—holistic, analytic, and developmental. All three rubric types share these three elements but render them in different ways.
Two general types of rubrics—holistic and analytic—are widely used for both providing feedback and grading student products and performances. A holistic rubric provides an overall impression of a student’s work by considering all criteria simultaneously. Holistic rubrics yield a single score or rating for a product or performance. Figure 1 displays an example of a holistic rubric for a scientific investigation.
An analytic rubric, by contrast, divides a product or performance into distinct traits or dimensions and considers each independently. Thus, a separate rating is provided for each trait. Figure 2 presents an example of an analytic rubric for an oral presentation, showing three traits described across a 4-point performance scale.
Each identified trait in an analytic rubric is evaluated independently. As Figure 2 illustrates, a student may display a deep understanding of the topic but be weaker in their delivery—or vice-versa. Thus, an analytic rubric can provide more specific feedback to both learners and teachers to inform needed improvements.
A third type of rubric—developmental—describes growth along a fixed, novice-to-expert continuum, in which each level represents a key benchmark on the road to high-level performance. A familiar example can be seen in the sport of karate, where six different colored belts signify varied skills levels. Similarly, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ well-known set of performance descriptors is a developmental rubric that is used in world language courses to gauge a learner’s performance level and growth in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in the target language. It is worth noting that developmental rubrics are generally not linked to age or grade—they simply describe current performance levels.
The Problem with Single-Point Rubrics
In recent years, a related tool, known as a single-point rubric, has become increasingly popular with educators. Yet, as the “punch line” of the joke implies, it is actually not a rubric. Consider the following example of a single-point rubric (Figure 3) and see if you can tell why we make this point.
At first glance, the distinction between a single-point rubric and the other types of rubrics is not always easy to discern. It has to do with the focus on only one level of performance. As researcher Jarene Fluckiger (2010) explains:
The difference between a single and a multiple-point rubric is in the number of levels of performance described. The single point rubric describes only one level of performance, the proficient level. Therefore, the single-point rubric has only one set of criteria, or “one point,” and that is the list of criteria, which shows proficient competence appropriate to the grade or learning contect (p. 19).
As this explanation and the example in Figure 3 reveal, a single-point rubric only contains one of the three essential elements of a rubric: a set of criteria. It does not include a performance scale and lacks detailed, descriptive language to explain the criteria and differentiate levels of performance. So even though it may be a useful tool for some purposes, it is clearly misnamed. (A more apt name would be something like a criterion-based feedback tool.
Using Rubrics for Feedback
Rubrics can serve two general purposes: they can provide feedback (formative), and they can be used for evaluation (summative, for example for grading). To be most effective for either purpose, a rubric must include the three elements described earlier in the article. These elements are essential to providing effective feedback to both learners and teachers to guide improvements in learning and instruction.
To be helpful, feedback must be specific, descriptive, understandable to the learner, actionable, and timely (Wiggins, 2012). In other words, a rubric needs to yield information that describes students’ current levels of performance, reveals explicit areas of strength and weakness, and suggests or implies specific actions that can be taken to improve performance.
In their article “The Power of Feedback,” John Hattie and Helen Timperley (2007) describe feedback as the “second part” of teaching. The first part is teachers’ initial instruction to help students acquire new knowledge and skills, combined with assessment procedures to evaluate students’ understanding and level of mastery. The second part—feedback—relates to three major questions:
- Where am I going?
- How am I going?
- Where to next?
“Where am I going?” relates to the learning goals or destination. It tells students what they’re expected to learn and be able to do after engaging in a particular set of learning tasks. “How am I going?” describes the progress students have made toward those goals. In other words, it tells students exactly where they are on their learning journey. “Where to next?” identifies what actions students need to undertake to make better progress, and it clarifies what students need to do to achieve the learning goals.
A more recent study by Hattie and a team of colleagues (2021) asked more than 3,000 high school and college students which of these three feedback components they found most helpful in improving essays they submitted online. Not surprisingly, students consistently preferred the “Where to next?” information.
Well-developed descriptive rubrics, especially analytic rubrics like the one in Figure 2, are helpful for offering three different kinds of feedback: teacher feedback, peer feedback, and student self-assessment. The key is in the performance-level descriptions.
Rubrics support feedback because they turn what could be a 'judging' task into a 'matching' task.
Rubrics support feedback because they turn what could be a “judging” task into a “matching” task. In other words, when students and teachers use rubrics to provide feedback, they are not primarily judging or evaluating areas of strength and weakness but rather matching the work to the closest performance-level description. The advantage of full-blown rubrics for feedback purposes is that suggestions for improvement are indicated in the performance-level description for the next level of work. The feedback-giver can add individual comments as needed, of course, but the heavy lifting on the next step for learning progress is done by the rubric. Analytic rubrics are particularly useful for this task because they consider each of the salient traits, one at a time, allowing for more detailed feedback than the more general, overall descriptions found in holistic rubrics.
Developmental rubrics can serve as tools for feedback and improvement in a similar way. While a student’s present performance is noted by the associated developmental-level descriptor, the next level in the progression specifies the necessary skills needed to advance—and these become teaching and learning targets for subsequent instruction by the teacher and practice by the learner.
A One-Legged Stool
Advocates for the use of single-point rubrics make the case that they should be used as tools for feedback, not evaluation and grading (Fluckiger, 2010; Wilson, 2018). We have already noted that single-point rubrics contain only one of the three essential elements of a rubric: a set of criteria. Without a performance scale, it lacks the performance-level descriptions that are the basis for using rubrics as feedback.
As we saw, the performance-level descriptions support students and teachers in matching student work to a level of work and providing suggestions for improvement in the description of the next level of work. Without the descriptive scale, effective suggestions for improvement can only be made by students or teachers who have both a sure grasp on the content area and an understanding of how learning progresses in that area. That is basically unfair and unhelpful to many students. The lack of a performance scale also means that single-point rubrics are not able to function as a connector for students between their learning and their final grade, as true rubrics do.
While single-point rubrics may have some value, we think of them as a one-legged stool—it may get you off the ground, but it is far from being adequate. We believe the use of more detailed, descriptive rubrics are far superior tools for feedback. And that is our single point!
