Slide Rubrics

Intent

Grade students based on the movement they made up or down rubric levels rather than the rubric level on which they end.

Problem

Standard rubrics evaluate students based on current ability, but do not reflect growth over time.

Solution

The first assessment of a skill or outcome is evaluated as usual against a rubric. However, subsequent evaluations are based on a ‘slide rubric’, where grades are assigned based on movement from the past performance.

For example, instead of assigning an assessment of “Proficient” a grade of B, one student could be given an A for moving up from “Partially proficient”, while another could be given a C for moving down from “Advanced”.

Applicability

This play works in a course with multiple rubric based assessments over time, where the main focus of evaluation is on growth as opposed to competency.

How to Implement

In the first assessment of a skill, use a normal rubric (as an example consider a 4 point scale with the categories “Emerging”, “Developing”, “Proficient”, “Advanced”). In subsequent evaluations, grades are assigned to rubrics based on previous performance. For example, the rubric for a student who scored “Developing”, may award a C for “Developing”, A for “Proficient” or “Advanced”; while the rubric for a student who scored “Proficient” may award a C for “Proficient” and and A for “Advanced”.

The final evaluation of a student is based on the final assessment, but that assessment is calibrated on a sliding scale based on the student’s prior performance, so that points are awarded not just for achievement, but for demonstration of growth and improvement throughout the course.

As a concrete example taken from Mahmood 2019: The slide rubric for an assessemnt may set the cutoff for earning an A at “advanced” for those who scored proficient in a previous assessment, but at “proficient” for those who scored developing previously.

See Also

List any other related plays here as a bullet list of chapter links. Then remove this text.

Source

Source: Aguire, B. “Rubrics for teachers: Differentiation & the slide rubric.” 2012. Retrieved from https://owlcation.com/academia/Student-Success-via-Effective-Differentiation-The-Slide-Rubric

Described by: Brian Harrington (http://brianharrington.net)

References

Mahmood, Dina, and Hugo Jacobo. “Grading for growth: Using sliding scale rubrics to motivate struggling learners.” Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning 13.2 (2019).

Community Discussion

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