Grades Based On Rubrics In The Math Classroom?

 

This past Thursday, our school had a one hour professional development on using rubrics in the classroom by a gentleman from British Columbia, Canada.  It was interesting since he indicated that grades K to 9 will be graded according to a standard type rubric using emerging, developing, proficient, or advanced but not the upper grades.  

Since I've spent most of my teaching career working as a high school math teacher, I'm used to giving grades based on a percent. Some schools I've worked at have regulations like you can't give anything less than 50 percent or if a student is getting too close to the maximum number of absences, you have to allow them to go to study hall to make up the time and other things but I'm not used to thinking in terms of using rubrics for a grade. This morning, I realized that in general, we grade elementary students using some sort of rubric but usually based on satisfactory or needs improvement or something similar.  

We learned to develop rubrics based on the verbs used in the state standards for our grades while using a list of similar words to help write what one is looking for.  He suggested using no more than three for each assignment and to get it down to one word for each cell to make it easier for students.

I semi like the idea of using this type of rubric for grading but it would take a while to implement for so many reasons.  One has to get both the parents and students to accept that this is a valid way of assessing and might even be more accurate than the percentage scale.  In addition, it is hard to determine valedictorian and salutatorian based on this type of rubric. I don't think colleges and other post secondary schools are set up to use a rubric since most still operate using the standard grades with percentages for admission, for scholarships, and so many other things.

State testing has been using this type of rubric but it used well below, below, proficient, and advanced when reporting results back to the school.  I don't think I've taught at a school that has used the overall results to change instruction or to scaffold instruction for students.  I do know one teacher who analyzed the type of questions used, what standards they addressed, and focused her teaching the following year using that. Only problem with that - the state changed out questions and standards so it didn't work well.

I will be honest with you. I teach at a small school with 27 students who are about evenly divided into two groups.  The elementary room has grades K to 5 while my room has 6 to 12.  Both teachers teach all the subjects. It can be difficult to make rubrics for each grade in each subject since that takes a lot of time.  Yes, we had training but who knows if they will give us time to practice or even decide to implement it.  

It seems education gets these ideas that last a couple of years before they are supplemented by some new idea.  I'd love to hear what you think about this.  Please let me know.  Have a great day.