Using Rubrics to Assess Student Progress

Aspen gives your school the ability to use rubrics as tools to measure student performance. A rubricClosed a structured set of grading criteria. For example, an English rubric might contain a criterion for reading comprehension, grammar, and writing, or reporting standard, is a structured set of grading criteria. Elementary schools often use rubrics to grade students for term report cards. An elementary school’s report cards might contain a rubric for English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Gym, Art, and Music.

Each rubric contains its own set of criteria. For example, an English rubric might contain one criterion for reading comprehension, another for grammar, another for vocabulary, and another for writing.

You can also determine the actual grades teachers can give for each criterion in a rubric. This is called a rubric rating scale. For example, an elementary school might allow teachers to enter:

  • M = Meritorious
  • A = Average
  • N = Needs improvement

To create rubrics to use for report cards:

  1. Define the transcript columns that will contain rubric grade values. For example, if teachers enter standards-based report card grades for each quarter, be sure you set the column types for the following grade columns to Rubric: Q1 grade, Q2 grade, Q3 grade, and Q4 grade.
  2. Create rubric rating scales to determine the actual values teachers can give to students for each criterion of a rubric.
  3. Create the rubrics and their criteria.
  4. Attach the rubrics to the appropriate courses in your school’s schedule. For example, you attach the Science rubric to the Science course.
  5. Enter grades for rubric criteria for students.
    Note: Your district can still use rubrics to track student progress, even if you do not have standards-based report cards. Districts can create rubrics and attach them to courses for teachers, or teachers can create their own reporting standards in the gradebook. Entering scores for each reporting standard criteria is a great way to track student progress in meeting standards and determining which instructional practices are working for a teacher, and which are not.