Rubrics appeal to teachers and students for many reasons. First, they are powerful tools for both teaching and assessment. Rubrics can improve student performance, as well as monitor it, by making teachers’ expectations clear and by showing students how to meet these expectations. The result is often marked improvements in the quality of student work and in learning. Thus, the most common argument for using rubrics is they help define “quality.” One student actually didn’t like rubrics for this very reason: “If you get something wrong,” she said, “your teacher can prove you knew what you were supposed to do!”
