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*...research shows three reliable effects when students are graded: They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in the learning itself. *Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they're doing is exact and objective.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rubrics.htm downloaded on 7.15.09 *...research shows three reliable effects when students are graded: They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in the learning itself. *Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they're doing is exact and objective. *As long as the rubric is only one of several sources, as long as it doesn't drive the instruction, it could conceivably play a constructive role. *students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they're doing often become less engaged with what they're doing. *What all this means is that improving the design of rubrics, or inventing our own, won't solve the problem because the problem is inherent to the very idea of rubrics and the goals they serve. *Neither we nor our assessment strategies can be simultaneously devoted to helping all students improve and to sorting them into winners and losers. *We have to reassess the whole enterprise of assessment, the goal being to make sure it's consistent with the reason we decided to go into teaching in the first place.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rubrics.htm downloaded on 7.15.09 *...research shows three reliable effects when students are graded: They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in the learning itself. *Rubrics are, above all, a tool to promote standardization, to turn teachers into grading machines or at least allow them to pretend that what they're doing is exact and objective. *As long as the rubric is only one of several sources, as long as it doesn't drive the instruction, it could conceivably play a constructive role. *students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they're doing often become less engaged with what they're doing. *What all this means is that improving the design of rubrics, or inventing our own, won't solve the problem because the problem is inherent to the very idea of rubrics and the goals they serve. *Neither we nor our assessment strategies can be simultaneously devoted to helping all students improve and to sorting them into winners and losers. *We have to reassess the whole enterprise of assessment, the goal being to make sure it's consistent with the reason we decided to go into teaching in the first place.

Whether it's said about the graphic design grid, Picasso's cubism, or a Zen book of koans, once the student learns the rules, they can throw out the book. The value comes in the contrast of expectation with the arrival of the truly new.

As John Maeda recently noted, the missing partner to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) is IDEA (Intuition, Design, Emotion, Art). As a person who was trained on both sides and now works and plays across STEM and IDEA, I feel strongly that our education programs need to combine both in order to create the T-shaped people that can go out and make a difference in the world (Principle 6).

The tools are there, what we need now is more design education, more understanding about how to present information, and how to tell compelling, relevant stories that matter.

"What good is a dream house if you haven't got a dream?" -Julius Shulman