Parents understand expectations and assessment criteria. When students can articulate to their parents (before, during and at the end of the task), what the standards of performance are, a clear and positive message is received. Parents generally want to support their child's learning and feel helpless, sometimes, because they are unsure of what open-ended tasks are intended to teach. Student rubrics remove the educational jargon yet still describe meaningful learning. Many teachers find rubrics and anchor papers useful during parent conferences as they review a  particular student's work.

Give students a checklist of points/ key words that they should have included in their work.  they can then use this to set improvement targets.

After comparing the effects of self- and peer-assessment on the writing performance and the rating accuracy of the participants, peer-assessment, however,turned out to be more effective in improving the writing performance of thestudents than self-assessment.

Even if the learner is honest and capable of accurate self-analysis, the choiceof response will inevitably reflect each individual’s interpretation of whatthe statements entail. One learner may interpret the statement ’I can describemy home to him’ as involving a brief description of the external appearanceof a house, while another may think that a full description of the internallayout with all the furniture is also required. If the first learner answers ’Yes’and the second learner answers ’No’, then the teacher has no insight, via thisformat, into what these learners are capable of

However problems can arise if members of the group do not contribute equally to the process and required outcome. Self and peer assessment has been advocated as one means of overcoming the problem of `free riders'.

when students and their peers are involved there are many more opportunities to share and receive feedback.

using rubrics to establish “performance benchmarks” for the “behavioral objectives” appropriate to each year in the program.

accurately measuring the specific entity the instructor intends to measure consistently student after student

Bias can also creep into assessments and erode accurate results

Will the users of the results understand them and see the connection to learning?

Who will use the results to inform what decisions?