Re: Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment

[aburke5054@aol.com]

The first chapter was pretty weak.  Rubrics are an efficient means of 
applying consistent scoring rules in large-scale assessments.  There's 
an important place for that.  Rubrics also have an important place in 
day-to-day lessons in the writing classroom, but there is clearly room 
for other things as well.  Ms Wilson seems confused about that.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Gloria Pipkin <gpipkin@knology.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:57:06 -0500
Subject: [arn-l] Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment

 DISCLAIMER: I acquired and edited this book for Heinemann.

 Maja Wilson, a brilliant young high school teacher in Michigan, has a 
provocative new book that challenges one of the current sacred cows of 
assessment -- the use of rubrics to judge writing. The title is 
Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment. You can read a chapter online 
at http://books.heinemann.com/products/E00856.aspx

 Alfie Kohn wrote the foreword to the book, and the March 2006 English 
Journal has an essay based on his foreword, titled "The Trouble with 
Rubrics." It's available online at NCTE only to subscribers of EJ, but 
Alfie has posted the essay to his web site at

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rubrics.htm

Maja also has an article in the latest issue of Rethinking Schools 
about ETS's computer-based writing assessment, titled "Apologies to 
Sandra Cisneros": 
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/20_03/apol203.shtml

Gloria
gpipkin@knology.net