Rubrics

For my unit, I had to create a rubric for a personal narrative students wrote. I tried to make it very fair and clear, but as I began to grade, I noticed how cut and dry they are. You either get a high score or a low score. It seriously seems like there is no inbetween.

As I read the article, "The Trouble with Rubrics," I can see some of the problems there are. Alfie Kohn quotes Linda Mabry by saying that "rubrics 'are designed to function as scoring guidelines, but they serve as arbiters of quality and agents of control' over what is taught and valued." I definitely see this problem! Later in the article, it says, "...students whose attention is relentlessly focused on how well they're doing often become less engaged with what their doing." I think students worry too much about their grades that this distracts them from putting forth a 100% learning effort. Instead of understanding the educational value behind a project, students often try to get the work done as quickly as they can and follow a checklist of requirements--this just doesn't seem right!

Now the question to ask ourselves as educators is what can we do to get away from this way of thinking? What do you all think?