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Wow…..Williams never fails to overwhelm me. By the time I finished this chapter, I wondered if you can take off points from a writing assignment for information overload. I think that there was a lot in this chapter that I’ll need to know for teaching; I just wish it wasn’t so long and drawn out.

I have been contemplating my feelings on rubrics and holistic scoring for years-- not months, days, or hours. I do not know how I feel about them. I think that they work better for other subjects, but yet how do you give a numerical grade (87/100) to a written assignment. For me, the problem lies in this—Every time I have used a rubric with my peers to assess a writing assignment, I tend to score differently than they do. And I don’t know why that is. Sometimes I am higher in my scoring, other times I am lower. When I ask why my scores differ, I am just told, “Because you aren’t doing it right.” Yet, how to do it “right” has yet to be taught to me.

I think this is why I question whether students can be effective evaluators of other students’ work. There are differences in how I see things and how another person see things, so how do we learn to reach the same conclusion? For example, in another class a group chose to explore the Batman graphic novels to illustrate a critical theory. That group felt that their chosen text was appropriate for the assignment. While I feel that graphic novels are excellent examples of writing and have their place among literature, I felt that their choice was completely inappropriate for the assignment. If I had to simply evaluate their choice of text, based on appropriateness, I would have given them a 1 out of 6, the group would have given themselves a 6/6, and other people in the class may have assigned a 3, 4, or 5 (based on their reactions to what we read). Who’s right?

Rubrics are a touchy subject with my mom. She’s been a teacher for over 30 years, and within the last 10 years, she has had to start using them in her classroom. She often refers back to a workshop she took on how to use them to evaluate student work, and how, within the workshop of elementary educators, scoring ranged for each example. Every time she uses the rubric for grading I can tell—and I don’t live with her or near her. I can hear frustration and exhaustion in her voice because, for her, rubrics are frustrating.

On the other hand, without rubrics, how do you score a paper? What really is the difference between a paper that gets an 87 and one that gets an 83? Where is the difference in the points? I am down to my last education class, and I don’t know how to do this….When will this be taught?

To me it is hard to define what makes good writing, because there is still a great deal of subjectiveness to it. While I may agree with you about the components that are present, I may still disagree with you about whether a paper is a 6 or a 5.

My search for “how to do it right” will continue.