What We Really Value

As useful as they have been, the great weakness of departmental writing rubrics lies in what they leave out. They present a handful of inarguably important criteria by which writing should be evaluated, but they omit dozens of other criteria (such as "interest," "tone," or "commitment") by which any rhetorical performance is also likely to be judged. They achieve evaluative brevity and clarity, but in so doing, they surrender their descriptive and informative potential. In short, traditional rubrics and scoring guides prevent writing teachers from telling the truth about what they believe, what they teach, and what they really value in student writing.

Bob Broad is associate professor of English at Illinois State University, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing assessment, research methods, pedagogies of literature and composition, and other aspects of English Studies.