Response to "The Trouble With Rubrics" by Alfie Kohn

I have to admit, Alfie Kohn’s article “The Trouble with Rubrics” bothered me a little bit.  In the article, he argues that it’s not a good idea for teachers to use rubrics to assess their students.  His major reason is that rubrics cause students to work with the ultimate goal of getting a good grade rather than to just do good work because they want to.  As a result, the quality of work suffers.  Kohn quotes an article by Linda Mabry of Washington State University.  Her point is that in terms of writing assignments, the standards that rubrics hold to tend to focus on spelling and organization, so the for a student to get a good grade, creativity and thoughtfulness take a back seat to grammar and form.

            I have two major issues with Alfie Kohn’s argument.  The first is that he seems to have an extremely idealized view of students.  For the student who wants to do work hard and do the best job he or she can do, I can completely see how a rubric might get in the way and be somewhat of a detriment to the type of work they might produce.  However, most students are not purely intrinsically motivated like this.  A lot of students need more structure, and need to be told what steps they need to take to complete the assignment and yes, get a good grade.  I was somewhat amazed at the part of the article when Mr. Kohn said that if a rubric must be used, it should just be a guide for the teacher, and shouldn’t be given to the students.  If students don’t know how the assignment is going to be graded, how are they supposed to know what to do?

            My second issue with the article is that Kohn offers no alternative to rubrics.  I understand that that is not really the point of the article, and perhaps he does have other ideas.  Perhaps he’s written another article about those ideas.  However, I don’t see how you can write something saying how rubrics and grading are a bad idea, and not offer any other concrete ideas at all.  I can definitely see his point about some of the flaws with rubrics, but his problems with rubrics really seem to apply to any sort of grading.  I’m not sure how school, in the traditional sense, can exist without grades.

          I would really like to agree with Alfie Kohn.  I think grading in music is probably even more difficult than grading in writing or math.  This is because music is an art, and art is inherently subjective in some sense.  As someone trying to become a music teacher, I would love to have a good alternative to using rubrics or other types of grading.  Perhaps I could simply judge each student on an individual basis based on his or her work and improvement on that work.  This certainly sounds more appealing than using a rubric, but I’m just not sure if it’s practical.  It’s one of the many things I’ll find out when I start teaching.