If you’ve spent any time around an infant or toddler, you probably have a clear picture of how learning to walk goes. It looks something like this:

1. The baby crawls.

2. The baby pulls to a stand.

3. The baby becomes a toddler, taking steps while holding onto something.

4. The toddler takes a few steps without holding on.

5. The toddler takes steps fluently without falling too often.

My question is this: Is crawling what’s wrong with walking? Is crawling what’s missing from walking? Is crawling a failure of walking? Of course not! But a deficit approach to walking, applied to a rubric, might look something like this:

Deficit Rubric

Crawling is just a normal part of the development of gross motor skills. And so is the development of any skill or understanding. There’s a sequence or progression of all skills and understanding, just like there’s a developmental progression of walking. “Really not walking” and “crawling” may seem like subtleties, but the meaning in language of judgment versus the language of growth is enormous. The meaning doesn’t feel the same.

So why is it that there are still so many deficit rubrics like this walking one for assessing student work? Why do we write rubrics and grading scales that are oriented to what’s missing instead of where a student is on a developmental path? It’s true that many grading scales are written with categories of “beginning,” “approaching,” “meeting,” “excelling,” and this sounds incredibly growth oriented. But if we pull the curtain back and go behind the scenes to take a peek at the rubrics and other measures driving those grades, the substance behind those words on the scale still are often about what’s wrong. And guess what that means for the grading scales? It means they are actually deficit based, too. Here’s an example from our summarizing target:

Deficit Rubric

We can see from this example that the model, what we want to see, the “4,” was written first, and then each level below was written by chipping away at the “4” until a great deal is missing and you have a “poor” performance or product in the “1” column. Not very growth oriented, is it? And, yet, this is a frequent approach.

Not only is this type of rubric not growth oriented, it doesn’t communicate steps to arrive at some target performance or product. It isn’t helpful for a rubric to include mostly of, “Do less of what’s wrong.” A mastery rubric speaks in terms of what the student did do instead of what they didn’t do. Just like walking. It’s definitely easier to write a deficit-based rubric, but to what end?

Adapting the rubric from above, we can take a mastery approach that’s descriptive of stages, like benchmarks, rather than 1, 2, and 3 simply having less of what is in the 4.

Mastery Rubric

Instead of being calibrated on an exemplar and every other level describing “what’s wrong,” the mastery version is all about “what’s next.” Even in the column the farthest to the right, there is a “Next, I need to.”

I have words in the header of the rubric, and there isn’t a symbol attached to the columns, but there could be if needed for a gradebook. To be clear, we really don’t have to add a symbol for every single assignment–and we shouldn’t. Many of these assessments can be for feedback only. Paring down the number of grades that we give makes life easier for you, is healthier for your students, and in no way precludes the ability to assign a grade for a report card or transcript.

When you do add symbols to rubrics, try to make them more growth oriented, implying steps or milestones, not traditional 1, 2, 3, and 4. Changing the symbol doesn’t change the meaning, but it’s awfully tempting for people to break out the calculators when there are numbers there, and this is a massive mistake. Using words (one, two, three, four) or Roman numerals can be helpful for removing the calculator temptation. Even though symbols don’t change meaning, when you change the meaning, it can be useful to follow with a change in the language to send the message that, “traditional grading has left the building.” Words like “first step,” “second step,” and so on may reinforce an understanding of the positive approach we’re taking. Again, only changing the symbol isn’t what makes the real change.

Here's another example “rubric reno,” this time from a writing target on organization:

Deficit Rubric

Mastery Rubric

Next Level with Hyper-rubrics

Rubrics offer the opportunity to share so much more than only words with students. With tabs and bookmarks and all things Google, the options for sharing resources with our students are endless. By simply adding hyperlinks, we can bring a wonderful new power to our rubrics (Gonzalez, 2021). Imagine all of the “next, I need to” cells in the rubric being linked to a resource.

With hyperubrics, we have placed directly in students’ paths resources on paragraph breaks, chunking, headings and subheadings, foreshadowing, self-assessment, organization, point of view, and revising. Your own mini video lectures, existing articles, examples of student work, all make for a vastly richer rubric that’s more than a sentence, but a learning tool itself, that gives specific direction, and opportunity for self-direction.

Eliminating grades could prevent many of the negative outcomes associated with grading, but tracking student learning remains necessary for most of us. Fortunately, rubrics provide a solid solution for measuring learning, while deemphasizing grades. Most rubrics require a “renovation” that shifts them away from a focus on what's wrong to a growth-oriented conversation about what’s next. By scaffolding self-directed learning through the use of mastery rubrics, and minimizing our use of grades, we can encourage students to take ownership of their learning and boost their motivation and engagement in the learning process.

Lee Ann Jung, PhD, is CEO of Lead Inclusion, Clinical Professor at San Diego State University, and a consultant to schools worldwide. Before beginning a career in higher education she worked in special education in the roles of teacher and administrator. Lee Ann leads the International Inclusive Leadership Program, a professional learning and graduate program for educators in international schools in partnership with San Diego State University. You can follow her on Twitter at @leeannjung. This contribution is based on her forthcoming Corwin Press book.