Rubric was a decisively more opaque, hence technically attractive, descriptor. Typically, people don't use rubrics unless the constructed response being judged is fairly significant. With a few exceptions, teachers use rubrics to judge the adequacy of students' responses to performance tests. Educators ordinarily use performance tests when they want to determine a student's status with respect to a significant skill. Based on the student's level of achievement on a performance test, educators make an inference about the degree to which the student has mastered the skill the test represents.
Instructors seek to enhance students' skill mastery.
If performance tests are truly worth the effort that goes into creating and using them, we should evaluate them chiefly according to the contributions they make to students' skill mastery. Although rubrics are receiving near-universal applause from educators, the vast majority of rubrics are instructionally fraudulent. They are masquerading as contributors to instruction when, in reality, they have no educational impact at all. Here are four flagrant flaws that are all too common in teacher-made and commercially published rubrics. Task-specific evaluative criteria.