By Alfie Kohn

I eventually came to understand that not all alternative assessments are authentic.  My growing doubts about rubrics in particular were prompted by the assumptions on which this technique rested and also the criteria by which they (and assessment itself) were typically judged.  These doubts were stoked not only by murmurs of dissent I heard from thoughtful educators but by the case made for this technique by its enthusiastic proponents.  For example, I read in one article that “rubrics make assessing student work quick and efficient, and they help teachers to justify to parents and others the grades that they assign to students.” To which the only appropriate response is: Uh-oh.

First of all, something that’s commended to teachers as a handy strategy of self-justification during parent conferences (“Look at all these 3’s, Mrs. Grommet!  How could I have given Zach anything but a B?”) doesn’t seem particularly promising for inviting teachers to improve their practices, let alone rethink their premises.

Second, I’d been looking for an alternative to grades because research shows three reliable effects when students are graded:  They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in the learning itself. The ultimate goal of authentic assessment must be the elimination of grades. But rubrics actually help to legitimate grades by offering a new way to derive them.  They do nothing to address the terrible reality of students who have been led to focus on getting A’s rather than on making sense of ideas.

A remarkable body of research over many years has demonstrated that the sort of teaching in which students are provided with answers or shown the correct way to do something — where they’re basically seen as empty receptacles to be filled with facts or skills — tends to be much less effective than some variant of student-centered learning that involves inquiry or discovery, in which students play an active role in constructing meaning for themselves and with one another.

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Now put yourself in the place of one of those hard-liners who want teachers to remain the center of gravity in the classroom, disgorging information. How might you circle the wagons despite all the research that undercuts your position? Even more audaciously, how could you try to get away with saying DI is “evidence-based” or supported by the “science of learning” — a favorite rhetorical gambit of traditionalists?

To the rescue comes an idea called cognitive load theory (CLT). This concept, primarily associated with an Australian educational psychologist named John Sweller, basically holds that trying to figure things out for yourself uses up so much working memory that too little is left to move whatever has been learned into long-term memory. It’s therefore more efficient for the teacher just to show students problems that have already been worked out correctly or provide them with “process sheets” that list step-by-step instructions for producing the right answer. (Imagine Jack Nicholson as the cognitive load theorist, hollering at students, “Inquiry? Your brain can’t handle inquiry!”)

Consider Republican governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s lament, posted on social media in June 2023, as she made a play for Trump supporters: “Do you remember when you were growing up…how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country.” The operative phrase here is “when you were growing up” — that is, when you were a child and therefore likely to be less aware of, or at least bothered by, disturbing news stories, complicated events, and hidden dangers. To claim that life itself is less simple and easy today is to confuse a life-cycle effect (what is true of people at a certain age) with a period effect (what is true of everyone at a certain point in history).