Differences of a Rubric and a Proficiency Scale

Today I worked with my 7th grade Social Studies teacher on creating a proficiency scale for the Industrial Revolution.  I asked him to come to our planning meeting with the standards that will be covered and if he had the learning targets to go with it.  I also shared the proficiency scale template we use at our school with him.  He came in today with a found "proficiency scale" from the internet.

Which is why I feel it is important to explain what I think is the difference between rubrics and proficiency scales.

Rubrics are a scoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students' constructed responses.  According to A Teacher's Guide to Standards-Based Learning,  "defines proficiency scales as a learning progression or set of learning goals for a specific topic, relative to a given standard."


An example of a rubric for industrial revolution is to the right.  In this rubric you can see they use the terms "some" and "few" within the level of the rubric.

When talking to my teacher I asked him, "if I was a student in your class would I know what some and few were in my learning?"  If the answer is no then you have a rubric for an assignment or assessment not a content learning progression.


Proficiency scales help guide students to understanding the content and progression of that content.

Once we determined we need to adjust the rubric so students understand what they will be learning throughout the unit, we worked on creating the proficiency scale to the left.  This scale will guide students to understanding the content not the task.

We started first with the Social Studies standards and broke those down into student friendly learning targets. We cross-referenced the learning targets with the ELA (English Language Arts) standards for the processing skills.  Then we determined what proficiency looked like by breaking the targets down asking the question: what does it look like to be partial proficient.

This proficiency scale will drive instruction and help the students know what is expected of them and the teacher know the progression of learning that will take place with this standard.

The next step will be to create the essential questions and then the assessment.

1st Professional Development for Teachers

Jessica (school principal) and I spent many hours dissecting the process we felt our teachers need (we found we should have started in a different place--that will come in a different post).  We knew we needed to give teachers time to understand the transformation and time to work on all the areas that come into standards based learning.  We needed to build in the why and importance of the change in grading and learning.  We started with a quote for teachers to reflect on their own practice up until this transformation point (October 2017).

We then followed with a standards based grading video: Standard-Based Grading Overview

Then in our department PLC (professional learning community) half day work we dove into our standards.  Asking, what are the skills our students need to become proficient at the standard.  Referring to the PLC questions #1: What do we want our students to learn?  Being specific with teachers this is not activities or task we want our students to complete but what skill and knowledge do they need to know to be proficient.  Teachers did a standard dive (as we called it) for every standard they were going to teach throughout the year.

Once teachers spent hours deconstructing the state standards for ladder of proficiency they then created student friendly I CAN statements. 

Example from math: 

Focus Standard 8.EE.A.1 Understand and apply the properties of integer exponents to generate equivalent numerical expressions.

I CAN learning targets (student friendly) I can recite the properties of integer exponents. I can explain how to use the properties of integer exponents. I can simplify expressions that contain integer exponents. I can simplify expressions that contain exponents of 0. I can simplify expressions that contain negative exponents.

Example from ELA:

Focus Standards: RI.7.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says (main idea?) explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text

I CAN learning targets (student friendly): I can identify the main idea of informational texts I can find evidence that supports the main idea from the text I can recognize the difference between directly stated information and inferred information I can make inferences about the main idea based on the text I can find evidence to support inferences in the text I can rank evidence by order of importance to support the main idea of the text as it applies to the main idea

The Beginning of the Journey

2017-2018 school year had begun and I was quickly learning how to observe teachers and give meaningful feedback, to encourage cognitive coaching conversion.  After observing for a few months and talking with my principal, Jessica Bennett, we both attending the Solution Tree Assessment and Grading conference in Phoenix, Arizona.

This conference changed how we would view assessment, grading and student learning. We went all 3 days and soaked up as much information as we possibly could, once the third day came we were second guessing where we even begin when we get back to our campus (this is the feeling after most teaching conferences). On the last day of the conference we were able to sign up to speak to one of the presenters, Cassandra Erkens.  She was able to help us determine where our starting point is with our teachers.  She recommended we start with Design in 5 by Nicole Dimich Vagle on the phases of creating engaging assessments.

So we jumped right to work and created our schools ladder for our teachers on the process of Bradshaw Mountain Middle School Assessment Ladder