Thanks Terry for making this connection. As the father of a "blue baby", I am grateful for this simple technology that has saved many lives. Likewise, a well-designed and collaboratively applied rubric can lead to feedback that can support student growth and improve teachers' practice.
He notes that for all of the benefits that the APGAR score has brought to this field of medicine, there have been some negative outcomes. For example, doctors are more likely to go to a C-section out of fear of natural birth challenges, even though a C-section may increase the risk to the mother. Gawande refers to this as "the tyranny of the score".
Do you see any challenges or negative repercussions from the use of rubrics for evaluating student work?
The tyranny of the score. I like that phrase. I’m going to answer this question: “Do you see any challenges or negative repercussions from the use of rubrics for evaluating student work?” First, I’m an advocate for authentic assessment, which is using a set of objectively determined criteria for clarifying what experts see when they observe a phenomenon, for thinking about the integration of the parts in light of shared expert knowledge, and for stepping back and linking the totality of the evidence to an action in the real world. Your blue baby survived because the transition from the womb to the world has become the nexus of expert knowledge. Even experts make mistakes. I’m sure there have been babies who have died because of them. But help me understand what the alternative is? Not use APGAR? Improve it? Go back to the old days of nurses’ hunches? In my experience, imperfect is a feature of all human assessment. All we can do is privilege the principles of authentic assessment, get better at seeing the through line between trained observation, expert analysis of in vivo perceptions in light of expert criteria, and promising actions. Running records is an APGAR assessment
Thanks Terry for making this connection. As the father of a "blue baby", I am grateful for this simple technology that has saved many lives. Likewise, a well-designed and collaboratively applied rubric can lead to feedback that can support student growth and improve teachers' practice.
Your post reminded me of an article in The New Yorker by Dr. Atul Gawande, "The Score": https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/09/the-score
He notes that for all of the benefits that the APGAR score has brought to this field of medicine, there have been some negative outcomes. For example, doctors are more likely to go to a C-section out of fear of natural birth challenges, even though a C-section may increase the risk to the mother. Gawande refers to this as "the tyranny of the score".
Do you see any challenges or negative repercussions from the use of rubrics for evaluating student work?
The tyranny of the score. I like that phrase. I’m going to answer this question: “Do you see any challenges or negative repercussions from the use of rubrics for evaluating student work?” First, I’m an advocate for authentic assessment, which is using a set of objectively determined criteria for clarifying what experts see when they observe a phenomenon, for thinking about the integration of the parts in light of shared expert knowledge, and for stepping back and linking the totality of the evidence to an action in the real world. Your blue baby survived because the transition from the womb to the world has become the nexus of expert knowledge. Even experts make mistakes. I’m sure there have been babies who have died because of them. But help me understand what the alternative is? Not use APGAR? Improve it? Go back to the old days of nurses’ hunches? In my experience, imperfect is a feature of all human assessment. All we can do is privilege the principles of authentic assessment, get better at seeing the through line between trained observation, expert analysis of in vivo perceptions in light of expert criteria, and promising actions. Running records is an APGAR assessment
This is great, Terry!!
Thanks, David! I thought it might be useful as a living metaphor. I’m glad it makes some sense.