Developing Performance Rating Scales
Adapted
from: Walvoord, B.E., & Anderson, V.J. (1998).
Effective grading: A tool for learning and assessment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Performance rating scales
establish a common format for stating performance evaluation criteria, while
leaving the criteria for individual teachers to establish.
Faculty members may use performance rating scales to assess any student
performance or portfolio of student performances – written, oral, clinical,
and so on. Performance rating
scales tend to be assignment-specific; that is, the criteria are different for
each assignment or test. As applied
here, performance rating scales represent a way of explicitly stating a
teacher’s criteria, and are used in the classroom to make grading criteria
very clear and specific.
Besides helping teachers
to delineate and communicate their performance criteria and standards,
performance rating scales can be used for departmental or institutional
assessment. As stated above,
performance rating scales provide a common format for stating different
teachers’ criteria and standards; it is this common format that permits
assessment. The specific criteria
and standards used to evaluate various course assignments need not be the
same for assessment purposes (although departments always have the option of
developing common criteria and standards). Performance rating scales, because they are very explicit,
allow criteria to be made public and understandable to outside audiences.
Most importantly, they clarify to fellow faculty members one’s criteria
and standards, which facilitates discussions of programmatic effectiveness and
needs.
Characteristics of Performance Rating Scales
It is helpful, in
understanding performance rating scales, to place them along two continua:
-
From unstated criteria (“It feels like a B”) to
highly explicit criteria (performance rating scales)
-
From norm-referenced scoring (grading on a curve) to criterion-referenced
scoring (performance rating scales).
Performance rating scales
are both highly explicit and criterion-referenced.
To construct a performance rating scale, the teacher (1) identifies the
factor or set of traits that will count for the scoring (such as “thesis,”
“materials and methods,” “use of color,” “eye contact with client,”
and so on); (2) builds a scale for scoring the student’s performance on that
factor or set of traits; and (3) evaluates the student’s performance on a
given assignment or activity against those criteria.
How to Construct a Performance Rating Scale
If possible, work from
examples of past student performance, grading checklists, descriptions of
criteria, comments on assignments or tests – anything that has helped you in
the past to articulate criteria for students’ performances.
-
Choose
an exam or assignment that tests what you want to evaluate. Make clear
your objectives for the assignment.
-
Identify
the factors or the set of traits that will count in the evaluation.
These should be noun or noun phrases, such as “thesis,” “eye contact
with client,” “use of color,” or “control of variables.” If
you cannot immediately come up with a list of the factors or traits, then
begin by describing an assignment that would receive an A, B, etc.
-
For
each factor or set of traits construct a four-point scale, where descriptive
statements accompany each point. For example, a ‘4’ thesis is
“limited enough to treat within the scope of the essay and is clear to the
reader; it enters the dialogue of the discipline as reflected in the
student’s sources, and it does so at a level that shows synthesis and
original thought; it neither exactly repeats any of the student’s sources
nor states the obvious.”
-
Try
out the scale with a sample of student work or review with colleagues and
revise.
Scoring with a Performance Rating Scale
Performance rating scales
tend to be revised as you use them, and they should be.
The benefit of doing a performance rating scale lies as much in the hard
thinking it forces the teacher to do, and in the influences it exerts on
teaching and learning, as in the final scales that emerges.
Why Take the Time to Develop a Performance Rating Scale?
How much time does it
take to create a performance rating scale?
That depends on whether you are only measuring one or two traits or ten.
It also makes a difference whether you have previous assignment sheets or
written grading criteria. Faculty
members working from previous grading checklists have produced a draft of a
four-trait performance rating scale in under an hour. Some faculty may need more time, depending on the amount of
available information and detail incorporated in the scale.
Why should you spend the
time? Users of performance rating scales have suggested several
reasons.
-
To make grading more consistent
and fair.
-
To save time in the grading
process. Once you are very clear about what you are looking for and
have your performance rating scale, you should be able to move quickly
through students’ work.
-
To diagnose students’ strengths
and weaknesses very specifically in order to teach more effectively.
-
To track changes in your
students’ performance over several semesters so that you may see how
changes in your teaching affect student performance.
-
To reach agreement with
colleagues on criteria for common exams, for multiple sections, or for
sequenced courses.
-
To introduce clearer distinctions
into your grading.
-
To communicate with students the
criteria and standards used to evaluate their work.
