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Criticisms:

The introduction of the rubric has stirred debate among scholars. Some educators have argued that rubrics rest on false objective claims and thus rest on subjectivity. Eric Turley and Chris Gallagher argued that state-imposed rubrics are a tool for accountability rather than improvements. Many times rubrics originate outside of the classroom from authors with no relation to the students themselves and they are then interpreted and adapted by other educators. Turley and Gallagher note that "the law of distal diminishment says that any educational tool becomes less instructionally useful -- and more potentially damaging to educational integrity -- the further away from the classroom it originates or travels to." They go on to say it is to be interpreted as a tool for writers to measure a set of consensus values, not to be substituted for an engaged response.

A study by Stellmack et al evaluated the perception and application of rubrics with agreed upon criteria. The results found that when different graders evaluated the same draft, the grader who had already given feedback previously was more likely to note improvement. The researchers concluded that a rubric that had higher reliability would result in greater results to their "review-revise-resubmit procedure".

Anti Rubric: Rubrics both measure the quality of writing, and reflect an individual's beliefs of what a department or particular institution’s rhetorical values. But rubrics lack detail on how an instructor may diverge from their these values. Bob Broad notes that an example of an alternative proposal to the rubric is the “dynamic criteria mapping.”

The single standard of assessment raises further questions, as Elbow touches on the social construction of value in itself. He proposes a communal process stripped of the requirement for agreement, would allow the class “see potential agreements – unforced agreements in their thinking – while helping them articulate where they disagree.” He proposes that grading could take a multidimensional lens where the potential for ‘good writing’ opens. He points out that in doing so, a singular dimensional rubric attempts to assess a multidimensional performance.