Strip the adjectives out of your rubric
'Excellent analysis' tells students nothing they can act on. Paste your rubric and make the AI replace every judgement with a description.
Oct 22, 2026 · 1 min read
Sadler (1989) argued that students can only close the gap between their work and good work if they can see what good consists of. 'Excellent analysis' and 'good use of evidence' describe your judgement, not the work, so students cannot self-assess against them and two markers will not apply them the same way. AI is a patient rubric editor: paste the rubric, ban the judgement words, and demand descriptions of what is present at each level. (Manning's criterion-referenced-rubric-generator skill applies the same rules from scratch.) Pairs well with a single column: see "Try a single-point rubric".
In practice
Rewrite this rubric so every cell is descriptive,
not evaluative:
[paste rubric]
Rules:
- Ban: excellent, good, satisfactory, poor, limited,
thorough, some, many, adequate.
- Each cell states what is PRESENT in the work,
concretely enough for a student to self-check.
- Adjacent levels must differ in kind, not degree.
Flag any criterion you could not fix and say why.- Paste your current rubric and ban the judgement words: excellent, good, limited, some, thorough. Every cell must describe what is present in the work.
- Ask for levels that differ in kind, not degree; 'uses evidence' to 'uses evidence well' is a scale wearing a rubric's clothes.
- Test each descriptor with one question: could a student check their own draft against it without you standing in the room?
Quick takeaway: if a student cannot self-check against it, rewrite it.