What do teachers mean when they assign a student the highest level on a rubric? Depending on your jurisdiction, you might use one of the following terms:

• surpassing a standard
• advanced
• very high to outstanding
• exceeds expectations
• exemplary
• excellent

I have mentioned all these terms since I believe they have the same overall intent.

So, what does it mean to surpass a standard or to be outstanding or excellent?

While some educators suggest that this means that a student can do pretty much anything their teacher might ask appropriate to their grade level, others feel it means a student can do work at the next grade level.

I have a different perspective; I believe that the highest level should be about something else. It should show that the student “sees the big picture,” that is, they make generalizations and can explain why things are the way they are.

In fact, for me, you could not assign a level like excellent or surpassing a standard to computational skills since a student can either perform those skills or they can’t. Speed or never making errors $given that we are human$ should not be the goals of instruction—or criteria for the highest level on a rubric.

Consider a Grade 2 topic like subtracting two-digit numbers. There might be students who can correctly solve straightforward subtraction problems and perform subtraction calculations, but that does not put them at the highest level. For me, a student at the highest level can see how problems are related, use what they know about one problem to solve another, and use strategies flexibly depending on the numbers involved.

For example, there are students who can perform any two-digit subtraction calculation, but can they answer this question: “Why might someone figure out 61 − 14 by figuring out 64 − 14 first? Then, what would they do?”

Or consider a topic like dividing fractions. Again, there might be students who can correctly calculate \(\frac{2}{3}\) ÷ \(\frac{3}{4}\), but can they see when it makes sense to divide fractions, why the strategies they use work, and how calculations are related?

For the highest level, I would need students to be able to answer a question like this: “Without just stating a rule, why does \(\frac{ 5}{\square}\) ÷ \(\frac{ 2}{\square}\) have to be 2\(\frac{1}{2}\) no matter what the denominator is?”

To support students in reaching the highest level, encourage them to reflect on relationships, explain strategies, and go beyond computational skills.