Chapter 13: Racing the Unconsidered: Considering Whiteness, Rubrics, and the Function of Oppression

A central question that drove the creation of this edited volume is what are the ways in which the ever-growing use of rubrics for teacher and student evaluation have had an impact on education and society? This is a challenging question that is rarely entertained when the issue of rubrics arises. Typically, when we talk about rubrics, the focus is on how to design or use them more effectively. Extending the discussion to consider the tacit implications of rubrics is imperative in the spirit of furthering keen examinations of the ways in which hidden curricula (Apple, 2004; Giroux, 1981; Jackson, 1990; Lewis, 2001) are perpetuated. One can argue that rubrics are not tools of instruction and therefore do not necessarily contribute to the hidden curriculum, but that is dependent upon how one defines curriculum, which is a contested issue itself (Lunenberg, 2011; Null, 2011; Pinar, 2011). Simultaneously, teachers (and administrators for that matter) are not inoculated from these hidden curricula either. Teachers at all levels of education are often locked into a strange position with rubrics. Not only do teachers design and employ rubrics to evaluate the learning of their students, but also teachers are subjected to the use of rubrics for the oftentimes high-stakes evaluations of their own performance. In short, the ubiquity of rubrics has a direct impact on all stakeholders in the classroom, despite the lack of critical dialogue about the implications of rubrics. One such implication is how rubrics further epistemologies of Whiteness and inadvertently contribute to the creation of structures of racial oppression in the United States.