Rubrics are widely used tools that assist in rating performance. For example, specialists and licensed faculty members often use rubrics to determine how closely a student’s demonstration of knowledge or skill aligns with expectations or accepted standards. Rubrics also describe practice that is common across specialists and other licensed professionals such as school psychologists, school nurses, occupational therapists, mental health professionals, speech and language pathologist, autism consultant, special education teachers, etc. The Eugene School District 4J Professional Growth and Effectiveness System incorporate Specialists Rubrics as a rating tool that describes characteristics of professional practice at different levels of performance. The Specialist Teaching and Professional Practice Rubrics are designed to help ESS licensed faculty and specialists and their evaluators to:
- Develop a consistent, shared understanding of what proficient performance looks like in practice.
- Develop a common terminology and structure to organize evidence.
- Make informed professional judgments about performance ratings on each standard.
The ESS-SPEC rubrics describe practice that is common across positions/roles. It is intended for ESS-SPEC who provides direct services such as therapy, counseling, assessments, diagnosis to students’ caseload as well as those who provide indirect support of services to students through consultation and/or collaboration with teachers, administrators and other professionals.
The roles and responsibilities of ESS-SPEC and licensed faculty to whom the rubric applies to will vary due to the diversity of functions and services in Educational Support Services. The ESS-SPEC rubrics are closely aligned with the classroom licensed faculty rubric and emphasize commonalities across disciplines.
