A Phoenix rubric is the scoring guide attached to an assessment: it lists the criteria you are judged on and the performance levels you can reach, and it lives inside your online classroom under the Grades tab. On letter-graded courses it maps those criteria to points or percentages that add up to an A-through-F grade. On the competency-based and Direct Assessment tracks the same rubric structure scores you Mastered, Met, or Not Met against each competency, with up to three attempts to level up your mark. The rubric is written before you submit and applied after, which is why reading it first, and building your work directly against its criteria, is the single highest-leverage habit at the university.
Where the rubric lives and what it shows
Every graded assessment carries its own scoring guide, and you reach it from the Grades tab in the classroom. Two things sit inside it: the criteria, meaning the specific dimensions the evaluator will judge, and the performance levels, meaning the described tiers of quality from the lowest to the highest achievable mark. Together they are a printed answer key for how points or competency marks are awarded, which is why opening the rubric on the day a deliverable is assigned tells you what a top result actually requires, in the evaluator's own words.
The rubric on the letter track versus the competency tracks
| Letter-graded courses | CBE and Direct Assessment | |
|---|---|---|
| What the rubric scores toward | Points and percentages, A to F | Mastered, Met, or Not Met |
| Structure | Criteria weighted into a total | Criteria mapped to competencies |
| Attempts | The course itself | Up to three per assessment |
| Best target | The top performance level on every criterion | Mastered on the deciding assessments |
The underlying object is the same on both sides of the school, a criteria-and-levels grid, but the currency differs. On the letter track the rubric distributes points, and a weak showing on a heavily weighted criterion sinks an otherwise good paper. On the competency tracks the rubric certifies mastery, and because you get up to three attempts, the rubric doubles as your revision map: each attempt should answer the exact criterion the last one missed.
Reading a rubric the way an evaluator does
- Read the highest performance level for every criterion first; that is the target, not the passing tier
- Note the weights, and spend your effort where the points or the deciding competencies concentrate
- Turn each criterion into a checklist item and confirm your draft visibly satisfies all of them before submitting
- On competency tracks, treat evaluator feedback as the literal to-do list for your next attempt
The points students hand back
Most lost marks are not knowledge gaps; they are rubric gaps. A criterion goes unaddressed because the prompt did not repeat it, a heavily weighted section gets the same effort as a light one, or a competency resubmission changes everything except the specific thing the evaluator flagged. Each of these is invisible if you never open the scoring guide and obvious the moment you do, which is the whole argument for reading it before you write instead of after you are graded.
Where tutoring support fits
Rubric alignment is exactly what our review pass is built to do. Send your draft and the scoring guide and we grade it against every criterion the way a Phoenix evaluator would, mark where it is currently landing on each performance level, and hand back a study draft or annotated revision that visibly hits the top tier, inside 24 to 48 hours. On competency work we map the resubmission to the exact criterion that held you at Met, so an attempt is never spent guessing. For the full anatomy of the three scoring systems behind these rubrics, the grading-systems manual lays them out side by side.
Grade it before Phoenix does
Send your draft and the rubric. We score it criterion by criterion and return it at the top level. First one free.
Sources and verification
Facts on this page come from official sources, and your course's exact rubric always lives in your own classroom:
- phoenix.edu competency-based orientation: the MA/ME/NM scale, attempts, and rubric location
- phoenix.edu classroom resources: where assessment rubrics appear under the Grades tab
- www.phoenix.edu: the University of Phoenix official site, primary source for program and policy facts
- apastyle.apa.org: APA Style, the authority behind Phoenix's formatting criteria