Rigor is: Using inquiry-based, collaborative strategies to challenge and engage students in content resulting in increasingly complex levels of understanding.

-AVID Center

“Rigorous Instruction involves designing and facilitating learning experiences that help students make meaning for themselves.”

-Robyn Jackson, Mindsteps Inc.

Rigorous instruction operates within, but at the outer edge of, students’ ability to master the content as

evidenced by the standards.

-The College Board

The Rigor Rubric

Level 1 / Level 2 / Level 3 / Level 4
Curriculum / The curriculum is textbook-driven and provides few opportunities for students to be challenged by any kind of rigorous content. / The curriculum contains some extension of surface-level content. The curriculum favors a particular rigorous strategy. / The curriculum begins to develop universal concepts, generalizations, and essential questions, though it may tend to favor two or three types of rigorous strategies. / The curriculum consistently develops universal concepts, generalizations, and essential questions, while challenging students with content that is complex, ambiguous, provocative, and personally challenging. Content focuses on depth over breadth.
Instruction / Instructional strategies are rarely used in the classroom. Instruction is mostly textbook or teacher-driven. It is assumed students will independently construct meaning. / Instructional strategies are used at key points in the curriculum. Opportunities for understanding the “whys” and reflecting on generalizations are occasionally provided. / Regular use of multiple instructional strategies helps students manage rigorous content. Opportunities to probe for deeper meaning and to reflect on concepts or generalizations are frequently provided. / Students consistently develop skills needed to manage rigorous content using many research-based instructional strategies. Reflection, generalization, probing for deeper meaning, and utilizing complex thinking processes are integrated seamlessly throughout instruction and scaffold students through varying cognitive levels.
Assessment / The main mode of assessment consists of end-of-unit tests that may not reinforce or develop skills for managing rigor. It is a “one size fits all” approach. / The assessment system used sometimes separates formative from summative assessments. A few different assessment strategies are used to assess learning. / The assessment system utilizes formative assessment to inform instruction. A wide range of assessment strategies are used to assess different levels of rigor. / A wide range of formative assessments are used to inform instruction and provide student feedback on content mastery. Students are assessed using strategies appropriate for the rigor level of the standard, the skill(s) paired with that content, and that allow students to show their highest level of mastery. Assessments are designed to measure students’ ability to synthesize learning and adapt that knowledge to different contexts.

Adapted from Teaching What Matters Most; Standards and Strategies for Raising Student Achievement by Strong, Silver and Perini, ASCD, 2001, the Rigor Rubric for Educational Programs by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, and SpringBoard and Rigorous Instruction by The College Board, 2011.