Basic education has several priorities, such as improving students’ levels of reading, calculation, and social interaction; changing pedagogical practices traditionally based on oral expositions and content learning; building a more inclusive school environment; improving security conditions; and ensuring that schools operate well. Although it is well known that rubrics are tools that allow for verifying achievements and accurately defining improvement needs, however, there are no available rubrics to assess principals’ management regarding these priorities in basic education. The purpose of the present study was to design and validate an analytical rubric that could be used by principals to self-assess their practices and establish improvement actions that would benefit learning in elementary schools. The instrument was assessed by 10 judges. Aiken’s V values higher than 0.75 were obtained in relevance, intelligibility of wording, and satisfaction with the instrument. The rubric was administered to a group of 645 elementary school principals, who found every item satisfactory, relevant, intelligibly worded, and suitable for use to help them to improve their managerial practices. A factor analysis was then carried out, and, in accordance with what was expected at the theoretical level, a single factor was found. Finally, it was established that the rubric has reliability of 0.877. It is concluded that the rubric for management practices self-assessment has adequate levels of content validity, construct validity, and reliability. © 2020, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia. All rights reserved.