This is mostly a design issue.

It should be more intuitive that a component is count up or count down. When count up most (but not all) marks should be positive. And vice versa. From both the instructor rubric creation page and from the ta grading page

Currently only the instructor can switch a component from up to down (it should probably stay that way), but we should make it visually obvious which components are up vs down. (So an instructor can catch an error in rubric prep more quickly)