Comprehensive Assessment

Harold Kwalwasser is an educational consultant and the author of Remaking America's Schools for the 21st Century. He served as Deputy General Counsel/ Legal Counsel for the U.S. Department of Defense and as General Counsel of the Los Angeles Unified School District. This post is an excerpt from his upcoming book Renewal: Remaking America's Schools for the Twenty-First Century

Downtown Brownsville, Texas, has an otherworldly feel. Nestled in a crook in the Rio Grande near where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, the narrow streets are filled with stores selling cheap merchandise to Mexicans or to the poor from the local Hispanic community, which is often just a few years removed from the other side of the border.

Mark Phillips is a columnist for the Marin Independent Journal and the The Answer Sheet. He volunteers with the California Film Institute's Educational Outreach Program and serves on the Board of the Buck Institute for Education. You can connect with him on Facebook.

A very important controversy related to children is flying under the radar of most educators. It's a controversy in which educator voices could play a highly constructive role.

Some background first. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders. It's used by mental health professionals, researchers, psychiatric drug regulation agencies, health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy makers. There have been a number of revisions since it was first published in 1952, and each revision has included more mental disorders.

Dr. Danielle Moss Lee (@HEAFNYC on Twitter) is President and CEO at Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF). With a background in administration and non-profits, she's passionate about educational equity, college access, curriculum and youth development. Read her blog at http://www.heaf.org/blog/.

Naturally, I understand that there's no significant magic or difference in providing college planning and counseling services to students of color per se, but there are important ways to help build upon their college aspirations in the course of doing this work. A while back, several colleagues and I got into a long discussion about the quality of their college advisors during the critical junior and senior years of high school.

Andrew Miller (@betamiller on Twitter) is a National Faculty member for the Buck Institute for Education, an org that specializes in project-based curriculum, and a collaborator with Abeo School Change, committed to make powerful learning a reality for every student. He is also a regular blogger for Edutopia.

Rubrics are a beast. Grrrrrrr! They are time-consuming to construct, challenging to write and sometimes hard to use effectively. They are everywhere. There are rubrics all over the web, plus tools to create them, and as educators, it can overwhelm us.

Todd Blake Finley, PhD (@finleyt on Twitter) is an Associate Professor of English Education at East Carolina University in C&I. He has taught elementary and 8-12th grade English and co-developed the Tar River Writing Project. Dr. Finley teaches, researches, works with schools and publishes in the field of composition, curriculum, instruction, technology, and collaboration. His home page is www.EEprof.com.

In a Buick LaCrosse crowded with English teachers on the way to a wine bar in Raleigh, Dr. Lil Brannon explained her trouble with rubrics: "Did you ever watch kids play Dance Dance Revolution, the video game where they put their feet in the right squares drawn on a mat? That doesn't look like real dancing, does it?"

Andrew Miller (@betamiller on Twitter) is a National Faculty member for the Buck Institute for Education, an org that specializes in project-based curriculum, and a collaborator with Abeo School Change, committed to make powerful learning a reality for every student. He is also a regular blogger for Edutopia.

With all the education action around Standards-Based Instruction, Understanding By Design, Assessment for Learning, Grading for Learning, Project-Based Learning, Competency-Based Instruction and more, we need to have a frank conversation about formative assessment and grading. This may be a difficult conversation to have.

Virginia J. Goatley is Director of Research at the International Reading Association and an Associate Professor in the Reading Department at SUNY Albany. You can reach her at vgoatley[AT]albany[DOT]edu.

Brenda Overturf is a member of the International Reading Association's Board of Directors. You can reach her at boverturf[AT]reading[DOT]org.

In this series of three posts, we aim to provide an overview of the ELA Common Core State Standards (ELA CCSS) to inform educators, parents, and community members about basic concepts and implementation.

Kadhir Rajagopal teaches algebra at Grant High School in Sacramento, CA. "Mr. Raja," as his students are fond of calling him, is the author of Create Success!: Unlocking the Potential of Urban Students and a recipient of the Twin Rivers Unified School District Teacher of the Year award.