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.

Andrew Miller (@betamiller on Twitter) is a National Faculty member for the Buck Institute for Education, an organization specializing in 21st century project-based learning, as well as for ASCD, an organization providing expertise in a variety of professional development needs. He is also a regular blogger for Edutopia.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) naturally lends itself to differentiated instruction. By design, it is student-centered, student-driven and gives space for teachers to meet the needs of students in a variety of ways.

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.

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.

I know many teachers use graphic novels and comics in the classroom. There are amazing books on the subject that include useful tools on how to effectively implement these resources for learning. The main thing teachers need to consider is purpose. I know, we love books and tools, but just like with technology, sometimes we get wrapped up in the tool instead of first thinking about the purpose.