Grant Wiggins

Mentor principals, district leaders, invited guests, and aspiring principals in the Regional Principal Leadership Academy, Rice Education Entrepreneur's Program, and Houston ISD's Aspiring Principals Institute are invited to attend this private lecture with award-winning author and consultant Grant Wiggins.

Understanding By Design is based on these four beliefs:

• Excellence in schooling requires a vigilant focus on learning for understanding — not teaching to the test.
• All education reform is local. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
• Students are motivated and challenged by genuine intellectual purposes.
• Education succeeds if and only if everyone in schools gets constant and powerful feedback, and is obligated to seek it and consider it.

Grant Wiggins is the President of Authentic Education in Hopewell, New Jersey.  He earned his Ed.D. from Harvard University and his B. A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis. Grant consults with schools, districts and state education departments on a variety of reform matters; organizes conferences and workshops; and develops print materials and Web resources on curricular change. He is perhaps best known for being the co-author, with Jay McTighe, of Understanding By Design and The Understanding By Design Handbook, the award-winning and highly successful materials on curriculum published by ASCD. His work has been supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Over the past twenty years, Grant has worked on some of the most influential reform initiatives in the country, including Vermont’s portfolio system and Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools. He has established statewide Consortia devoted to assessment reform for the states of North Carolina and New Jersey.  Grant is the author of Educative Assessment and Assessing Student Performance, both published by Jossey-Bass. His many articles have appeared in such journals as Educational Leadership and Phi Delta Kappan.