Simply Better

Goodwin is vice president of communications and marketing at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, (McREL), a nonprofit education research and development organization. Here, he reviews research-proven best practices for improving classrooms, schools, and after-school programs, with an emphasis on what teachers and administrators can do right now to help students, even at-risk students. Chapters focus on five factors and practices at the district, school, and classroom level: creating challenging and engaging instruction; ensuring curricular paths to success; providing student supports; creating high-performance school cultures; and developing data-driven district systems. Many examples from successful schools are given, and boxes provide excerpts from other print sources. A companion website offers reports from McREL. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)