Creating the Schools Our Children Need deserves your immediate attention. In this book, Dylan Wiliam provides a one-stop guide to school improvement. He makes the case that schools need to be improved and that current initiatives will not result in the development required. Attempts to learn from countries which have performed well in international tests will also be ineffective for reasons that include the difficulty in identifying the factors responsible for success.
Wiliam’s careful evaluation of these and other projects as flawed or deficient does not lead to despair. He states there is a way forward which involves 3 well-defined planks of a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementation of formative assessment at the classroom level, and teacher development. The message is exciting and inspiring and will leave you wanting to get out there and do it.
The organisation of the book makes it particularly engaging: establishing the problem, evaluating unsatisfactory solutions, proposing effective ones. This book will provide you with relevance and value and is highly recommended for school board members, administrators and teachers who want to make effective change. His straightforward prose and jargon-free approach are well suited to this topic.