Creating the Schools Our Children Need ― Why What We are Doing Now Won't Help Much (And What We Can Do Instead)

Improving education in America is hard, because it doesn't have an education system...It has 13,491 of them. Dr. Dylan Wiliam is the world's foremost authority on formative assessment and has worked for years to improve the state of education in the US and abroad. Through his experience teaching in classrooms, leading schools, and directing research, Dr. Wiliam has found there is no simple solution to school improvement that works in every classroom every time—but there are district-wide measures that can improve the odds of success. In Creating the Schools Our Children Need, Dr. Wiliam breaks down the methods American schools use to improve, and the gaps between what research tells us works and what we actually do. Dr. Wiliam analyzes the three real, implementable improvements that are proven to be factors in school success: Building a curriculum focused on developing knowledge Supporting a culture where every teacher improves Applying a framework for evaluating new district initiatives Solutions to the problem of improving education for our children require each school district to make smart decisions about what will make the most difference in their district. In order to create the schools our children need, district leaders must understand why what we're doing right now really won't help much, and critically, what we can do instead.

Dylan Wiliam is one of the world's foremost education authorities. He has helped to successfully implement classroom formative assessment in thousands of schools all over the world, including the United States, Singapore, Sweden, Australia, and the United Kingdom. A two-part BBC series, “The Classroom Experiment,” tracked Dr. Wiliam's work at one British middle school, showing how formative assessment strategies empower students, significantly increase engagement, and shift classroom responsibility from teachers to their students so that students become agents of and collaborators in their own learning.Dylan Wiliam is Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. After a first degree in mathematics and physics, he taught in urban schools for seven years, during which time he earned further degrees in mathematics and mathematics education. Learn more about Wiliam's research, as well as his products and services at the Learning Sciences Dylan Wiliam Center.