Ensuring student success - Book reviews - Review

School Administrator, Dec, 2001 by Joseph W. Rudnicki

Superintendent, Sunnyvale School District, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Ensuring Student Success provides an excellent resource to educators serving in every role. Even non-educators who want to devote energy to improving student achievement will find this book to be a thoughtful read. Myles I. Friedman's approach satisfies the logical, rational and sequential thinker. His work is founded on solid scientific reasoning for decision making in education.

The logical writing sequence serves to define issues and problems followed by an analysis of them. Friedman, a retired education professor in South Carolina, describes necessary interventions, which include corrective tutoring, effective instructional strategies and empowering students with strategies for self-teaching. The work concludes with information on preventing impediments to learning, the benefit of effective preschool instruction and the benefit of teaching students to innovate. Friedman offers a comprehensive approach to improved learning.

The book delves into key issues facing all citizens and professionals. School violence, teaching techniques, class size, class disruptions and ability grouping are included among the factors affecting student learning and school culture.

This book belongs on the reading list of conscientious citizens and educators interested in research and data-driven reform. My copy has become a regular reference source.

(Ensuring Student Success: A Handbook of Evidence-Based Strategies, by Myles I. Friedman, The Institute for Evidence-Based Decision-Making in Education, P.O. Box 122, Columbia, S.C. 29202, 2000, 259 pp., $77.95 hardcover)