This invaluable research-based guidebook illustrates how quality teaching can overcome the impact of low socioeconomic conditions and improve student performance dramatically. The authors present instructional techniques that require students to speak with skill, write with clarity and purpose, read with a critical eye, and listen with active engagement. Using six practical strategies, educators can overcome the odds and guide learners to success by:

Setting high expectations for all students
Making differentiation part of everything they do
Challenging students to think critically
Insisting on results-oriented goals

Brian M. Pete is president of The Education Associates, an international consulting firm, and cofounder of Robin Fogarty & Associates. He has a rich background in professional development and has worked in and videotaped classroom teachers and professional experts in schools throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Pete's work on educational videos include Best Practices: Classroom Management and Best Practices: Active Learning Classrooms. He is the coauthor of books that include From Staff Room to Classroom (Corwin Press 2007), and titles from the Nutshell Collection, which include How to Differentiate Learning, Data!Dialogue! Decisions!, Twelve Principles That Make the Difference, Nine Best Practices That Make the Difference, Close the Achievement Gap, The Adult Learner, and A Look at Transfer.

Robin J. Fogarty is president of the Chicago-based, minority-owned educational publishing and consulting firm RFA: A Robin Fogarty Company. She has taught in classrooms from kindergarten level through college and served as an administrator. She is the author or coauthor of more than 10 books, including From Staff Room to Classroom: A Guide for Planning and Coaching Professional Development (with Brian M. Pete), which won a 2006 National Staff Development Council book award. She is a contributor to 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn and has written articles for Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and the Journal of Staff Development.