Be 1% Better

Transforming Your School Starts with 1% Changes

As his school began rebounding from the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic, visionary educator Ron Clark asked himself a crucial question: How can we continue to improve when we're already giving our all? The answer was to ask his staff to brainstorm ways to be just a little bit better. If everyone committed to ten of these one percenters, as he called them, they would have a major impact. That's exactly what happened, and today, the Ron Clark Academy is leading the way with simple but innovative practices that are transforming the lives of students, parents, and teachers. 

In Be 1% Better, Clark opens his playbook, sharing dozens of ways he and his staff have made change doable. The strategies here work both within and beyond the classroom by breaking change down into baby steps that can easily be integrated into daily tasks and that don't involve months of planning or considerable resources. 

Be 1% Better equips educators, administrators, staff, and school leaders with everything they need to get just a little bit better, then watch as these one percenters cascade into cultural and curricular shifts that benefit everyone. 

Ron Clark is the New York Times best-selling author of The Essential 55, which has sold more than one million copies in twenty-five different languages. Clark's other works, Move Your Bus, The End of Molasses Classes, and The Excellent 11 were all met with critical acclaim. He has been named American Teacher of the Year by Disney and was Oprah Winfrey's pick as her Phenomenal Man. He founded the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia, which more than 145,000 educators from around the world have visited to learn about the extraordinary ways that teachers and parents of RCA have helped children achieve great success. Clark has been featured on the Today show and CNN, and his experiences have been turned into the uplifting film The Ron Clark Story, starring Matthew Perry.