Education Innovation: What It Is and Why We Need More of It
Education Innovation: By Sputnik Contributor on September 28, 2011, Via Education Week
Whether for reasons of economic growth, competitiveness, social justice or return on tax-payer investment, there is little rational argument over the need for significant improvement in U.S. educational outcomes. Further, it is irrefutable that the country has made limited improvement on most educational outcomes over the last several decades, especially when considered in the context of the increased investment over the same period. In fact, the total cost of producing each successful high school and college graduate has increased substantially over time instead of decreasing – creating what some argue is an inverted learning curve.
This analysis stands in stark contrast to the many anecdotes of teachers, schools and occasionally whole systems “beating the odds” by producing educational outcomes well beyond “reasonable” expectations. And, therein lies the challenge and the rationale for a very specific definition of educational innovation.
Education not only needs new ideas and inventions that shatter the performance expectations of today’s status quo; to make a meaningful impact, these new solutions must also “scale”, that is grow large enough, to serve millions of students and teachers or large portions of specific under-served populations. True educational innovations are those products, processes, strategies and approaches that improve significantly upon the status quo and reach scale.
Systems and programs at the local, state and national level, in their quest to improve, should be in the business of identifying and scaling what works. Yet, we traditionally have lacked the discipline, infrastructure, and incentives to systematically identify breakthroughs, vet them and support their broad adoption – a process referred to as field scans. Programs like the Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3) are designed as field scans; but i3 is tiny in comparison to both the need and the opportunity. To achieve our objectives, larger funding streams will need to drive the identification, evaluation, and adoption of effective educational innovations.
Field scans are only one of three connected pathways to education innovation, and they build on the most recognized pathway – basic and applied research. The time to produce usable tools and resources from this pathway can be long – just as in medicine where development and approval of new drugs and devices can take 12-15 years – but, with more and better leveraged resources, more focus, and more discipline, this pathway can accelerate our understanding of teaching and learning and production of performance enhancing practices and tools.
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