Taking promising reforms and innovations “to scale” is a challenge that has bedeviled public schools for decades. One prominent example was the multi-million dollar New American Schools program, which, supported through federal and private dollars, solicited proposals from around the country for novel or proven whole-school design programs—such as Success for All—and engaged school districts to adopt school-based professional-development programs designed to help schools replicate the programs. Like so many other efforts to replicate best practices, New American Schools failed due to uneven implementation. The New American Schools experience, like decades of similarly ineffective efforts to replicate successful education programs, should teach us that the “uptake problem” in public education warrants serious attention in order to foster innovation and improve productivity in U.S. education.
New instructional innovations using technology hold great promise for dramatically improving educational delivery systems and resource productivity. Schools, like Rocketship Education and School of One, that blend distance learning and computer-driven curriculum with on-site, teacher-based instruction demonstrate that smart uses of technology can allow public schools to use teacher time more productively, more effectively engage students, and save labor costs so that money can be invested in teacher salaries, social supports for students, or smaller class sizes. However, getting these and other innovations to take hold more broadly across the United States is far from a sure thing.
The same issues have come up when we look at how few districts have tried to replicate what works in high-performing charter schools. One Center for Reinventing Public Education study of charter-management organizations (CMO) has shown that only a few districts are working seriously to import apparently successful literacy programs, “no excuses” cultures, or even the support structures that make Achievement First, KIPP, and Aspire Public Schools well-known.
Erin Dillon and Bill Tucker at Education Sector were smart to point out that the rush to support technology-based school expansion must avoid exaggeration of the benefits and embrace rigorous outcome evaluation—a necessity for the charter sector as well. But history tells us that there’s a bigger problem: There is little evidence that our public-school system will open or transform schools to high-tech and high-performing models, even if those programs demonstrate success under the most rigorous conditions. And, even where programs are adopted, it still won’t be easy.
The political barriers alone are daunting. Status quo defenders advance policies that would limit or block innovations, such as online learning, by requiring students to participate in a certain number of hours of classroom-based instruction each day. State and federal restrictions on how money is spent can make it difficult, if not impossible, for schools to experiment with innovative approaches to spending.
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There is little evidence that our public-school system will open or transform schools to high-tech and high-performing models... |
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More mundane, but possibly more of a pervasive threat, are attitudes toward adopting new innovations. Using technology for instruction challenges some of the most fundamental beliefs about education and the role of teachers, prompting significant reaction from teachers and parents alike. Without strong state accountability systems, school districts and schools have limited incentive to experiment in order to identify better instructional approaches. And even when all of the policy stars align, school districts and state departments of education tend to be risk averse, valuing compliance with known rules over entrepreneurialism.
Still, some school districts are actively working to embrace technology and other innovations to support their learning goals. New York City’s iZone is perhaps the most ambitious example. The city hopes to transform or create 100 or more schools, including new charter schools, over the next three years by building on fundamentally new assumptions, such as scheduling staffing and class time around student learning needs rather than a one-size-fits-all model. In the iZone, technology is used to catalyze these innovative school attributes for breakthrough learning outcomes.
It remains to be seen, though, whether even innovation-friendly school districts like New York can effectively partner with entrepreneurs, become wise consumers and evaluators of new innovations, train and gain the support of their teachers, and effectively engage parents and students. State education agencies face their own capacity issues.
New flexibilities from federal and state laws are needed to ensure that state and district leaders who want to innovate can do so. State policymakers who wish to champion innovation will need to pursue strategies and policies such as:
• Gathering information about promising approaches, evidence of effectiveness, cost, and implementation requirements;
• Re-doing state budgets to allow for startups, demonstrations, and partnerships with private providers;
• Creating budgetary flexibility so that capital-labor tradeoffs can be made at the school level;
• Designing incentive programs that encourage innovation and build new capacities;
• Creating situations under which schools must either adopt innovations or be replaced by other providers; and
• Considering policies to relax rules in exchange for specific performance outcomes and strong accountability measures, similar to the “operational freedom in return for results” that should govern charter schools.
State leaders will also need to identify and eliminate policy barriers to the quick spread of productivity-enhancing approaches. For starters, states can remove laws and regulations that are based on inputs. Prime candidates for elimination are student “seat time” requirements, pay scales that reward seniority and teacher education levels rather than performance, and funding formulae that prevent districts from combining funds in innovative ways. States would also do well to do “innovation audits” to assess which rules most prohibit innovation.
School districts and state agencies face serious cultural and political barriers in overcoming a dismal track record on innovation. Until this changes, we can expect that public education will continue to adopt only marginal innovations that will result in negligible productivity gains for students. Greater policy and funder attention is urgently needed if American public schools are to hit desired outcomes for productivity, innovations, and renewal.
Robin Lake is the associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). A version of this essay originally appeared in the Policy Innovation in Education’s policy paper “Schools in High Gear: Reforms That Work When They Work Together,” released this week in conjunction with the PIE-Network annual meeting.
