The latest twist on spreading innovation one school at a time

Hoping to strengthen and quicken efforts to help all students engage deeply in productive learning, educational policy makers at all levels are asking schools to embrace innovation. Slow and steady improvement, they argue, won’t produce significant changes in schools or in student learning and accomplishments. Bolder and more creative solutions must be found.

This focus on innovation has two related goals. First, schools move toward adopting specific policies, programs, and practices that research and experience have shown to be successful elsewhere. Second, schools redesign themselves as innovative organizations that continually identify and adopt programs and practices — including the requisite organizational structures and cultures — that help them better serve students.

Responding to that need, some school districts have encouraged school-based innovation and sought assistance from school development organizations that specialize in helping schools. New York City’s schools, for example, have contracted with several school development organizations to implement a program called iZone 360 in about 75 schools. Big Picture Learning is one of those external school development organizations working with iZone 360 and the organization with which the authors are affiliated.