The Investing in Innovation (i3) Fund encourages school districts to scale their innovative ideas locally, regionally and nationally, providing $650 million in competitive awards for such programs. The guidelines for i3 are spurring educators into new discussions about defining and identifying innovation in education. The i3 funds, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), will be awarded to applicants with a record of improving student achievement in order to expand the implementation of, and investment in, innovative practices that are demonstrated to have an impact on:
The funds will be awarded though competitive grants to school districts and nonprofit groups with innovative ideas and programs. The i3 program is aligning its award structure with the overarching goal of scalability. Specifically, the three types of awards outlined are:
At DMC, we believe innovation in education is all about finding ways to do more with the same or less – it is about achieving better outcomes with fewer resources. The federal government, through grant programs such as i3, has effectively given notice to districts that federal dollars, going forward, will be invested in a similar fashion. While there is no debate that school districts are becoming increasingly complex for many reasons, districts must figure out ways to educate America’s children with fewer resources. Those districts and leaders with the ability to harness the power of innovative ideas to drive performance and culture change will have the most success.
DMC believes and has observed many districts with innovative programs worthy of i3 funds as outlined by the DOE. The design categories for i3 show that the country seeks a portfolio of innovative ideas across the outlined stages. These grants are not necessarily designed to find something new, but to scale the good ideas that already exist in districts today and create incentives for sharing ideas that have proven to work in various settings.
Districts are now in the process of identifying their own innovative programs and finding the partners to work with them to secure i3 funds. To help, DMC has developed a framework to assist districts in understanding their own portfolio, investing in the processes that make a difference and disengaging from ideas that once showed promise but are not showing results. Most districts already have a portfolio of innovative programs that have worked internally and possibly been scaled to other settings within the district.
To help districts identify the kinds of innovations they already have, DMC has created the Innovation Matrix where the vertical axis is for “degree of change” and the horizontal axis is for “degree of impact.” New ideas or programs that represent a more substantive degree of change are represented on the upper half of the matrix, and ideas/programs with larger impact/scalability are represented on the right-hand side of the matrix. Understanding how a district’s own innovation portfolio falls across these segments is critical for prioritization and effective resource allocation.
Also, DMC has created a three-stage process to help districts consider the evolution of their innovative practices. This stage-gate process is similar in concept to the i3 award structure. The first stage is idea generation – that moment where creative thinking leads to new concepts that have the potential to change the landscape of an organization. This is the moment when a “light bulb” goes on in the head of a teacher, principal, administrator or other stakeholder and the idea is captured. At this stage, it is important to recognize that good ideas can come from any number of sources including individual classrooms, district offices, schools and collaborations among these groups. They can also come from charter schools, public schools, non profits, or the private sector. The real challenge is to recognize the “light bulb” moment and seize on it to move to next stage of the process.
Programs in the “Idea Generation” stage may be eligible for i3 development grants if they are backed by research findings and have the potential to be scaled. This is a category where the DOE appears willing to invest in sound ideas that have not yet been subject to rigorous research.
The next stage, “Getting it Right”, involves testing, experimentation and refinement of a new idea. This is the stage where an organization might have seed money to test an idea in a few classrooms, schools or pilot situations. This is a crucial phase for innovation because many inventions and ideas are significantly transformed through this testing and refinement phase. Ideas that looked good on paper may need refinement in practice. There will also be times when ideas simply do not work as they were conceived. It is important at this stage to establish criteria for success so that districts will know if the program is in fact producing results. Many districts may already have innovations and pilots at this phase. The i3 “validation” grants fit into this category. These are ideas with proven validity and can be scaled on the regional or state level. The DOE will be will be looking for data to show that the idea worked versus simply relying on anecdotal information.
The third stage – and the one that has traditionally been the most difficult for schools districts – is the “Making an Impact” phase where the now proven idea is replicated and disseminated on a larger scale. In education, this is where the idea is replicated in a variety of locations or contexts and is able to drive student achievement gains in all of those settings. In the past, districts have not had strong incentives to replicate ideas beyond the local setting. The i3 Fund is looking to promote the most promising practices in terms of scalability and replication. The i3 guidelines are looking for programs that have already been tested but have the potential for “scale up,” and can be replicated on regional, state or national levels. These are the programs that will be eligible for the i3 “scale up” grants with the highest monetary value as they have a proven track record of success and are ready to be scaled and shared with other districts.
In the past, innovation has often escaped education because it is difficult to move from the “getting it right” or the “validation” phase to the “making an impact” or “scale-up” phase. It is difficult to replicate ideas in over 15,000 U.S. school districts with different funding structures and different forms of governance. However, i3 marks a recognition that the good ideas may already be out there and offers financial incentives for sharing them.
School district leaders have a unique opportunity today to manage the innovation process by setting the tone in their districts and in determining how resources are allocated. In the past, much attention has been focused on ideas generated outside the district. The i3 Fund is an opportunity to focus on identifying innovative ideas that have achieved local success that can be proven and scaled. It is also a signal of the sort of programs the government will be funding in the future. District leaders must build an infrastructure and a culture where innovation can flourish. This requires a focus on results of ideas already in action, experimentation and risk with new ideas and of course, the ability to learn from, tweak or abandon ideas that show little to no results. Through the i3 program, the federal government has issued a challenge to districts. Said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “We’re looking to drive reform, reward excellence and dramatically improve our nation’s schools.”
