Across the country, state education agencies have begun to institute new offices to specialize in innovation—searching for new ideas and helping them to make it into education policy. The “new ideas” cover a variety of areas, from teacher quality to online learning, which means they “transcend the assigned duties of any single office or division,” making the creation of an office focused on innovation a logical step.
Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan and Oregon have all established offices to promote innovation, and other states are considering them. Supporters of such offices see them as vehicles for leading education departments “beyond their traditional focus on service and compliance toward working as laboratories for ideas and the sharing of information across districts.” Much of the force behind creating these offices also has to do with the pressure to turn around failing schools and districts—giving people the space to think creatively how to do this is “changing the way we do business,” says Chris Minnich, senior membership director for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
One innovation to come from Kentucky’s Division of Innovation and Partner Engagement (DIPE) was “the snowbound pilot.” Every year, school districts in the eastern part of Kentucky have been forced to cancel three to four weeks of school due to heavy snow. This has been hugely disruptive to students’ education, so three districts proposed solutions, and DIPE helped implement them. The success of the initial pilot moved lawmakers to change legislation to give districts more flexibility to educate students through alternate means, including virtual lessons. Six additional districts joined the pilot program in the current academic year.
In Louisiana, the office of innovation has a budget of $20 million and has focused on issues such as school turnarounds, recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, and implementing a state teacher and administrator evaluation system. It also oversees an “educator pipeline,” or service to help districts across the state attract teaching talent.
For now, most innovations are implemented at the district, rather than state, level. It is too early to tell whether or not any innovation or initiative will ever reach state-wide status. “The challenge is to get this innovation to become mainstream,” says CCSSO’s Minnich. An overriding goal is for agencies to make so many breakthroughs that, someday, “these offices of innovation won’t be needed anymore.”
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