In every school district across the country, each year, new initiatives are adopted with the goal of improving the literacy performance of young students. Just as frequently, these initiatives fail or quickly become passing fads. Elmore (1996) summed up this problem of scale with the statement: āInnovations that require large changes in the core of educational practice seldom penetrate more than a fraction of US schools and classrooms, and seldom last long when they doā (p. 2). Various perspectives exist as to why educational innovations scale or fail.
Why innovations succeed and scale
Datnow and Stringfieldās (2000) review of data from 16 school-reform-focused studies provides a helpful framework to understand better what it takes to bring lasting change to a school. A key feature, they concluded, in implementing and sustaining a reform initiative is that groups of stakeholders, at the state, district, and local levels, work together in an integrated way, rather than a few individuals working in isolation from others who also are involved in the setting.
Slavin and Madden (2007) also underscored the importance of a network, but their approach differs in terms of its composition. Drawing on lessons learned from their scaling-up of Success for All (SFA), Slavin and Madden advocate creating two networks of stakeholders that go beyond the school setting and are created principally to provide support to the other members in the network: a network of other schools prepared to help new schools implement the innovation, and a network of a core group of trainers who coordinate between the projectās headquarters and the regional training sites. Members in the network all share the same goal, implementing and sustaining the SFA model in schools; they do not have competing agendas or other stakeholders lobbying for their resources, time, or funding in the way that state legislators or district administrators do. The advantage of a network beyond the local context is that the innovation can be somewhat sheltered against the policy changes that invariably accompany changes of school and district administrators.
Slavin and Madden (2007) identified several other features necessary for an innovation to scale, features that match well with the definitions of scaling discussed in the previous section. They noted that the quality of the innovation must be maintainable as the innovation spreads, it should have a strong research base to continually investigate and demonstrate the innovationās effectiveness, and it should provide specified procedures and materials to the school to ease the uptake of the new instructional approach.
Gersten, Chard, and Baker (2000), focusing on factors that affect the sustained use of evidence-based core teaching practices, noted the importance of teachers becoming skilled with the teaching order for an innovation to be scaled. When teachers have a deeper conceptual understanding of the instructional practice, there is a greater likelihood, they argued, that teachers will continue to implement the instructional practice, even after incentives are removed or disappear. This idea of working toward a deeper conceptual understanding of the new practice also fits with Fullanās (1993) observation that change cannot be mandated, not when the nature of change requires skillful thinking and decision-making.
Guskeyās (1986) finding, that changes in teacher beliefs and motivation only come after changes in practice, suggests that, to achieve the deeper conceptual change that Gersten and colleagues (2000) and Fullan (1993) argued for, the teacher should be engaged in the new practice from the outset of adopting the innovation. In other words, the way to deep change is not through discussion, but through taking on the new instruction. Beliefs will change after the teacher sees the effects of the new program on student learning and not as a result of prolonged discussions about theory.
