While innovative school models and practices are taking hold across the U.S., the field lacks sufficient research, evidence and support to ensure high-quality implementation, widespread scaling and improved student success. Ensuring effective implementation and efforts to scale will require serious research, new technical solutions and strategy and policy assistance.
So what is next? In this publication, we describe the desired state of innovative models, where we are now and how to make progress. We offer three specific recommendations:
- Establish new systems, structures and opportunities to build stronger research capacity and skill sets to respond to practitioner needs and build the evidence base
- Invest strategically in a small cohort of promising models to refine implementation and codify and spread best practice
- Corral resources to build the evidence base about “what works” faster and with more rigor
We hope these insights will be useful to interested funders and the field in general. Please share widely.
