Innovation in Education: It Starts in Classrooms and Communities

By Harriet Sanford

From Washington to statehouses across the nation, conversations about education are focused on innovation like never before. Innovation funding from the U.S. Department of Education has fostered a climate in which seeking new ways of doing things is hailed and rewarded at the highest levels of state and federal government.

But when it comes to applying this to the work of schools, the struggles of bringing innovation to the classroom have been exhaustively documented over the years, with limited success at breaking the cycle. Too often, good ideas don't travel well.

Schools appear to change all the time, but often in faddish ways that don't necessarily alter their...