Learning From Scale-Up Initiatives

We Need to Gather Strong Data as We Go

By Robert C. Granger

In launching an unprecedented effort to improve school achievement and other youth outcomes by “scaling up” evidence-based programs, the Obama administration has given education a golden opportunity on the research front. With new funding, the administration has shown its commitment to supporting “what works.” These scale-up initiatives—including the White House’s Social Innovation Fund , or SIF, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ efforts on teen-pregnancy prevention and home visitation, and the U.S. Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund , or i3,—present a real opportunity for us to learn to do this work better and make lasting impacts on the lives of young people.

The i3 Fund is likely the effort most familiar to educators. Among the 49 successful i3 applicants are Success for All , KIPP’s Effective Leadership Development Model , Teach For America , and Reading Recovery , each of which will try to reproduce its effects in new communities, schools, and classrooms. This work faces a serious challenge, however. Research and prior scale-up efforts have shown that programs that are effective at small scale (perhaps because they were implemented in favorable circumstances by the original developer) have trouble maintaining that effectiveness when extended more broadly. We see that the expanded programs make a difference in some locations, but not others, and with some...