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Unleashing Locally Driven Innovation

By Ken Kay

Last summer, as I was winding down eight years as president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I went around the country and met with 30 district superintendents. I asked each one a simple question: What could I do to help support their efforts to lead 21st-century districts?

We came up with the idea of creating a professional learning community of superintendents and district leaders committed to 21st-century education and the concept of the 4C's: critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. A few of us thought the idea of creating a community of practice to support the transformation initiatives of local district superintendents was a great one, so in January of this year we launched EdLeader21 , a national think tank for superintendents.

I came away from those discussions with one additional perception: None of those superintendents felt that federal or state policy was helping their efforts to innovate. This perception was reinforced last spring when I participated in Education Week 's "Innovation InSight" events in New York and Chicago. When I asked about 200 practitioners whether state policy was supporting their efforts to innovate, not one person raised a hand. When I asked if federal policy was supporting their efforts to innovate, only one...