Innovation often drives improvement in successful enterprises. Even the U.S. Government spends many millions of dollars to conduct research and development in areas such as the Nanotech industry. Yet since the current administration took charge of the US Department of Education, grant funds for innovation have diminished, grant programs been cut from the budget in favor of apportionments that disappear as a trickle of money into school district budgets. Even remaining competitive grants like the “Reading First” require proposal of programs and curriculum that are from approved lists and which adhere to the party line.
There are many complaints about the educational system, too numerous for a short article such as this. Some complaints are valid, some are overstated and others are simply unsupported by evidence. Yet with all of the concerns the administration has stifled innovation in favor of standardization. Improvements in education have always come from innovators, just as in any other endeavor. Teaching children is a difficult undertaking and it is made more difficult by the world that children experience outside the classroom. Teachers must innovate and thereby education can evolve to integrate useful aspects of modern technology, culture and experience. If the children’s attention is to be grabbed and held on to, if education is to be relevant to today’s children, then changes in the world must be used to innovate instructional delivery and curriculum development.
Limiting innovation through grant programs has been mandated over the past six and a half years and it smacks of arrogant leadership. Limiting innovation will reduce the effectiveness of future education by forcing adherence to limited, ineffective or out-moded educational philosophies and practices. Limiting innovation serves to diminish the quality of schools today and into the future. One size fits all does not even work in a classroom of twenty students much less across all public schools.
Grants are tremendous vehicles for innovation: grants fund energy and ideas. Certainly grants must be effectively monitored and projects chosen for funding must be selected based on the quality of the application and not to satisfy geographic distribution or political purposes. With proper administration of grant programs, wonderful innovations are possible. The Thomas Edison of education and his or her light bulb of a solution to an educational problem is out there waiting for grant money to flip the switch on.