How is the Race to the Top Fund different from the Education Department’s Investing in Innovation Fund?
The grantees for Race to the Top are states. It’s a theory of change based on comprehensive, statewide education reform. The Innovation Fund is for districts and nonprofits. Its theory of change is to support and incent innovation and to scale up specific programs that show evidence of success. There are a lot of questions in education that we don’t know the answer to. We’ve got to have a funding engine that provides the fuel for innovation, to make sure that we are getting the best ideas out there, that they’re known, and that they’re replicable. The Innovation Fund is designed to do that. Why not pool the two funds? Because the small innovations would get overlooked. The state level is about scale, whereas innovation is first about ideas, then about being able to do it with reliability and validity, and then about scale. If you don’t have those first two steps, you don’t ever get to scale. The Innovation Fund sounds similar to what you did at NewSchools. Yes, it is similar. At NewSch
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