Innovation and improvement in the US

A week or so ago, EdNET 2009 took place in Chicago. EdNET styles itself as an ‘educational networking conference’, and is a meeting place for schools administrators, policy makers and the education industry. RM was there – in fact, we sponsored the opening session of the event.

Very interesting was a keynote address given by James Shelton. Shelton is the Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Innovation and Improvement at US Department of Education. With a strong track record working in education businesses, he’s not a typical education policy maker. Our, more or less verbatim, notes of some of the key messages make for an interesting read:

Entrepreneurs are here to take risks and solve problems. The Department of Education wants to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit as we need help solving the biggest issue in the US today – under performance in schools.

Money is not the solution … achieving more with less is the solution.

We need tools to help getting more out of every person in the education system – students, teachers, parents. We need new levels of productivity. We need to embrace online learning. We should be putting more emphasis on online schooling, as we have significant evidence that online schooling works.

Don’t give us tools and systems to do the same things in a different way; give us tools and systems to fundamentally do things differently.

Education and learning technologies is spoken about at the highest level within our current administration. It will improve our children and it will help sustain our economy by focusing on innovation. You are an important industry.

It’s significant that Obama is focusing on innovation in education, and that learning technologies are seen as an important contributor.

There’s anecdotal evidence that it’s not just federal policy makers who are enthusiastic. In San Diego, interactive white boards are big news.