The Massachusetts Innovation School Policy and the Missed Opportunity for “Radical” Change

• In Event: Challenges in and Opportunities for Continuous Improvement

Abstract

The Innovation Schools initiative in Massachusetts presents the opportunity to address persistent race- and class-based opportunity and achievement gaps by granting educators unprecedented autonomy to experiment with new approaches to teaching and learning. However, situated within the state policy framework and high-stakes accountability, schools proposing change under this policy have struggled, by and large, to be radical in their innovating; radical innovations promise to disrupt historical inequities perpetuated within and by our educational policy context. Anchored in critical policy analysis, this archival study examined the innovation plans from over 50 innovation schools in the Commonwealth. Our findings suggest that schools’ efforts to innovate are constrained by normative metrics of success and traditional outcome measures associated with external accountability.

Authors

• Megin Charner-Laird, Salem State University

• Stacy Agee Szczesiul, University of Massachusetts - Lowell