Report suggests Department of Education innovation program is massive waste of taxpayer dollars

The Department of Education’s (DOE) classroom innovation program had a 74% failure rate while costing taxpayers billions, a new report reveals.

Through its “Investing in Innovation” (i3) Fund, the DOE gave out over $1.4 billion in grants between 2010 and 2016. Grantees were tasked with researching innovative instructional models for the classroom.

Of the 172 grants issued, only 150 have reported results thus far, and approximately one-fourth of those hadn’t properly tested the findings. 

Of the 112 grant programs with properly tested findings, just 26% yielded any measurable benefit for students, the Institue of Education Sciences reported last month.  

The results were so bad the lead author of the report, Barbara Goodson, found them “psychologically disappointing.” 

“You would hope that all this [innovation] would pan out for students,” she wrote. “And, that we would know better how to make education.” 

While some might see these results as a reason to cut the program and save taxpayer funds, Goodson does not.  

Instead, she argued for more taxpayer funding in three main areas. 

First, researchers need larger test samples to ensure their findings aren’t skewed. When testing a new educational model, having more students participate in the study means the findings will be more reliable. 

Second, more research is needed regarding the implementation of such programs. It’s not enough, Goodson says, just to create a model that works. Educators also need to be taught how to implement them in their schools effectively. 

Third, the program needs a “national scale up.” This means giving smaller grants to localities to implement the new instructional model in their local districts, rather than larger grants for nationwide implementation.  

The DOE’s efforts to promote innovation in education continue to this day, under the i3’s successor program, “Education Innovation and Research,” which has funded $3 billion more in grants since 2010.