Incentives for Innovation in the Public Schools

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses some propositions about the structure and incentive systems of public schools as they relate to the adoption of innovations and to their implementation in the schools. These propositions may have certain systematic implications for educational research and development (R&D) policy and also for such broader questions as how to implement planned change in bureaucracies. A major focus of R&D policy should be, through experimentation and through incentives that encourage new patterns of institutional behavior, and to encourage a long-overdue diversity of approaches to schooling. Even with more sophisticated approaches to R&D management and to the realities of implementation, the task will be long, costly, and difficult. In the current state of knowledge, this process must be justified primarily on the grounds that an educational system that develops effective mechanisms for innovation is more likely to respond to changing social needs than one that is primarily centered on preserving the existing institutional order.