1. The Wallace Foundation’s Approach to Scale
Thank you, Dara, for that introduction. Let me add my welcome to all of you and my thanks for your participation in this convening.
I thought it might be useful – to set the context for this professional learning community of PLC as we call it – to share some observations about
how this convening fits into The Wallace Foundation's overall strategy to make a meaningful contribution in the fields in which we work, and
How we at the foundation think about scaling up social innovations.
Will Miller
President, The Wallace Foundation
Professional Learning Community
Expanded Learning Opportunities
November 20, 2013

2. Our discussion today The Wallace Approach How innovation spreads
Theory in action
Reflections on scale
I am going to cover four topics.
First, so you understand where we are coming from, I’ll walk you through Wallace’s approach to philanthropy, which guides our work of supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices.
Turning to the issue of scaling up innovations, I’ll share some of the theoretical underpinnings of how new ideas and practices spread through society.
Next, in order to ground these abstract concepts in the real world, I’ll offer a few concrete examples drawn from our own initiatives.
Then, to wrap up, I’ll offer some thoughts on how all of this applies to the future of the ELO sector and the work we are doing together.

3. Our discussion today The Wallace Approach Support work of grantees
Add value by advancing knowledge
Let’s start with the Wallace Approach – or, as we call it in foundation jargon, our theory of change.
It origins lie roughly 15 years ago, when Wallace was a relatively young foundation.
After putting tens of millions of dollars into school improvement and other types of programs, our Board decided to take a step back and look at what those millions had actually achieved.
Although we had supported a number of wonderful programs, our Board came out of that self-evaluation a little disappointed at how few had been scaled or sustained beyond the period of our direct funding.
To borrow from an old proverb, we were better at giving people fish than we were at reaching them how to fish.
After this period of self-reflection, we as a foundation decided that if we’re to have the impact we want across the country, we need to bring more to the table than money; we had to leverage the power of knowledge to help institutions strengthen their ongoing work to meet the needs of our time.
At the heart of our approach to philanthropy is this idea that progress is often blocked as much by a lack of understanding about what to do as it is by a lack of money to do it.
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Therefore, we aim to create social value in two ways:
First, by supporting the work of our grantees to benefit the kids they serve directly, and
Second, by seeking to add value by advancing knowledge that improves policy and practice in the field as a whole.
To hold ourselves true to this second goal, we ask ourselves a simple question: What are we doing in our initiatives that has the potential to make a meaningful difference for those working in this area who never get a dime from us?
This is the question underlying our theory of change.

4. The Wallace Approach (Our theory of change)
Understand the Context
(Engage with the external environment to identify knowledge gaps, field interest, and time lines)
Generate Improvements and Insights
(Build promising new approaches and new evidence/knowledge)
In all of our work, we start by trying to understand the context, and identify what we call a high-leverage knowledge gap – that is, something that is not known which, if known, could help propel social progress.
To qualify as addressing a high-leverage knowledge gap, an initiative must tackle a problem for which the solutions are as yet unproven and insights about what works -- and what does not -- could make a meaningful difference in achieving the initiative’s goals.
There are many ways to identify these knowledge gaps – such as reviewing the literature, interviewing experts, and asking leading practitioners what they do not know that, if they knew it, would allow them to make a breakthrough.
That’s what we mean when we say it starts with understanding the context.
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Next, we work with our grantee partners to help them test new ideas and generate improvements, in order to build insights and evidence.
We think the greatest potential for generating insights occurs when we don’t wait until the end of an initiative to evaluate results – but integrate learning from the very beginning of the work in ways that can inform both our grantees and the field as a whole.
What we want is a virtuous cycle that balances problem-solving actions undertaken by grantees, informed by the best available experience and research, with both in-process and after-the-fact analysis of data so we can understand the underlying causes of improvement and identify best practices.
We see this as an act of co-creation, believing everyone involved in this process – foundation staff, our grantees, our technical assistance providers, and the researchers – can learn a lot from each other, which is one reason we fund professional learning community opportunities like this one.
We then seek to share widely what we and our partners have learned so that the broader field can benefit. For this approach to work, policymakers need to know they can rely on the evidence we share to be credible, and practitioners need to know they can rely on our insights to be useful.
We conceive of our approach as a cycle because experience has shown that what we learn in one round of this process often leads to new questions that become the focus of additional initiatives or rounds of grants.
Because our topic today is scaling impact, I want to focus on the box at the lower left – catalyzing broad impact – and share with you what’s behind it.
Catalyze Broad Impact
(Improve practice and policy nationwide)

5. Our discussion today The Wallace Approach How innovations spread
The question of how new ideas spread is thousands of years old. It stretches all the way back to the invention of writing in Samaria in the fourth century B.C.E. and can be heard in ancient parables like the one in the Gospel of Matthew about the Sower whose seeds only bore fruit if dropped on fertile soil.
But it was not until 1962 that a researcher took a systematic approach to addressing the question.

6. What is diffusion?
The ‘bible’ of diffusion – Diffusion of Innovations, by Everett Rogers
Diffusion is “the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.”
That was when Everett Rogers, then a professor of communication studies at Ohio State University, published the first edition of Diffusion of Innovations.
Over five editions, it has become the most-cited social science text in history, with more than 47,000 references.
Rogers defined diffusion as “the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system.”
While stated in somewhat abstract, academic language, it’s a simple concept. An innovation can be an idea, a practice or really anything that is new to the user. The other key ingredients are communications channels, time and an audience.
The interesting thing that Rogers found is that across different ideas, behaviors, products, and cultures, the spread of innovations could be explained by a common set of factors. The book is more than 500 pages, so I’ll just share highlights of what I think are the four most important ones.

7. What drives diffusion? Extent and nature of the communications efforts
Organizational policies and incentives
System-level policies and incentives
Characteristics of the innovation itself
The first is the extent and nature of the communications efforts. Do people actually hear about the innovation; if they don’t, they can’t even consider adopting it.
Are those who are communicating about the innovation influential, either because they hold positions of authority or are other sources of influence?
How is the innovation framed?
Businesses, political campaigns, and, increasingly, nonprofits invest in market research to figure out the most effective way to do so for a given target audience.
Some of you may have seen the anti-smoking ads aimed at teens that argue tobacco companies are deliberately misleading the public.
Why did these replace earlier efforts?
Because market research showed that teens didn’t believe that pictures of elderly people dying of emphysema applied to them (do you remember when you too were immortal?); but teens really hate the idea of being lied to.
The new ads used a frame that was meaningful to the target audience.
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Second, organizational policies can be important factors. Is a new practice discouraged, encouraged or mandated at the time of introduction of the idea? Are organizational incentives likely to encourage or discourage adoption – and are they working to amplify or impede organizational policy?
System-level policies and incentives also play a role: Laws and public funding can play big roles in driving adoption of a new idea at scale, for better or worse.
Last and perhaps most important: According to Rogers, the characteristics of the innovation itself determine between 49 and 87 percent of the variation in the adoption of innovations.
So let’s dive deeper into these characteristics.

8. Characteristics of a successful innovation
Relative advantage over current practice – is it better?
Compatibility with current practice and values – does it fit what I do?
Simplicity – can I master it?
Testability – can I try it out in part before I commit?
Observability – can I see it in action?
Why do certain innovations with similar intensity of communications – and similar support from organizations and systems – succeed while others fail?
Why do some spread more quickly than others?
Rogers identified five key characteristics.
How people see these characteristics has the largest influence on an innovation’s rate of diffusion.
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The first is relative advantage. That’s the degree to which people perceive an innovation to be better than what it’s replacing.
“Better,” of course, is in the eye of the beholder. An innovation’s relative advantage can be measured in terms of dollars and cents (what it costs), convenience, effectiveness in solving a problem—whatever matters to the audience.
An example. The Sony Reader came out in The Amazon Kindle came out a year later.
Technologically speaking, it was far worse than the Reader – it was bulkier, was harder to read in many lighting conditions, and weighed more; but because it cost less and offered many more books, which was what really mattered to people, the Kindle succeeded where the Reader failed.
The second key characteristic is compatibility with current practice.
When a new idea or practice is consistent with what potential adopters already do, believe and know, it’s more likely to be adopted quickly.
In the early days of personal computing, software packages that mimicked how we did things on paper – whether it was how we kept our appointment books or created a financial spreadsheet – were far more successful than more powerful packages that required you learn a completely new way to perform a task.
The third is simplicity.
Innovations that are easy to understand and easy to use get picked up more quickly than those that aren’t.
We’re seeing an unfortunate counter-example right now in the roll-out of Healthcare.gov. In late September, the administration decided that the Web interface shouldn’t let people shop for plans before registering, which was a complicated process due to the need to verify income.
Many people frustrated with the slowness and complexity of registration simply gave up on the entire process, which was a major contributor to the low number of enrollments so far.
The fourth key characteristic is testability. Often what a potential adopter wants to know is, “Can I take this new thing out for a test drive before I buy it?”
In our field, the principle of testability is the reason why districts often want to do a pilot program before committing to a wholesale policy change.
Those pilot programs build evidence of practicality and relative advantage within the particular social system, a school district in this case.
The final characteristic is observability. Put simply, if people can see a new idea in action and verify that it works, they’re more likely to adopt it themselves.
Among these characteristics, studies have shown that the first three factors – relative advantage, compatibility and simplicity – are especially important in explaining the difference between rates of adoption.

9. The diffusion curve Time Cumulative number of adopters
A second central insight of Rogers’ work is that diffusion is a social process.
The yellow line on this chart displays the cumulative percentage of adopters of an innovation over time. The characteristic S-shaped diffusion curve begins slowly, and, at a certain point, begins to rise rapidly before tapering off after half those in a system have adopted an innovation.
What’s behind the shape of this curve is differences in the rate of adoption by different groups, shown in the purple line.
Different people have different levels of risk tolerance for trying out new things, depending on the situation.
At the left end of the spectrum you have the innovators. These are the visionaries who actually spend their time inventing or experimenting with innovations that others will eventually adopt.
Next come the early adopters. These are the folks who are on the lookout for the next cool thing and are quick to see how it relates to their own lives.
They have a higher tolerance than the average person for new ideas and gadgets that may or may not work quite as promised.
In the age of the iPhone and Google Glass, we’ve all gotten better at recognizing the early adopters among us.
The state of Kentucky was an early adopter of the Common Core State Standards.
These early adopters are important to “spreading the word” about new ideas to their peers, particularly for complex innovations.
Advertising and mentions in the media will help get the word out about an innovation, but information alone won’t be enough to convince most people to take a risk on an unknown quantity.
They need to hear from their peers that the next big thing is more than just a passing fad, is practical, and will make a positive difference in their lives or work.
The next group, the early majority, are the pragmatists who prefer to wait for all the kinks to be worked out, check the online reviews, compare prices, and then get on board when they’re confident the decision to adopt won’t come back to bite them.
Very often, they will wait until the innovation becomes stable, is easy to implement and is reliable.
The late majority don’t really want to have to change at all, but eventually they look around, see that everyone they know is already doing it, and bow to peer pressure. Some of you may have a few Facebook friends who fall into this category.
Finally, there are the laggards, the stubborn few who aren’t just behind the curve, but actively oppose adoption.
It’s important to keep in mind that diffusion theory doesn’t view laggards as an obstacle to overcome. They might have sound reasons for holding out, and their feedback may be the impetus for the next round of innovation.
The same person may fall into different groups for different innovations, depending on the nature of the risks and benefits he or she perceives.
Speaking personally, a look in the back of my closet would quickly persuade you that I am an early adopter of new computer gadgets. At the same time, I am a curmudgeon (a term I prefer over the technically more correct label “laggard”) when it comes to Twitter.
Rate of adoption
Time

10. Putting diffusion theory to use
Meet people where they are
Focus on connections between groups
Not every innovation makes it up the curve
One of the keys to putting diffusion theory to practical use is that you’re not trying to move people from one category to another, turning laggards into the late majority or the early majority into early adopters.
Instead, the goal is to meet people where they are, ensure there is conversation between groups, listen to what they have to say and, as appropriate, use that feedback to adapt your innovation to their needs and the way you speak about it to the way they hear it, understanding that what worked for early adopters might not work for the majority.
I understand this is how many of you have cultivated your relationships with states, districts, and schools.
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Another important related point is that not every innovation moves all the way from one side of the curve to the other.
Remember the roll-out of the Segway? Before its release, it was widely heralded as the next great “It,” a revolutionary new technology that would forever change life as we knew it.
For a variety of reasons, the Segway revolution never happened, and at about $6,000 each, we now see their use mainly in airports, warehouses, and golf courses.
So, it’s not enough to get a lot of attention. The innovation needs to meet a real or perceived need at a cost that creates value for the user to really scale up.

11. Our diffusion activities
Raise awareness
Inform policy makers, thought leaders
Inform practitioners and other funders
Benchmark current practices
Publicize existence proofs
Support field building
Develop tools and actionable products to speed adoption
Synthesize what’s known into Perspectives
Briefing and convenings
Website and social media
Communication partnerships and media relations
Advertising
Film and video
Remove barriers
Facilitate or incentivize adoption
Encouraging the widespread adoption of effective social innovations is perhaps the single biggest challenge in philanthropy.
Our foundation’s mission statement – improving learning and enrichment opportunities for the least advantaged children throughout the United States – implies this kind of goal.
Still, we recognize this isn’t easy.
As a private foundation, we don’t have the authority to compel anybody to do anything.
For that reason, the diffusion model is a good fit for Wallace because it recognizes that most adoption decisions are voluntary.
So when it comes to scale, our strategy is to inform, inspire and help practitioners, policymakers and leading thinkers make widespread improvements.
We attempt to do this by utilizing a wide variety of tactics to diffuse the knowledge and insights we gain, as shown on this slide.
Think of it this way: Wallace makes about $60 million in grants annually.
In several, but not all, of our program areas, we are trying to influence a public education system that spends $600 billion a year through about 15,000 independent school districts.
The challenge of achieving impact at that scale can be likened to trying to move the elephant by poking it with a straw.
It can only be done by informing, educating and persuading others – typically those in various areas of our government and their nonprofit partners – to adopt policies and spend public and private money in line with the evidence we have gathered.

12. Our discussion today The Wallace Approach How innovation spreads
Theory in action
Of course, you may be thinking that improving the lives of the least advantaged kids isn’t the same as selling Kindles. So what does all this theory look like when a foundation like Wallace tries to put it into practice?
Let’s turn to some examples.

13. Wallace’s education leadership initiative
Understand the Context
(Knowledge gap: How to prepare and support leaders in ways that strengthen school improvement efforts)
I’ll start with our work in education leadership.
We started working on the issue more than a decade ago, seeking first to understand the context. We knew that the role of school leadership had been largely absent from the national conversation on school improvement, which was largely focused on teaching and class size. When principals were discussed at all, the prevailing view that that there was a shortage of them. We quickly realized that there were important gaps in the field’s knowledge about how to prepare and support leaders in ways that could strengthen school improvement efforts.
So we moved to the lower right hand box, setting out to help generate improvements and insights on preparing leaders who can deliver the change we need. We worked with 26 states and 15 urban districts. We commissioned research to fill knowledge gaps about how to train effective principals and evaluate what was working and what wasn’t across different sites. And we convened professional learning communities for states, districts, and our research and communication partners.
The results of all that work included more than 70 research reports, 140 sustained, high-quality initiatives (including 24 pre-service training programs) and the creation of 15 new nonprofits.
In seeking to diffuse what we learned in order to catalyze broad impact, our third box, we wanted not only to raise awareness of the importance of school leadership but to encourage education decision-makers to act on that awareness.
But for those decision-makers, change always comes with risk: What if I redirect precious resources to a new initiative and it fails?
In fact, Rogers described the innovation decision process – where individuals move from knowledge, to consideration, to adoption – as one of risk reduction.
With that in mind, our dissemination work sought to emphasize the five characteristics of successful innovation.
Generate Improvements and Insights
(Worked with 26 states and 15 districts; commissioned research; convened PLCs)
Catalyze Broad Impact
(More than 70 reports, 140 initiatives, 15 new nonprofits)

14. Characteristics of a successful innovation
Relative advantage over current practice – is it better?
Compatibility with current practice and values – does it fit what I do?
Simplicity – can I master it?
Testability – can I try it out in part before I commit?
Observability – can I see it in action?
We aimed to show:
that a deliberate approach to school leadership can be more effective than the status quo;
that it is compatible with the other elements of a district’s reform agenda and can make those elements more effective;
that it is do-able, by which I mean, with the right approach, districts can in fact improve school leadership; and
that this is a testable idea, one a district can pilot before taking to scale.
Finally, our publications and convenings made it an observable idea, giving decision-makers a window into how others were going about implementation and what they were achieving.
As mentioned a moment ago, in order to scale up, an innovation has to work – to create value each of the next group of adopters sufficient to overcome the risks and costs of adopting it.
For this reason, we have articulated a principle at our foundation that we should move with the evidence, but be careful not to get ahead of it.

15. We say more only as we learn more
Promote specific solutions combining outcomes and cost
2007: Policymakers should support evidence-based principal training programs using tools to assess them
We think this approach of saying more only as we learn more is a good one for a foundation like ours for both philosophical and practical reasons.
Philosophically, it helps us avoid doing potential harm by recommending things that are untested.
From a practical perspective, protecting our credibility helps us be more effective in persuading others to take the ideas generated by Wallace and our partners seriously.
When we began our work in school leadership around 2000, we understood that there was a lot we didn’t know.
So we focused on building awareness of the importance of school leadership, even as we committed to the understand the context phase of our work, seeking a sharper definition of the problem at hand.
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By 2003, we had evidence that the widely held view that there was a shortage of principals nationally was a misperception, so we focused our diffusion efforts on shifting the attention of policymakers from the quantity of principals to the quality of principals.
This brought us to the question of how we should go about producing quality leaders.
What makes for a good principal? How do we impart the necessary skills to the next generation of leaders?
To tackle these questions, we commissioned research into the basic characteristics of effective principals and what it would take to train them.
By 2007, we had, through our grants, learned enough about what makes for a good principal training program to promote the adoption of a basic evidence-based framework for effective principal training, along with a tool to assess individual programs.
Currently, we’re back in the generating improvements and insights phase of the cycle, putting what we had learned to the test through our Principal Pipeline Initiative.
It’s the first of our education leadership initiatives to rigorously test the effect on student outcomes when districts provide a large number of talented aspiring principals with the right pre-service training and on-the-job support.
At the same time, we and our communication partners are still communicating the original idea that school leadership should be a priority.
Because adoption rates vary, diffusion is an ongoing process. We’re a long way from the system level of impact we seek. But we are making considerable progress.
Indicators of this progress from the local to the national level include:
the adoption of improving the training of principals as a central plank in the education platform of the newly elected Mayor of Boston;
the number of states that have made a priority of improving school leadership using research-based approaches; and
the inclusion of school leadership as an explicit focus in federal education reform programs.
These ideas and innovations are indeed spreading.
Define the problem, share emerging solutions and operational lessons
2003: Policymakers should shift from increasing supply of certified principals to improving quality
2000: Policymakers should focus on improving school leadership
Build awareness of the problem and need for solutions
Less knowledge
More knowledge
Degree of knowledge about what works

16. We all practice diffusion
PASA’s City Symposium provides cities with framework to start their own intermediary or afterschool system
Say Yes and others help ensure expanded learning and community schools are part of New York State’s education reform agenda
TASC and NYC pilot a new initiative to meet the need of middle school students struggling with reading
Horizons and Higher Achievement adapt their models to allow for more widespread impact
If anything about that example strikes a chord with you, it may be because all of you here today are putting diffusion theory into practice every day, whether consciously or not.
You all clearly embrace the idea that scaling up is about more than just formal replication of your program model in new sites.
You all seek to provide inspiration and guidance to other organizations that want to provide expanded learning opportunities to children in their communities.
You actively engage the media and policymakers to promote the importance of expanded learning.
You attend PLCs like this one and hold conferences of your own to exchange ideas and best practices.
And you participate in intensive research studies to establish the relative advantage of the innovations you have developed.
All of this is diffusion in action.
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For example, the Providence After School Association’s annual two-day City Symposium provides cities with the framework for starting their own intermediary or afterschool system.
Attendees learn
the basics of developing a business and strategic plan;
how PASA goes about partnering with its school district, city government and local program providers;
how it conducts ongoing program quality assessment;
and other topics.
In the three years PASA has hosted the Symposium, twenty-seven cities have attended.
Several cities have either replicated PASA’s AfterZone model or adapted aspects of it for their own purposes.
Nashville even picked up the name AfterZone for its system.
The fact that PASA provides the tools for cities to develop the approach that works best for them, as opposed to pushing a cookie-cutter model, greatly enhances the scalability of their work.
Here’s another example: As most of you know, Say Yes to Education’s Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey was a commissioner on Governor Cuomo’s New New York Education Reform Commission.
Other members of this PLC testified before the commission about the importance of expanded learning opportunities.
No surprise, then, that community schools and quality expanded learning with academically enriched programming were among the commission’s recommendations.
And the governor heeded those recommendations, including $15 million for community schools and $20 million for expanded learning in the state budget.
About a month after the expanded learning grant was announced, the City of New York made its own announcement: 6th graders who struggle with reading comprehension at 20 New York City middle schools will get an extra two-and-a-half hours of learning a day, including arts, sports and daily one-hour sessions with tutors.
TASC is the city’s operating partner in this initiative. BELL and Citizen Schools are among the community partners that will be working with individual schools.
TASC has tweaked its model to meet the city’s needs by adding an intensive reading component.
Now the city and the field will get to observe how that adapted model performs in select schools.
This notion that innovation is an ongoing, adaptive process is integral to the way Horizons and Higher Achievement have approached scale.
Horizons recognized that in order to serve as many children in as many places as possible, it would need to build on its model of partnering with independent primary and secondary schools.
In recent years, the organization has forged partnerships with community colleges and universities, which now account for 10 of the 37 Horizons sites, with more on the way.
This is a case of necessity being the mother of invention because these new partners offer unique advantages, including
pro bono contributions from faculty;
the resources of graduate schools of education;
the chance to expose students at an early age to the world of post-secondary education; and
the prospect of inspiring Horizons parents to take college classes for the first time.
Higher Achievement, meanwhile, is thinking about scale both in terms of serving more children and spreading its innovations.
While it has long focused on helping disadvantaged youth get into top high schools, it has set itself a new goal: by 2030, all students in the cities where it works will graduate from high school, ready for college.
To accomplish this goal, Higher Achievement is adapting its afterschool and summer model into a school turnaround strategy, concentrating services in single schools in order to directly serve 70% more students by 2016.
At the same time, it will seek to promote broad adoption of its distinctive features – like its emphasis on culture – in the cities where it works, even in schools where it doesn’t have staff.

17. Our discussion today The Wallace Approach How innovation spreads
Theory in action
Reflections on scale
Those of us at Wallace think it is great that this approach to scale – spreading the insights and improvements you generate in your work – is something you all do in one way or another.
I’d like to close by reflecting on some of the implications of this approach as we all work together to provide expanded learning opportunities to greater numbers of children.

18. Reflections on scale Scaling isn’t easy Change is a cycle
Evidence is crucial, but it’s not the end of the story
Innovators are in it together
The term “scaling up” seems to imply that it’s a simple mathematical formula, but we all know the reality is quite different.
We all want to serve as many kids as we can. And some funders take it as a given that today’s pilot program is a starter kit for tomorrow’s nationwide expansion.
But good ideas almost always take time to hone and refine. Further, they don’t always work the same way in different contexts.
Diffusion theory tells us there aren’t that many early adopters out there.
The majority are in wait-and-see mode: Does your model work? Is it cost-effective? Who else is doing it?
As I mentioned earlier, we’ve come a long way in our school leadership work, but the fundamental task – persuading decision-makers of the importance of school leadership – is ongoing.
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Patience and persistence are critical. So is adaptability.
At Wallace, we realize we are never done understanding the context in which we work.
We are never done generating insights and improvements.
And when those insights and improvements don’t catch on as quickly as we like, we recognize that the answer isn’t necessarily a bigger, splashier marketing campaign.
It may be we need more experience on the ground and better evidence.
All this is because, when it comes to opportunities for children, we have learned that one size does not fit all.
So we can’t cling too tightly to our ideas, especially if there are counter-indicators in the data.
We have to pay attention to the evidence and use it to let our ideas evolve.
As a funder, Wallace has a responsibility to you, to help you work through that process.
And we’re counting on you to continue to help us do the same.
One of tomorrow’s topics is outcomes.
Many of you will be speaking about the research you are participating in.
You all deserve the utmost respect and appreciation for helping build the evidence base for expanded learning and student support services.
But “outcome” is another tricky word because it suggests an endpoint.
While it’s absolutely crucial to the diffusion of expanded learning that we develop credible evidence of what works and what doesn’t, it’s also crucial for all the potential adopters out there to understand that no one study is the end of the story.
There is always more to learn about work as important and multi-faceted as this.
In fact, the most compelling evidence for the majority of adopters – including policy makers – comes from the cumulative, mutually-reinforcing findings of many studies in different times and places.
Innovation can seem like lonely work.
There you are huddled at the far-left end of the diffusion curve.
You truly believe you’re onto something that can improve lives.
Every day you see it with your own eyes, but the wheels of change move slowly, and there are a lot of skeptics that need convincing.
Basically, you’re feel like you’re trying to move an elephant with a straw.
One thing you have to stave off that loneliness is the support of likeminded peers.
Peer-to-peer communication is a critical element of diffusion theory.
There is so much knowledge sitting in this room today, so much we stand to gain when we take the time to share what we know and learn from each other.
Each of you has a different model and your own vision of expanded learning, but at the center of it all is the idea that disadvantaged children need more and better opportunities to learn.
That idea in itself has the potential to transform this country. The more we join our voices, the farther they will travel.

19. We know it can be done… together
Achieving the spread of an innovation is very difficult, but we have many examples that should give us courage.
Laws banning smoking in public places are an example. Health groups like the American Cancer Society raised awareness of the problem, especially for waiters. Cities that were early adopters made observable the fact that businesses didn’t lose customers – making it compatible with city officials’ goal of o preserving economic vitality. The innovation has spread.
In our own field of learning and enrichment for children, we have seen an increase in the high school graduation rate from 25 percent in 1900, to about 75 percent today, a 40-year high according to Education Week. We have much further to go, but the improvement – district by district, school by school – shows progress is possible…
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…if we all work together.
Thank you very much.
together