Backpacks and cake mixes: the elusive search for sustained innovation. (understanding the times).

How did this happen? Who decided that students should carry backpacks? It's a rather recent phenomenon, but watch a middle school empty out some afternoon and you'll wonder what we ever did without them.

The important thing to note about backpacks in school is that they're everywhere; in every type of school and carried by every type of student. I don't know how this practice got started, but I'll bet it isn't the result of any DOE initiative, board of education mandate, or school improvement planning committee suggestion.

Whether you think backpacks are good for students or not doesn't change the reality that in less than one generation of students they've achieved ubiquity. A Web search for "school backpacks" yields hundreds of hits. Wal-Mart, Amazon.com and Toys-R-Us are among the many retailers offering dozens of backpack brands from dozens of companies, including: Thermos, Binney & Smith and Mattel. But more than creating an entirely new industry, the backpack phenomenon is an example of systemic and sustained innovation.

It's not the use of backpacks that's important. They play no major or significant role in the value of academic programs, and it can be debated whether the use of them is more detrimental than beneficial. What's important is when it comes to advances in school programs that do matter, large-scale, sustainable innovation is very hard to come by in public education.

INNOVATE AND STAGNATE It's not that we're short on innovation; it's that we're short on capacity to expand and sustain innovation. That may be the nature of bureaucracy, but it can't be tolerated. There's simply no excuse for letting new approaches or organizational practices that hold benefits for the entire system to be relegated to magnet school status. When we do that we knowingly and willfully under serve most students.

It sounds shocking, and it is not indicative of the intent of school leaders. In most cases, there is a passion to extend the innovation, yet at least two significant obstacles tend to push the innovation into stagnation.

First is a budgeting blind spot that categorizes innovation expansion as a call for new money. That's neither logical nor fiscally responsible. A better approach is one based on educational priority. The "new money" approach assumes all existing program expenditures will continue to have value and need to be maintained at present levels. This is illogical because innovation doesn't merely add new structures or practices to schooling. Instead it displaces former structures and practices with better ones, which may not just produce better outcomes, but be more cost-efficient as well.

Fiscal responsibility improves when the merit and value of existing programs are evaluated in light of innovative new ones. If a better, more educationally powerful way to do something is discovered it should replace the old approach. It should go to the top of the budget pile, and when the money runs out, a lower priority should be cut. Easier said than done, but still the right idea.

CAKE MIXES Change is a challenge for school faculty as well. They don't automatically embrace new methods. To the contrary, other than those spearheading the innovation, many school staff members will argue that the old way is just as good, or better.

At best they're suspicious. A good analogy to this was published in a recent edition of the online newsletter, NewsScan. It quoted marketer Kathy Biro, saying "When cake mixes were first created, they required consumers to only add water--a major behavioral shift. Consumers felt a cake made with such a mix could not possibly be as good as a homemade cake. So cake mix formulas were revised to require the addition of an egg and milk. The new mixes met with great success, because the behavior shift required of consumers was minor."

Incremental expansion may help to overcome faculty suspicion. The challenge for district administrators is to ensure the increments are big enough to maximize benefits for learners, but not too big to intimidate teachers.

If your district is succeeding in taking innovations from experiment to district-wide practice please let me know. I'll put your story in my backpack and share it wherever I go.

Daniel E. Kinnaman, [e-mail], is publisher.