Secretary Rod Paige recently announced the creation of the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII), to be headed by a new Deputy Under Secretary. This office will be a nimble, entrepreneurial arm of the Department of Education, making strategic investments in promising practices and widely disseminating their results. It will also lead the movement for greater parental options and information in education, and will free other offices to focus on their core missions.

• Making Strategic Investments in Promising Educational Practices.
  Like today's best entrepreneurial foundations, this office will support promising programs and—working with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement—rigorously evaluate their results. It will practice "venture philanthropy" through the strategic management of dozens of competitive grant programs, and also through the Fund for the Improvement of Education. This office will become the Department's expert in leveraging competitive grant programs for maximum learning and maximum impact, and will aggressively disseminate findings about "what works" to the educational field.

• Providing Leadership for Parental Options, Information and Rights.
  Under the No Child Left Behind Act, parents play a crucial role in the improvement of our schools. Greater parental options are enhanced under the law, including expanded public school choice, charter schools, and supplemental educational services. The law also recognizes that greater options must be combined with more information, as informed parents are true allies in the movement for better schools. OII will combine and coordinate programs related to parental options and education, including programs for charter schools, magnet schools, public school choice, non-public education and family educational rights, and will coordinate the public school choice and supplemental services provisions of the new law with OESE.

• Focusing the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education on Large-Scale Reform.
  Another benefit of the creation of OII is that OESE will be free to focus on its major formula programs, the centerpiece of No Child Left Behind. A majority of the Department's K-12 funds flow through these programs, including Title I, Reading First, the Teacher Quality State Grant, and more. By transferring the smaller competitive programs to OII, OESE can focus entirely on school improvement writ large, providing technical assistance to states and districts to ensure accountability for results in return for greater flexibility and local control. At the same time, the competitive programs will receive greater attention.

• Relieving the Office of Educational Research and Improvement of Programmatic Responsibilities.
  Moving grant programs to OII will allow OERI to focus on its core missions of supporting research, evaluating educational interventions, and collecting statistics.

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