Education research and development (R&D) is a pipeline: What comes out depends on what goes in, starting with ideas.
To drive breakthrough solutions to education challenges, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) launched the Accelerate, Transform, Scale (ATS) Initiative. Designed to support high-reward, scalable solutions that improve education outcomes for all students, this work differs from other education R&D in its risk profile: While we expect some projects to fail or substantially change course, the potential payoff is high.
Traditional federal grant processes, however, can feel constraining because they ask applicants to pair a radical idea with a detailed plan for developing and evaluating it right out of the gate.
To give innovators license to put forward bold ideas without simultaneously working out every nut and bolt, the ATS Hub—led by Digital Promise and SRI—has launched an Ideas Challenge. Modeled on similar challenges run by other federal agencies in health and transportation, as well as Digital Promise’s experience running the National Science Foundation VITAL Prize, this challenge lowers the barrier to entry so the field’s most promising concepts can take root.
The Ideas Challenge also seeks to balance novelty and feasibility. Breakthrough solutions to entrenched problems in education must work within complex systems, so we expect them to draw on multiple disciplines and require cross-sector collaboration. These solutions may come from unexpected places, such as a district staff member without formal research training who sees a new way to tackle a problem of practice, or a health entrepreneur whose solution to a systemic challenge might translate to education. Sometimes the people just outside a system bring the freshest eyes and the boldest ideas. In a study of scientific problem-solving contests, solvers were more likely to succeed the further a problem was from their own field of expertise (Jeppesen & Lakhani, 2010).
But the education sector’s history with outsiders is mixed. Some efforts have produced lasting change, as when physician Maria Montessori reimagined early childhood education. Many large-scale outside initiatives, however, have fallen short because they underestimated systemic barriers to change (Stecher et al., 2018; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Bold ideas from outside seem most likely to succeed when they’re developed with insiders who understand classrooms, students, and school culture.
That’s why the Ideas Challenge pairs a broad entry point with two later stages that push applicants to vet their ideas with people on the ground. The initial Open Round, available to the public, closed in July. We deliberately kept the barrier to entry low: Contestants described a solution concept and provided just one citation suggesting why it might work. The 26 teams selected in that round are now fleshing out their concept and theory of change.
In November, the community will have an opportunity to vote on nine finalists who will receive financial support and mentoring to develop their ideas further. A key component of the final stage is testing their concepts with intended users such as teachers and district staff.
The Ideas Challenge asked one guiding question: What breakthrough, highly scalable ideas could foster every learner’s agency, durable skills, or executive functioning while building academic content knowledge? Entries could take any form, whether a model, a policy, a system, or a tool, and did not need to involve technology. Even so, many of the ideas we received used artificial intelligence (AI), reflecting how quickly AI has spread through education despite ongoing debate about its appropriate role. The submissions offer a signal of where innovators see the greatest opportunities.
The goal of the Ideas Challenge is not simply to collect good ideas but to move the most promising ones toward real solutions, whether through federal grants, philanthropy, or venture investment. In an upcoming post, we’ll share more about the range of ideas we received and the teams now in the Discovery Phase. Stay tuned!
