FPG's Implementation Scientists Strengthen State Departments of Education
FPG’s State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence-Based Programs Center (SISEP) establishes and strengthens the capacity for action in state departments of education by supporting the infrastructure and mechanisms necessary to produce significant student outcomes.
Research points to implementation capacity as the missing component in efforts to move national and state policy into effective action in districts, schools, and classrooms. According to SISEP co-director Dean Fixsen, research also shows that people on the ground often have little implementation knowledge, skill, or expertise—and there also is little use of “implementation teams.”
“Organized and effective implementation teams make a big difference,” Fixsen said. These teams consist of a minimum of 3-5 people who are accountable for guiding the implementation of an initiative through each stage of the process. “Without implementation teams, districts, schools, and states are left to their own imaginations to figure out implementation science and best practices.”
Fixsen explained that to bring evidence-based practices into schools effectively, states need an infrastructure that relies on implementation teams at regional, district, and building levels, with education employees and partners fulfilling these teams’ roles and functions. At each level of the infrastructure, implementation teams can apply crucial expertise to develop implementation capacity, relying on principles and practices of implementation science to rapidly assess and adjust to unique conditions.
Fixsen noted the particular importance of implementation teams at the regional level within states.
“On average, each state education department attempts to support 280 school districts, yet research contains no example in which a 1-to-280 management ratio works effectively,” he said. “By addressing this gap in the organizational structure through making use of regional implementation teams, each state’s responsibility becomes manageable.”
According to Fixsen, SISEP has learned through its work with states that rapid development of regional implementation teams is crucial to take advantage of political will to engage in systemic change and to begin to uncover obstacles to that change.
“Inability to develop regional implementation teams was a major impediment in two states that altogether have ceased attempting to build implementation capacity,” Fixsen said.
SISEP developed the “State Capacity Assessment” (SCA) to measure statewide progress.
“Two of the five states from our initial group of partners demonstrated significant gains on the SCA,” said Fixsen. “And this showed the potential for a state to develop a very competently functioning infrastructure within five years.”
He added that scores on an analogous assessment of capacity at the district level revealed the importance of regional implementation teams. “Without support from a regional implementation team, districts failed to progress at all.”
Fixsen also said that states from SISEP’s second group of partners are benefiting from lessons learned from the first group as SISEP continually adapts its work.
“The second group of states improved substantially after only 18 months,” he said. “And they continue to progress rapidly.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs funds the SISEP Center.
State Implementation and Scaling-Up of Evidence-Based Programs Center
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