Question: Where does Innovations in Education (iie) get its funding?

Answer: Since the mid 90's iie has been funded by conference registration fees and recently by the $30,000 received from the Utah Legislature to submit its proposal for demonstration projects.

Question: How has iie spent its income?

Answer: We spend the money in the areas from which it comes. Almost all of conference registration fees are used to pay for conference expenses. This including mailings, lunches for attendees, renting conference facilities and other conference related expenses.
Funding from the Utah legislature went to pay consultants to help prepare the proposal, conduct the research used to prepare the Competency Based Education/Learning Support System portion of the proposal and to develop the prototype for the Learning Support System software. It also helped the funding of this web site.
Some of this funding will also be used to pay for some of the expenses for a spring 2004 conference for educators and education policy makers highlighting the seven components that were included in our Legislative proposal.

Questions: How are iie officers compensated for their services?

Answer: iie officers receive no income from iie monies or any other funding sources. They have agreed to be citizen volunteers and accept no money for what they do. This allows them to be totally independent when evaluating education innovations. Their compensation is their expectation that their efforts based on years of expereince will improve the future education of their children (10 in two families), grandchildren (10 in six families) and currently, one great grand child. Of course all Utah children will benefit from these same efforts and successes.

Question: How are iie's ”innovations” selected?

Answer: A due and diligent search is undertaken to evaluate each potential innovation including:

Evaluating the initial research which must already have indicated that the “innovation” makes a performance difference.
Trying out the “innovation” by iie officers and their families to insure no risk to health and safety.
Discussing an “innovations” impact on individual families by talking with principals, teachers and parents about their experience.
Spending time with “innovations” proponents, whether for profit or not-for-profit organizations, to evaluate their stability.
Evaluating an “innovations” staying power i.e. how long has it lasted in the educational environment.
Looking at growth rate, i.e. are more families and educators using the “innovation” this year compared to last?
After an “innovation” meets the above criteria, iie then ranks them by their potential for accelerating a child's learning and reducing educational costs.

Question: How do you find potential innovations to evaluate?

Answer: We subscribe to Internet services that identify new programs. We review Utah test data, identify significant positive changes in a school's test scores and investigate. We locate the top performing schools and try to find out what influences their performance. We read educational publications. We look at national educational research group web sites to see what they are evaluating. We are always looking for "best practices" in the educational world.