Scaling-up Brief

Oct 15, 2026

Scaling-up Brief analyzes why effective implementation capacity is essential for improving education outcomes, especially for students with disabilities. It explains how educators’ “uniqueness” across states, districts, schools, and classrooms makes standardized approaches ineffective, so implementation-informed strategies rely on Implementation Teams. Using national ratios, it argues that current state-to-district demands are unmanageable and proposes regional structures (RITs) to develop, sustain, and improve district implementation teams for measurable student impact.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages3

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Leveraging Change in State Education Systems

Leverage for Change

Leveraging Improvement

With the structure in the Implementation Ratio column in mind

Scaling-up Brief Dean Fixsen, Karen Blase, Caryn Ward, Barbara Sims | | | November 2014 Number 5 | | --- | --- | --- | Effective implementation capacity is essential to improving education. The State Implementation & Scaling‐up of Evidence‐based Practices Center supports education systems in creating implementation capacity for evidence‐based practices benefitting students, especially those with disabilities. Leveraging Change in State Education Systems Educators are prone to say,“we are unique” meaning that their school, district, region, or state education system is unlike any other. We agree. The State Capacity Assessment and District Capacity Assessment baseline data collected by the SISEP Center support the assertion of uniqueness – the data vary along every dimension. Education units are anything but standard. What is a school – one that has over 4,000 students in Los Angeles or one that has 40 students in Montana? What is a district – one with over 600 schools in Chicago or one with no schools in Oregon (all the Oregon students in that district attend schools in Idaho)? The uniqueness of education units from states to classrooms presents a challenge for implementation‐informed approaches to using effective innovations to produce marked improvements in student outcomes. Education is an interaction‐based profession. Education systems produce important outcomes that are the product of teachers interacting with students in education settings. If the adults don’t teach, the children don’t learn at an acceptable rate. An implementation‐informed approach to dramatically improving student outcomes relies on Implementation Teams (for more information go to scalingup.org and [implementation.fpg.unc.edu](implementation.fpg.unc.edu) ) . Implementation Teams have expertise in implementation science and practice. Implementation Teams are skillful in their approaches to developing implementation capacity in education systems that are highly variable and unique in so many ways. Leverage for Change In the 50 United States there are about 14,000 school districts, 98,000 schools, 3 million teachers, and 50 million students. The Table below provides the national averages: there are 280 districts per state, 7 schools per district, 30 teachers per school, and 17 students per teacher. These averages are not represented in any given state, district, school, or classroom but do provide information to illustrate implementation capacity development. | Structure | N = | National Ratio | Implementation Ratio | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | States | 50 | 50 | 50 | | Regional Entities | | | 14 RITs / State | | Districts | 14,000 | 280 Districts /
State | 20 Districts / RIT | | Schools | 98,000 | 7 schools /
District | 15 schools / DIT | | Teachers | 3,000,000 | 30 teachers /
school | 30 teachers / BIT | | Students | 50,000,000 | 17 students /
teacher | 17 students / teacher | | Source: National Center for Education Statistics, [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372) | | | | State Implementation & Scaling‐up of Evidence‐based Practices Center [www.scalingup.org](www.scalingup.org) The information in the National Ratio column points toa significant omission in the way education systems are structured. On average, one state education department is being asked to relate to 280 districts in a meaningful way. We have searched the management literature and cannot find any examples where a 1:280 ratio was effective. A typical recommendation (Joss, 2001) is a management ratio of 1:8 ([e.g. one](e.g. one) unit can effectively manage about 8 other units) . The average of 7 schools per district is in this range; the other ratios are not. The ratio of 280 districts per state is the most unmanageable outlier. Leveraging Improvement Improvement of student outcomes starts in the classroom. Leveraging improvement in education outcomes begins with supporting effective

FAQs

Why is implementation capacity important for improving education outcomes?

Effective implementation capacity enables education systems to adopt and sustain evidence-based practices that improve student outcomes, particularly for students with disabilities.

How does the document explain the challenge posed by variability in education systems?

It argues that education units differ across states, districts, schools, and classrooms, making implementation approaches that ignore local variation less effective.

What role do regional implementation teams (RITs) play in the proposed approach?

RITs are positioned as the regional infrastructure that helps develop, support, and sustain district implementation teams (DITs), making state-level demands manageable and improving implementation quality.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Quinn Holloway