Journal of K-12 Educational Research 31 Historically, the Texas Education Code (TEC) tightly regulated traditional public education in Texas. The TEC legislates aspects of school districts such as the evaluation tools for teachers and administrators, student to teacher ratios for elementary grades, hiring practices for classroom teachers based on state certification, and when instructional days can begin each school year (Crow, 2015). Creating a New Vision of Public Education in Texas (Visioning Document) was a call to action for innovation in traditional public schools written by 35 Texas superintendents in 2008 (Texas Association of School Administrators [TASA], 2008). The Visioning Document stated a need for reform in Texas education to allow for improvements in teaching and learning through collaboration and technology use by granting districts autonomy to create the best environment for its students. With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states began passing legislation enabling more freedom for local school districts which enabled the districts to have some of the same freedoms charter schools were granted (Crow, 2015; Texas Association of School Boards [TASB], 2016). Legislation granting some freedoms to individual campuses, groups of campuses, or districts began in Delaware in 2012 as a school turnaround program for struggling campuses (Reform Support Network, 2012). For many of the early adopters of this concept, the freedom from state regulations was done to turn around a campus and the changes came with grant funding (“Early Childhood Education…,” 2019; Early Learning Challenge Technical Assistance Program, 2016; Illinois Action for Children, 2016; Louisiana Department of Education, 2018; Osborne, 2017; Reform Support Network, 2012; U.S. Department of Education, 2014). The earliest adoption of District of Innovation (DOI) not tied to campus performance was in New York in 2008 (Center for Public Impact, 2016). Since then, 22 states have adopted some form of DOI legislation, freeing campuses and districts from state mandates to enable innovation in teaching and learning with most of the legislation more closely aligned to Texas’s DOI plan. The autonomy granted to districts through DOI legislation allows districts to customize learning environments to meet the needs of its student population (Crow, 2015) which should improve district programing and student engagement (TASA, 2008). Districts began implementing DOI plans as early as the 2016-2017 academic school year (Texas Education Agency [TEA], 2017). DOI status allows a Board of Trustees to approve a plan that would exempt the district from different parts of the TEC helping traditional school districts gain the same freedoms from state regulations granted to charter schools (TASB, 2016). As of February 2019, 829 of the 1,023 traditional school districts in Texas had written, approved, and posted DOI plans since the implementation of House Bill 1842 (TEA, 2017, Figure). Unlike other states with similar legislation, Texas does not have an application process that requires TEA approval to become a DOI. The only thing that would prevent a district from becoming a DOI would be a state accountability rating of an “F” the year the district wrote the plan (Texas Education Code [TEC], Chapter 102). In the 2017-2018 school year, this enabled 98.6% of the traditional school AN EXPLORATION OF TEXAS’ DISTRICT OF INNOVATION PLAN AND IMPLEMENTATION AT THE DISTRICT LEVEL Stephanie Bonneau, EdD Journal of K-12 Educational Research 2021, VOL. 5, ISSUE 1 www.dbu.edu/doctoral/edd
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