With new innovations in education providing equitable access to learning, improving creativity, and promoting teamwork, the non-profit organization SmileHub has released new reports on the States Leading the Way in Educational Innovation and the Best Charities for Education in 2024. The data has been shared with Digital Journal.
Over the years, most innovations have been additive and evolutionary rather than disruptive and revolutionary. However, as digital technology has advanced, the opportunities to advance the way students learn and educators deliver has advanced considerably.
Digital innovations in education include artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented reality/virtual reality, internet of things, online learning, and smart classes.
To highlight the states innovating the most in their education systems and the ones that have more work to do, SmileHub compared each of the 50 states based on 14 key metrics.
The data set ranged from test-optional universities per capita to full-time virtual schools per capita to the adoption of K-12 computer science policies.
The outcome identified the ten most innovative states as:
- California
- New York
- Massachusetts
- Pennsylvania
- Illinois
- Ohio
- Texas
- Florida
- Virginia
- Indiana
In contrast, the ten least innovative states were found to be:
- Idaho
- Utah
- Oklahoma
- Wyoming
- Hawaii
- West Virginia
- Mississippi
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- Nevada
With the vast data set there were some interesting variances. Texas was shown to posses the most schools that offer advanced placement courses per capita – 6.7 times more than in Delaware, which has the fewest schools.
On the overall creativity scale, California has the most creative workspaces per capita – 18.4 times more than in Mississippi, which has the fewest creative workspaces.
For student support, California has the most education charities per capita – 8.3 times more than in New Hampshire, which has the fewest charities.
