Entrepreneurship instead of jobs. Teams thinking instead of individuals tinkering. Global business serving global markets – and 7-by-24 instead of 9-to-5. Power in venture capital not the state capital. Suddenly information and capacity for innovation have become assets worth more than land, labor and loans.

We’re sending graduates into this information economy. But our schools still operate on calendars designed for a bygone agricultural economy. Our class periods, bells, furniture arrangement, and rules prepare students for yesterday’s industrial economy.

The American School Board Journal does more than bemoan education’s lack of response to change. With Sodexho Marriott’s underwriting, it’s looking for and encouraging innovative school districts.

This year its Magna Awards have gone to districts that are not particularly wealthy. Districts without large university populations. New Haven (Yale), Palo Alto (Stanford), and Ann Arbor (Michigan) aren’t listed. Nor, alas, are we.

The 23 winners are ordinary districts doing extraordinary things. Thinking. Innovating. Overcoming negativity and fear of change.

What qualifies for an award? The project has to be appropriate to a school board’s role (be consistent with Carver’s governance principles). Done in collaboration with others. A successful, innovative effort to advance students’ learning. And most important, capable of being replicated by other districts.

The recognized accomplishments are as diverse as they are innovative.

Corporate headhunters instead of college recruiters visit a district in Ohio. Why? It’s focused on preparing kids for jobs that pay $100 an hour instead of the minimum wage.

Six adjacent districts in Kansas, plus Catholic schools, are actually talking to each other about alternative instructional methods -- including science and entrepreneurial academies. Sounds commonplace, but collaboration between districts is unusual enough to win awards.

A district in Kentucky stopped talking about the importance of early childhood and started doing something about it. Project Jump Start provides the high-quality educational programming kids need if they are to succeed.

Transportation, nutrition, health care and special education are included.

Short of funds, the district sought, and received, support from the local business community.

It started with five-year-olds and now covers 5400 children age 3 to 5. The aspiration? To have all children performing at grade level by age 10. They’ve already made dramatic progress.

In the process, student attendance and parental involvement are also way up.

Another Kentucky district decided to do something in response to the research regarding early learning. It starts youngsters on chess, music and Spanish – and is delighted with their students’ achievement.

A multi-lingual Idaho district focused on math – an easier goal for them than reading. Measured by ITBS scores it’s a whopping success.

Project Outreach focused community involvement in a Maryland district. Its low income second graders were reading at a first grade level. The project offered one school 60 volunteers, after-school programs at three churches, home visits, and the participation of community groups from the AARP to law enforcement.

The result? Their low-income second graders are now reading at a third grade level.

A Wisconsin district produced dramatic improvements in its students’ health and physical fitness.

A New York district, in partnership with a local medical center, offers in-hospital experience to its middle-school biology students. Participating students’ interest, and performance, in all the sciences has soared.

A Minnesota district, confronted with an overcrowded high school, purchased a vacant mall two miles away. No more overcrowded classrooms and hallways.

But it gets better. With community cooperation the new educational center also houses preschool programs and adult education. And the 700 members of the senior class moved to Mall High are energized with innovative academic projects.

Some 20 years ago I was chair of something called the Virtual Classroom Project. We found, incidentally, that kids can learn as much content at home via computer as in a classroom.

This year a Magna Award went to a Virtual High School organized by a Massachusetts district for some 200 high schools around the world.

It’s too late in the school day to win awards for middle schools and magnet schools – although they’d still be innovations for us. But awards were given for after-school programs, community mentors for at-risk students, block scheduling, job shadowing, schools within schools, and merging public and school libraries.

Our district has challenges. But each has an innovative solution.

Are we capable of putting others’ tested, award-winning innovations in place? Coming up with our own? Of course.

Will we? That remains to be seen.

Nicholas Johnson is an Iowa City School Board member. More information is available on his Web site, http://www.nicholasjohnson.org.