Untapped Founders: Survey of 1,000 Educators on Innovation, Barriers, and Readiness to Build

There is a common assumption about innovation in education: that it comes from outside the system.

In March 2026, we surveyed 1,000 educators across the United States to ask a question no one had quantified before: how many of the people working inside education have ideas for improving it, and what happens to those ideas?

The answers suggest that the largest pool of education innovation in America isn't untapped because the ideas don't exist. 

It's untapped because the infrastructure to support them doesn't.

At a Glance

• 63% of educators have had an idea for a new school, program, tool, or app
• 70% have never acted on their idea
• #1 barrier is not fear of failure. It's "I don't know where to start"
• 83% wouldn't know where to go for help if they wanted to develop an idea today
• 87.5% say they'd be interested in a program offering seed funding and coaching
• 62% have considered leaving their job to pursue their idea outside the system

Most Educators Have Already Imagined Something New

Nearly two out of three educators have, at some point in their career, imagined creating something new for education. 

A school. A program. An app. A curriculum. A service.

That number alone reframes the conversation about where education innovation comes from. 

The ideas aren't missing. They're everywhere, distributed across every grade level, every school type, every experience bracket in the profession.

But having an idea and acting on it are very different things.

Of the 63% who have had an idea, only 18.7% have ever tried to pursue it. The remaining 44.3% are sitting on ideas they've never seriously acted on. This is a profession-wide phenomenon, and it has no outlet yet.

The #1 Reason They Haven't Acted Isn't Fear. It's "I Don't Know Where to Start."

When educators explain why they haven't pursued their ideas, the answers are revealing not for what they include, but for what they almost entirely leave out.

Fear of failure ranks dead last.

Only 6.6% of educators with unpursued ideas say they haven't acted because they're afraid their idea would fail. The notion that educators are too risk-averse to innovate is not supported by the data.

What the data actually shows is a population that is blocked, not timid. 

The top barriers:

The top three barriers are all structural. Educators don't lack courage or creativity - they lack a starting point, financial safety, and time.

Taken together, 69% of all reported barriers fall into categories that are directly addressable through coaching, seed funding, and awareness that support systems exist. The main problem isn't motivation, it's infrastructure.

83% of Educators Wouldn't Know Where to Go for Help

Even among educators who want to act, the path forward is almost entirely invisible.

When asked whether they'd know where to go for help if they wanted to develop an education idea today, the responses were stark:

Fewer than one in five educators can identify a clear starting point. For every educator who knows where to go, nearly five others are either guessing or completely lost. The on-ramp simply doesn't exist for most people in the profession.

This problem gets worse with experience. Among educators with 15 or more years in the field, only 12.7% know where they'd start, and 35.6% say they'd have no idea where to begin. 

The people with the deepest knowledge of how education works are the most disconnected from any pathway to act on that knowledge.

87.5% Are Interested in Seed Funding and Coaching

The survey described a simple concept: a program offering a small amount of seed funding (up to $5,000) and three months of coaching to help educators develop and test an idea. 

Respondents were asked how interested they'd be. The response was overwhelming:

• 44.6% said "very interested"
• 42.9% said "somewhat interested"
• 12.5% said "not interested"

That's 87.5% interest across the full sample of 1,000 educators, not just those who already have ideas.

Among educators who have already had an entrepreneurial idea, interest rises to roughly 97%. But even among those who haven't yet had a specific idea, a majority express interest - the existence of a pathway may be enough to generate ideas that wouldn't surface otherwise. 

Modest, structured support is enough to activate interest across nearly the entire profession.

62% Have Considered Leaving Education to Pursue an Idea

The conversation about educators leaving the profession typically centers on burnout, compensation, and working conditions. This data introduces a dimension that is rarely discussed: entrepreneurial exit.

62.3% of educators have seriously considered leaving their jobs to pursue an idea or opportunity outside the traditional school system.

The brain drain is not hypothetical. It's already happening. 

And it's happening fastest among the newest educators: 20.1% of those with fewer than seven years of experience have already left or are planning to, compared to 12.7% of those with more than 15 years.

The system is losing its most entrepreneurial talent at the front end of their careers, before they've had the chance to bring their ideas to life within or alongside the system they know.

This reframes teacher retention as more than a compensation issue. It's an innovation issue. When the profession offers no viable path for educators to act on their ideas, the ones with the strongest drive to build something new are the ones most likely to walk away entirely.

What Educators Are Imagining

The ideas educators carry are as varied as the profession itself, but a few patterns stand out.

Among the 63% who have had an entrepreneurial idea, the most common types were:

The most important finding is what sits at the top. 

The most common entrepreneurial instinct among educators is not to abandon the system but to improve it from within. 

New programs and curricula, designed by people who understand the daily reality of a classroom, are the most frequently imagined ventures.

But the second most common category tells a different story. Tutoring, coaching, and mentoring services typically sit outside the traditional school structure. Nearly as many educators are imagining ventures beyond the system as within it.

One in five has imagined building an entirely new school or learning environment. 

That's more than 130 educators in this sample alone who have thought seriously about what a school could look like if they got to design it.

What stands out is that entrepreneurial thinking doesn't fade with experience - it evolves. 

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