In public management，the research on government innovation is a significant breakthrough point to observe the reform and development of government system. Since 2008，21st Century Education Research Institute has established the “Local Education System Innovation Award” as an attempt to promote education reforms of local governments by advocating the evaluation of local governments by non-governmental organizations. Based on the reconstruction and textual analysis of cases winning the Award in the past 12 years （the Award is given every 2 years），this paper summarizes the motivation，content and effects of innovation in systems by the government，and conducts a heterogeneous analysis of the innovation preference of governments at different levels and in different regions. Results show that passive innovation，driven by practical education problems and by means of management mechanism innovation，is the main tendency of government’s education innovation. However，reforms of migrant children’s education，private education，higher education and examination systems are still the shortcomings and blind spots for the innovation. Besides，this study also provides an effective method for the research of innovation in local education systems.