The article is devoted to the construction of integral assessment of effectiveness of innovative projects in education. The purpose of the innovative project is usually quite versatile, so the results achieved from the implementation of the project should be assessed not by one, but by the whole criteria system. The effectiveness of the project is the ratio of the results to costs. Therefore, both the result and the cost must be quantified in the integral (complex) effectiveness assessment. On the basis of the individual (private) parameters, the study requires to build an integrated assessment, which will not only allow to assess the effectiveness of the project, but also to choose from several proposed projects an optimal in terms of efficiency. Thus, it is shown that the integral evaluation of the project is a multi-criteria optimization mathematical model. The specificity of the educational projects is that many private criteria of efficiency do not lend themselves to precise quantitative measurement. It is therefore necessary to express these criteria quantitatively and to bring the resulting values to a comparable form. Different normalization techniques may be used for this purpose. Further development of an integrated assessment is analytical expression based on the values of its individual criteria (build the optimization model with constraints on the values for those criteria) and the proposal of a method of realization of the obtained models. It is noted that the value of an integrated assessment (and therefore the optimal choice of project) may vary significantly depending on the chosen method of normalization of particular criteria and method of implementing the model. Thus, the study proves that the development of an integrated assessment should include not only the selection of the particular criteria and offer a specific way of constructing an integrated estimation, but also carrying out comparative characteristics of the possible types of integrated assessments in terms of the adequacy of the actual situation in which the project should be implemented.