In the latest episode exploring new school models powered by artificial intelligence, Summit Public Schools’ Cady Ching and Dan Effland join Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner to discuss Summit’s transformation into an AI-native school model. The conversation examines how clarity around school outcomes and model design enables the effective integration of new technology, followed by insights into the evolution of Summit’s expeditions. Ching and Effland emphasize the importance of a holistic, purposeful education, as well as the need for a robust technology infrastructure to scale innovation.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Cady Ching: I think what has been really helpful for me is to list the ways that a model is not. It’s not a curriculum, it’s not an LMS, it’s not a schedule by itself, it’s not a set of beliefs or a graduate profile by itself. Those are parts of a model, but a lot of the building that we’re seeing right now is focused on building for parts versus building for an actual whole model. And so the AI-native model is how all of those model elements are working together. And it is not going to be replacing a school model. It’s going to expose whether or not you actually have a model. And I think AI is forcing a lot of school systems right now to get really honest, because if you don’t know what students are supposed to be learning and you’re not sure how they’re showing that or what adults are responsible for, AI just layers on complexity and, quite honestly, chaos. But if you do have the level of clarity of what Dan is speaking about, AI is actually making systems work a lot better, or it can make systems work a lot better.

I think the jury is out on the tools that we need and how we can create the tools that we need. But AI really isn’t replacing, it’s revealing whether or not your school model actually exists.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane, it is good to see you with some excitement for today’s episode.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, we have a real treat today. We’ve got two of my favorite educators in the world joining us for what I’m sure is going to be just a really interesting conversation.

Michael Horn: Well, and for years, as obviously I’ve learned about Summit from you, direct from you, and yet it’s been nearly 3 years, I think, since you passed the baton, if math is still a thing. And I know from afar that the team continues to be among the most innovative schools in the country and so I know that they continue to think about reinvention, and frankly, you know, what does Summit need to look like? How can it get even better? All these questions for its learners. And so I’m incredibly excited to dig in and learn about what they’re calling Summit 3.0 on today’s show. I will say it’s also interesting to have this conversation because we’re sort of in our model geek out, if you will, at the moment, right? While we’re having this conversation, we’ve had the founders of Alpha School, Flourish on, both of which are designed as AI-native models. And for those who listened to those episodes we sort of created a little bit of a side-by-side, if you will, where we said, hey, Summit is here as this baseline for a pre-AI model trying to do personalization or optimization of each kid’s learning. And we explored what can you do in an AI-native world? How can you design differently? But today what’s exciting, I think, is we’re going to get to dig into what does it look like for an existing model with that orientation to become, quote unquote, AI-native.

And as you know, transformation and how organizations reinvent themselves, that’s something I get really passionate about and excited. So I cannot wait to learn from the real-life example in progress.

Diane Tavenner: Well, we’ve got the two perfect people for that conversation, Michael. And so let me introduce you to Cady Ching, who is the CEO of Summit Public Schools, where she was an extraordinary teacher and school and network leader for a decade before taking on that role. So she brings this full spectrum of experience to this next phase. And Dan Effland, who is the senior director of innovation at Summit, where he was also an extraordinary teacher and school leader before taking on this new role of leading for the second time in the history of Summit, the reinvention of the model. And so welcome, Dan and Cady. We’re so happy that you’re here with us and excited to talk to you about the work you’re doing.

Cady Ching: Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m excited too. It’s coming at this moment for Dan and I where we’ve been trying on a lot of language about where we’ve been, where we are today, and where we’re going. So selfishly, this is a milestone for us.

Michael Horn: Well, and I get to feel like I’m jumping in on a team huddle of y’all. Yeah, this will, this will, this will be fun.

Cady Ching: Welcome, Michael.

Michael Horn: Thank you.

What Is a School? 

Diane Tavenner: Dan and Cady, a few weeks ago we got together and you walked me through the thinking and planning you’re doing. And honestly, I was captivated, you know, because I got stuck on it and I wanted to dissect every word. By this simplest definition of school, it’s honestly the simplest definition I’ve ever read of a school. And I wanted to start there today because I really think we always have talked about getting to the simplicity on the other side of complexity. And I think you’ve done it with this definition, and I think it’s going to be really powerful in this next chapter. And so maybe, Dan, kick us off. And if you will share that definition and a little bit about how it came to you or how you all came to it in your process and what you think it unlocks.

Dan Effland: Yeah, happy to. And thanks for having me here. I’m so excited to talk to you all. Yeah, so, I mean, we’ve been working on this for years, right? What is simplicity on the other side of complexity? And I think as we’ve been digging into what does redesigning look like, it became really clear that you have to get down to some foundational elements to avoid designing within conventions and not even really realizing you’re doing it. And so the way we’re thinking about schools is simply, it’s a group of young people. It’s a set of outcomes or competencies. And then it’s a set of resources that help you support young people to achieve those outcomes or competencies. That’s it.

Kids, outcomes, resources. And stripping all the way back to that has allowed us then to engage with our community, because all this work is like with students, caregivers, and educators, and go like, OK, what do we really want? What do schools really need to be? With full freedom, we call them dreaming sessions, where we can really engage off the simplest foundational elements and not get hooked by any of the conventions that have existed, you know, for decades or longer than that in a lot of cases.

Summit 2.0: Evolution and Vision

Michael Horn: It’s really cool because you’ve sort of, like you said, you sort of have a conversation around what those end posts, and we can sort of figure out what’s inside the box to get there apart from what’s always been there. But before we go to that sort of Summit 3.0 vision and where you’re thinking currently is, because I’m imagining you’re going to have lots of trade-offs and changes as you go through the design process, but I think it would be helpful to do a quick turn on Summit 2.0. Both to ground, frankly, our audience, but also to set up a question of how things are changing and where and so forth so that we can understand that. And so I’d love, and maybe Cady, you dive in on this first, how would you describe the Summit 2.0 model, which was not only in your schools, but schools across the country? It’s one of the reasons I think it can be called a model,  it’s scaled beyond Summit itself, right? And as you think about that, the new model, what is it in the Summit 2.0 that you’d say, we really want to hold on to this? Or where are the things that you’re saying, hey, actually, that’s something we can leave behind or start to question whether we want to change that?

Cady Ching: Yeah, thanks for asking this question. I think it’s so important. The reason why I keep smiling when you all say Summit 2.0 and 3.0 is because Dan and I actually got into it a couple weeks ago about if we wanted to use that language or not. And my issue with it was I think it’s really, it serves a purpose because like to Diane’s point, it is simplicity at the other end of complexity. And there is a danger in the simplification of the 2.0 and 3.0 because at Summit, we really think about innovation in two ways. One just being innovation through refinement, which is the day-to-day tightening of the model elements that we’re building on for these larger moments of innovation, which we call innovation for redesign. And so those are sort of the sector-shifting, big model, what we call Big M changes. But I’m going to use Summit 2.0 and 3.0 language today in shorthand.

Michael Horn: Thanks for doing it for the listeners.

Cady Ching: Yeah, and so Summit 2.0 really speaks to our personalization era at Summit, where we showed personalization doesn’t need to be a luxury. And we did that by designing cohesive student and teacher experience., and it included model elements like mentoring and skills assessment and differentiation using real-time data, which we enabled through tech. And the tech that we co-built was called the Summit Learning Platform. For me, what I think was most remarkable about what we proved in Summit 2.0 is what you mentioned. It was scalable, and it did scale, and schools were able to implement and sustain the Summit model on public dollars. Which was remarkable. And so we reached 100,000 students, 6,000 educators, and 400 schools across 40 states.

And we did it with district, charter, private, rural, suburban, and urban. It was completely shifting the field. And then we normalized mastery-based learning, personalized playlists and skills and habits in a way that now is the foundation and the baseline in so many places that we’re now talking about building these AI-native models on top of. And so to the second part of your question, which I’ll kick off and then, Dan, I’m going to pass it to you to add on, we think about model elements and processes that we want to carry forward into Summit 3.0. In the process side, which is where I thrive, we were successful because we were leading from this intersection of the learning science, community engagement, and technology, and we centered teachers and students at every part of the design.. And we’ve used those same design principles to continuously improve our model since Summit 2.0. For me, I feel like we’re 4 years into Summit 3.0, and we’ve already gotten some really exciting data back about situating us as leaders in the field again around what we’ve built on top of the personalization.

In last year, this is our most recent data, we saw that our Summit alumni have some of the highest post-graduation incomes and lowest debt loads, as compared to other top-performing charters. And this is the type of longitudinal outcome evidence we’ve been really longing for. And when you think back about how Dan just defined the system, what that data does for us is it grounds us in that we do have a really strong set of outcomes and competencies that are timeless. Our young people are now achieving them, and we’re letting go of the old technology to create space for AI-reimagined infrastructure that’s going to help us to better allocate resources. And we think our biggest resource levers are people, technology, and time. So that’s really how we’re thinking about Summit 2.0 setting us up for Summit 3.0.

Michael Horn: Dan, did you want to jump in there and add some?

Dan Effland: Yeah, yeah, I think I’ll just like, you know, I think, you know, Cady and I were both teachers in Summit 2.0. We were both school leaders in this, and so we have a lot of really direct connection to it. And the thing that really makes me think about it is like, you know, the learning platform is no longer in existence, but the elements of the model really deeply took root. Mentoring, mastery, what we called habits of success, I think we’re calling durable skills in our world now. Like, I’m fine with it, whatever we want to call it. It’s become ubiquitous. And I think it really helps. I mean, I think it really gives us a sense of a strong foundation of like, we’ve done this before, we’ve built a model that’s scaled and really stuck.

And it doesn’t matter if the technology, you know, is stuck or not, because that technology is not the model. The tech model is these elements of how you support kids to master these outcomes with whatever available resources you have are. And so, yeah, I think there’s a point of pride when we think about, you know, what we’re begrudgingly calling Summit 2.0. And then I think there’s a sense of the strength of the foundation to then build what’s coming next.

Personalization & Durable Skills

Michael Horn: It’s interesting. And we’ll come back to the technology, I know, and we want to circle back to that. But hearing Cady, you described the model, used a few words that I think are really important for people to hear. One of them was cohesive, because I think a lot of the tech efforts right now around personalization in so much of the country are the opposite of cohesive. And that’s why we’re seeing a blowback sometimes against technology, because it’s sort of all over the place and hundreds of things going on at once for a young person with tons of distractions. And you talked about it being grounded in the learning sciences and personalization as a, as a means, not the ends, right? And, and then you have these longitudinal outcomes. And I’m just calling them out because I think people often lose sight of, this is the bedrock, right, of how we build from, and then go from there. And the other piece, and Dan, you just referenced this, the field is now calling it durable skills.

I still prefer habits of success. Let me just be on record on that one. But one of the things you all really did well around Summit 2.0 was have incredible clarity on the mission, what success looks like, such that you could measure in the way you just said, Cady. And I didn’t know those stats. I mean, it’s fascinating., and then you had these commencement-level outcomes, right? You were super clear on what does it look like from a, you know, for a Summit graduate as they go out in the wild. And it seems in some ways those commencement-level outcomes have been precursors to the movement across states that we’ve seen in the Portraits of a Graduate. And I do think that there’s some key differences. I’ll hold my editorial back on what those are more because I want your take on that.

Like, what, if anything, are the differences and, and between those commencement-level outcomes that you all have defined, the portraits of a graduate that we see states doing, and more broadly, like, what’s the importance of being super clear on what those outcomes are and, and how you’d know, on the other side, if you could speak to that. And I don’t know, I’ll make it a grab bag of which one of you wants to jump in on that.

Dan Effland: Dan, take it away. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, so our vision has been the same for 23 years. It’s preparing young people for a fulfilled life, really all people. We think of our staff as part of that too. And fulfilled life is in some ways, again, simple. It is purposeful work, financial independence, strong community, strong relationships, and health. And so that’s given us a holistic picture, a holistic point B that we’re always going for.

You know, I don’t, I don’t know how I compare it to Portrait of a Graduate or Portrait of a Learner. What I know is it gives us a lot of clarity in that you can’t design a coherent model without clarity of where you’re headed. And that it’s also really important that that clarity is holistic and is not simply a set of academic outcomes. It is much broader than that. And that gives us a huge advantage in this work right now because we’re not spending a lot of time. We certainly talk to our community and affirm, you know, on a regular basis, is this still what people want? Is this still what our communities are after? And it is. And so we can move right to like, okay, how do we get there?

Cady Ching: The thing that I would add on top of that is, I loved, Michael, what you called out around the language of a model. I think that at the operator level, and when I’m talking to, to other school leaders, this word is used in a lot of different ways. And I think what has been really helpful for me is to list the ways that a model is not. It’s not a curriculum. It’s not an LMS. It’s not a schedule by itself. It’s not a set of beliefs or a graduate profile by itself. Those are parts of a model.

But a lot of the building that we’re seeing right now is focused on building for parts versus building for an actual whole model. And so the AI-native model is how all of those model elements are working together, and it is not going to be replacing a school model, it’s going to expose whether or not you actually have a model. And it’s, I think AI is forcing a lot of school systems right now to get really honest, because if you don’t know what students are supposed to be learning, and you’re not sure how they’re showing that, or what adults are responsible for, AI just layers on complexity and quite honestly, chaos. But if you do have the level of clarity of what Dan is speaking about, AI is actually making systems work a lot better, or it can make systems work a lot better. I think the jury is out on the tools that we need and how we can create the tools that we need, um, but AI really isn’t replacing, it’s revealing whether or not your school model actually exists.

Diane Tavenner: I’d love it if we go back to your simple definition, Dan, that we started with, when we sat down. You use the word package of outcomes, and I was obsessed with that word package for this reason, because you know, maybe I will jump in here a little bit on the portrait of a graduate. 

Michael Horn: The table’s been set for you, Diane. 

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And one of our, you know, Summit’s longtime beloved board chair, board member, who honestly is one of the most forward-thinking, I think, philanthropists who launched a scholarship for Summit graduates going into Pathways years ago, like ahead of the curve, you know, sent us a note the other day with a real critique of portraits of a graduate. He was sort of reading about them and was just very, you know, like, what are these people thinking? And I think what he was responding to was a lot of the portraits of the graduate, like, feel very checkboxy and compliance-oriented. Versus this sort of holistic. And I know that’s not the way they were intended.

AI Evolution in Education Models

Diane Tavenner: They all have good intentions behind them, but the way they have been sort of brought to life and then communicated and then implemented are what Cady, I think, is speaking to, not as a model, but as like these individual components that don’t have a coherence about how they’re actually organized an organized set of resources to achieve those package of outcomes, if you will. And so I think that what you all just described is at the core of your success going forward and what an advantage you have. And it really speaks honestly to the durability that you’re carrying all of that forward in this next phase, that being, living a life of wellbeing it actually hasn’t changed, right? The elements of that haven’t changed, and that’s what you’re equipping young people for. So, you know, in a recent episode, Michael and I had a conversation, just the two of us, which was super fun, and we were dissecting a way of thinking about school models in three buckets. And I know you are both familiar with this framework, which is essentially that, you know, Model 1 will use AI to make sort of the existing industrial model school more efficient and better. Model 2 will stretch the bounds of that industrial model school with integrated AI. And Model 3 will be AI native, you know, essentially built from the ground up with AI capabilities that are assumed to be at the core. And, you know, as you think about where you’re now going with Summit 3.0, how do you view it in the context of this framework? And, you know, what does AI make possible that wasn’t possible in 2.0 because it was designed pre-AI?

Dan Effland: Love this question. And I did listen to that episode. So I’ll start with the model part, and then I really want to get into what AI makes possible and kind of what it pushes us to do. So I love reading like Learner Studios’ 3 Horizons model. I love Bob Hughes’ paper on the 3 models. I find that stuff really, really important for evaluating what exists and really valuable for visioning and for getting into this place of what really is possible. And I think, and that’s really useful. I will say, when we start designing and working with our young people and working with our caregivers and our educators, I actually find it useful to kind of set those categories aside and to ask the more foundational questions around, like, we know where we want to go, we have this clear vision, we have this really simple, you know, conception of what a school is with kids’ outcomes and resources.

And now let’s go from here. And when you get into, like, as we’ve talked about, we have a lot of clarity about our outcomes already. We really believe deeply that this holistic model of a healthy, thriving, you know, young person, young adult, adult is going to be durable regardless of the transitions that are happening in our society. But when it comes to the resources part, now we have this whole huge different potential, one, AI being a resource, but also a way that I think we’re most really interested when it comes to AI is how we can use it if we integrate it into our tech stack. Really how, like, with a really robust knowledge graph and really strong data layer, you could be dynamically reallocating resources in a way that just would be impossible for people. You know, like when I used to build an annual schedule, like the primary schedule with our Dean of Operations, she and I would sit in an office for a week with a spreadsheet to make a schedule for the year that never changed, right? Like, it’s just so labor-intensive. But now I think when we think about AI as part of our infrastructure, and it’s kind of a layer in our tech stack interacting with a really robust knowledge graph and data layer, we can start to ask ourselves, like, how do we get the right resources to the right kids at the right time for the right outcome? And really get very, very precise, and also do that dynamically. And I think that then allows us to think about personalization, just-in-time instruction, integrating real-world experiences, ensuring that personalized learning still happens in community and there’s deep human connection that is part of personalized learning journey in a way that was, was not possible when, you know, 12 years ago when we were thinking about Summit 2.0, the technology just didn’t exist.

And so, I mean, it’s exciting. I mean, I really think there’s incredible possibility there. And while there’s definitely lots of really cool tools being built, we’re much more focused on the, like, where does this fit as part of our technology infrastructure or our tech stack, because we think that’s, like, potentially a huge lever for transforming learning for young people.

Current Applications of AI in Schools

Michael Horn: It’s fascinating to me, ’cause you just named a number of things that AI could do that I had never thought about in terms of, like, dynamically changing the schedule for, you know, the school and students and, like, there’s some pretty cool things you can start to imagine that ripple out of that. One of the things in that conversation that Diane referenced that she and I agreed to hold ourselves accountable for was to get really specific when we talk to school leaders about, so what’s happening today in your schools that’s actually leveraging AI or is quote, unquote AI native, if you will? And so you all are obviously still in the design phase for 3.0. I use that with trepidation now, but put that aside for a second. Like, today, if I were to, you know, get to be in California again and I was hanging out in your schools, what would I see that’s powered today by something that’s AI native? What is it? What are the tools? What does it look like? What does it do? What are you building versus partnering with? Give, give us a sense of some concrete applications. Anywhere in the tech stack or during the day, that is AI-powered?

Cady Ching: I think this would be a good opportunity to talk about a specific tool that we’re using, which maybe not ironically is Futre as one model example of what it can look like. And Dan can speak to specifically what it’s looking like in the student and teacher experience. But one of the reasons why I start with speaking about a specific tool is because I think that largely edtech has not— has been really unsuccessful in solving for what we need to operationalize innovative school models. And Futre has been a nice shift of pace for us because it is truly a tool that is building for the child versus fitting a child into a tool or larger system. And I think that the way in which we’re using it with our young people can work in many H2 and H3 model contexts because it’s able to give us real-time data about our young people and then allowing us to build their student experience based on the data that we have about them. Dan, can you introduce, Michael a little bit more to Futre and how we’re using it at Summit?

Dan Effland: Yeah, absolutely. So Futre right now we’re using with our juniors and seniors, although we anticipate starting younger, in the coming year. And right now, our juniors are really using it to do a lot of career exploration, which the tool excels at, and really like exploring very deeply different possibilities. And then what those possibilities mean as far as what they need to be working on now or experiences they have between kind of their current point A and their future point B. And then our seniors are using it to get more concrete about what really, what is my next step? What does that mean? What is the thing I’m doing immediately after high school?  — I think we deeply believe this and will proudly say it is best-in-class career-connected learning. It is. Absolutely. It is the thing when we do — when I do focus groups, when we do alumni data, kind of research, it just comes up over and over again because our young people actually get out in the community or within the school building and really doing what we now are calling real-world experiences. We’ve called them lots of different things over the decades, but we are — one of the things about that though is that kind of like we were talking about, how do we really curate the journey with this resource allocation stuff? Just tracking all of those different experiences, often there’s 50 or 60 choices for students at one school when we had those expedition cycles. We’re now pulling those experiences onto the Futre platform so we can really start to map what students have been doing, what they haven’t been doing, maybe what they should be doing. And then their mentor can take an even more engaged kind of role in coaching them through that pathway. We’re really excited about that.

We’re kind of just starting, you know, to pull those on. But I think in the future it’s one of the things that we see that the Futre tool will be really, really helpful with because, you know, young people need coaching as they’re figuring out that concrete next step.

Michael Horn: So super interesting. I actually have two questions, but let me go to you, Dan and Cady, first. And then I have a question for you, Diane. I’m going to put you on the hot seat. But I think we’re allowed to do that. But it’s interesting. You just said something there in your answer, Dan, which was then the mentor or coaching.

And so just like to put a fine point on it, The, like, this works really well because you have a model where there is that function that is meeting on a regular weekly basis, right? And like, so therefore that touchpoint, like it’s coherent again to use that word, but I, I would love a quick update on how Expeditions has evolved because when I think when Diane was exiting Summit, like, y’all were in the middle of redesigning it and I’ll be super honest, like even though she and I talk basically weekly, I don’t actually know the new version of Expeditions. And so, I still have a slide in my talk about Summit that says, you know, like every 8 weeks or whatever, you go off for 2 weeks. And y’all should update us on what’s the current state of Expeditions at Summit.

Cady Ching: Yeah, I’ll respond to 2 pieces. One, with the mentoring piece, that model element does exist. One of the reasons why I personally love Futre is because it takes some of the lift of mentors needing to be the vessel of all career pathways off the human. So when we think about that resource allocation of, you know, people, talent, it’s creating a better, more coherent system for the adult as well, which has been so important because we love to center our teachers as well in the design. And then the Expeditions redesign, it’s been really cool. We’ve been, you know, continuously shifting that program based on what our alumni are sharing back with us, based on how the world is shifting. And of course, AI, as so much a part of our students’ experience today and in the future, has shifted it again. It is non-graded— so this is actually surprisingly one of the most controversial things when we rolled it out to parents— they are not receiving grades on the different career exposure pieces that they try out as they’re with us at either the high school levels or as early as 6th grade in Seattle.

And it’s really about ensuring our students get about 9 career exposures between the time they start with us to the moment they leave, because we know it’s really important for them as they develop their identity to see themselves in different career pathways that are all mapping towards high opportunity where they can build their generational wealth for their family. So it’s probably pretty similar in terms of the time allocation. They’re in sort of what we call their core classes for 6 weeks, and then they’re pausing for 2 weeks to go out, usually in the upper grades, off campus. You don’t see — when people come to observe this on our site, they’re not actually a lot of kids in the building because learning happens without walls. Dan, what else would you add as you’re going? Dan is quite literally on an expedition tour currently. He’s at one of our school sites right now, and right after this recording, he is going to go in and speak to our teachers. So what else would you add?

Dan Effland: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s an important side of it is so that, I mean, one, it’s just, I was still in a school leadership position when we transitioned to this kind of redesigned Expeditions, and I just can’t tell you how powerful the experiences are. I can think of so many stories, so many young people, but like one in particular that a young, he’s — well, he’s probably not even that young now, but he’s 25, but he was a young, young man at the time who was really, really struggling. And this kid was having discipline issues, attendance issues, struggling, like, not necessarily living at home on a regular basis. And we really, we thought we were gonna really lose this kid. And he started doing an expedition experience related to culinary arts. After he did that first one, he did a second one, and then there was kind of a sequence of them where he had, you know, like the first one was kind of like a survey course. It was the community college. It was about 25 kids.

Finding Passion and Purpose

Dan Effland: Then he was able to do one where he was actually kind of shadowing one of the actual culinary arts program college students and learning in a second wave. So I’m having a hard time not using his name, but I’m going to keep it out. But I just loved this kid. And he found his pathway. And not only did he find his pathway and ended up going to a culinary arts program and graduating and now works, you know, like in the culinary arts, you know, scene in Seattle, his attendance improved, his grades went up, his connections with his mentor, with his teachers, with his peers, which were, you know, fraught, got better and better. And he became a healthier human because purpose and passion and having a pathway is essential for all of us. And we’re at a time when, you know, you can read about this everywhere, there’s studies, our young people are really searching for that clarity about purpose and pathway. And when you see it, I mean, it’s just like Cady said, it’s kind of hard, like it’s not a good thing to tour because the kids are mostly out in the community.

Dan Effland: But when you have the privilege of being a school leader and you see these kids over the years and they do their cycles, you just, the impact is unbelievable. So yeah, I just wanted to, yeah —

Designing Education for the Child

Michael Horn: No, the anecdotes make these things always so much more powerful. And I mean, you can, through your story, hear him building a positive identity of himself, right? And that’s incredible. Diane, something Cady said made me think of it, which is obviously, you know, folks who listen to us know that you’re the entrepreneur behind Futre. I now understand why it was originally called Point B based on Dan’s language and I guess, but she said something interesting, which was like a lot of edtech has not helped the launch of new model design, right? Because it’s been, and that, that’s sort of been obvious to me for why, right? Because the market is schools as they are, and venture capital wants big markets, and right, like, it’s — so it’s, it’s this sort of reductivist thing that happens. But she said you’ve been designing for the child, and so you’ve been able to escape that and I wondered if you just might want to reflect on that, because I imagine it is still hard though, um, because you’re still like — schools are the conduit to the kids. So just sort of like, what’s the advice, or what have you learned, right, through, through navigating that?

Diane Tavenner: Well, I think that I mean, so much of what Dan and Cady have just said is so important. And I think that what, what was one key thing is, you know, I sort of set out to build Futre as an edtech partner that did things differently than what I experienced when I was sitting in, you know, the seat that Dan and Cady are in. And you know, that core value of our company is how we do the work is as important as the work that we do. And so how we do the work is very much co-building with schools and leaders and students. And so, you know, we are out in the field working with students and teachers and people like Dan and Cady literally every other week. So we are literally co-designing and code building what happens. And so what you just heard, that Futre is being designed to help young people build this identity over a 10-year journey. I mean, that’s unheard of, I think, in any sort of tech market.

People don’t think about that. We have real outcomes that people are aiming towards, and most tech products just look at what’s something that exists and try to make it more efficient or slightly better. They don’t think about the integration of it, the flexibility of it, how it will be used by the adults. I mean, As an example, they just told you Futre can be used both in individual coaching, mentoring, advising, counseling. It can also be used with groups of students in a classroom, and it’s actually literally designed to support both of those. And I will say the, the inclusion of really supporting real-world experiences came directly from our engagement with our school partners and our students. That emerged as this real need And we were watching people literally running around schools with laptops on their arm and all these spreadsheets and trying to organize. And so we have co-built these elements together.

But you’re right, the incentives in the business side of things are not to build this way. And so, you know, like always, we’re going to see if we can prove that wrong and say, no, when you do build this way, you not only get better outcomes for young people, schools and teachers and educators, but you also can be a successful, scalable product.

Michael Horn: So certainly a more enduring product if you, if you thread that needle, right? So for sure.

Cady Ching: Yeah, exactly. So I think it’s I think it also speaks to why it’s so important for Dan and I to sort of pull together a coalition of the willing with other operators. One thing we haven’t spent — I know we’re almost at time — that much time talking about is how hard this work is. It is challenging, and we have so much to learn. We are not perfect. We are learning every single day. We are constantly seeking out other school systems that have similar visions for education, and we’re trying to learn from them. We’re trying to get out onto their campuses and be in community with them because we know that if we want to build something that’s enduring and lasting and maximizing impact on the number of students in our country, or even globally, we have to build for the students of Summit as well as all students.

And I think that, that’s what’s most important for me as I set out to lead some of this work is if it only works at Summit, it’s not good enough. And what we’ve learned about leading change at scale is that we need a shared purpose for what school is actually for, and that belief that it’s possible to build a system for that purpose, which is actually no small feat. And it’s why we’re spending so much time building what I would call a coalition of the willing, which is educators and systems who agree on our common destination before we start building the actual tools. I think my core idea is that beliefs come first, model comes next, and then the tools come last. And when we get that order right, that’s when the scale can become possible.

Summit Learning: Model vs. Technology

Diane Tavenner: Cady, I want to double-click on what you’re saying because, you know, you talked at the top of this about how Summit Learning had really scaled across the country to 40 states and, you know, 100,000 students, etc. But Dan, you also said the technology, the Summit Learning platform was not the model. It is not the model. And the model has really taken root even as that particular piece of technology has gone away. That said, I do know that you both believe deeply that having an aligned core technology that is the infrastructure that sort of I think, Dan, you used the word guardrails, like puts up the guardrails and the support for the model is profound. And I know that you’re in conversation with other folks who’ve done some at learning who are, who it’s taken root for them as well, but are having a hard time really keeping that model intact. And so talk about sort of the need for that infrastructure, the role that it plays and what you think it might look like in 3.0. And Cady, you just said it, no one’s going to build technological infrastructure for a single school or a single school system.

And so there has to be this coalition.

Cady Ching: We have to create the market.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And so talk about that because the market generally is not very coherent. And as I sit on the other side, it can be really confusing and hard so talk about how you guys are thinking about that.

Enabling Learning Through AI

Dan Effland: Yeah, I think this is something we’ve started to be spending more and more of our time on as we’ve gotten clearer in the work with our students and caregivers and educators this fall. We’ve gotten clearer about where we’re going. There is this need, which is that technology is not the model, but it is, you know, there’s a reason we talk about time, talent, and technology as the big levers with resources. It is a huge enabler. And I think the possibilities with AI as part of that technology infrastructure make it an even stronger enabler. So I’ve already talked about like the idea of like dynamically reallocating resources, which is, I think, I love in a conversation educators here, because I think sometimes it’s not the, like the shiniest thing to talk about, but we know that getting kids the right thing at the right time in the right sequence is often the difference between learning and not learning, between progress and not progress, and between finding that pathway and not finding it. And so, at a high level, when we’re thinking about that infrastructure, we need to make sure that, like, we have a really rich, you know, amount of data.

And there’s a lot of work to be done there. Our school systems historically have not put data together in ways where you can create what like a technology person would call the data lake in a way where you can really access that as you need it. And then the next element is going to be a really robust knowledge graph that is not just academic standards. It’s got to be much broader than that. And then, of course, the way that AI would then interact with that to allocate and think about your resources. And I’ll share too, like when we think about resources, I generally think of everything as a resource. My time is a resource, Cady’s time is a resource, our educators’ time is a resource, curriculum is a resource, YouTube is a resource. Anything that can help a young person move towards those outcomes, we think of as a resource, and how can we constantly repackage those and get them in the right order while holding onto the vision? Because I think there’s a version of personalized learning that I would call like individualized learning.

That’s not what we’re talking about. I believe this has to happen deeply in community and with really strong relationships and human connection. And so the personalized learning, then it’s actually more complex when you’re committed to maintaining community and relationships, because you’ve got to figure out configurations of young people and not just put everybody separately on a computer they have a particular pathway and so.

Cady Ching: And that’s what we’re seeing, we’re seeing people just run, sprint towards an outcome without doing the diligence. And I think that it’s resulting in a lot of binary. If you’re either tech-forward or you’re human-centered, and there is a way to bring that together and build a model that’s doing both and that’s what we’re setting out to do.

Dan Effland: Yeah. There’s another binary too, that we haven’t talked about, but we should stamp here, which is this binary of like, real-world readiness or academic foundations. And that we now, we have these camps and like, we’re all about academics and we’re all about the real world. And when you talk to students, you talk to students and caregivers and educators, no one thinks it should be an either-or. That’s the scarcity mindset we’re often in, an area that we engage in educators. And we’re deeply committed that our young people will be prepared with college-ready academic foundations and real-world readiness, which means for us habits of success, communication, collaboration, all executive functioning. That is has a purpose

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. One is, as Dan, your story of that student showed, the sense of purpose, which is connected to what my life will look like in the future, really is what drives everything for a young person, right? It’s how they’re forming their identity as they build that vision. It’s what motivates them to stick to the hard work every single day on this journey to get where, where they’re going, and so yeah, I think what you’re up to is really critical. I hope that a lot of schools and systems engage with you to create this demand in the market for this type of infrastructure, dare we say, you know, Summit Learning Platform 3.0 as well. Because I think that it’s really, it’s hard to conceive of a post-AI model that doesn’t have that. That real infrastructure.

And I know you all haven’t seen it or found it yet, but continue to make strides in bringing it to life.

Michael Horn: This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question: what will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving. Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI and education because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learner Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.com. 

So a good place maybe, Diane, to wrap up.

Should we pivot to our before we let you off the hook section? Cady, Dan, we have a tradition here where we, where we talk about something we’ve been reading, writing, watching, listening, whatever it is, not writing, listening to, and eventually I’ll get my verbs correct. But and then, so just often we try to keep it outside work, but we often fail. So, Cady, you want to go first, and then Dan, we want to hear what’s been on your playlist or bedside table, and then Diane and I will wrap it up.

Cady Ching: Yeah, sounds great. I have been— I taught my 7-year-old what it means to brain rot. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term, but where you just sit on the couch and just kind of watch nothing for hours and hours. And we did do a Spider-Man and Avengers binge this past weekend. So that is something I have been watching a lot of. Reading is going to be hard for me to separate it from the professional. I’ve just been really deep in leader succession. I think to do this work, you need really strong talent in leadership pipeline.

And so I’ve been in HBR. I check the Marshall Memo every week to see what, what they’re pulling out, to really think about how I’m leading personally, locally, individually, but then also what the sector needs. Dan, I’ll pass it to you.

Dan Effland: Similarly, like the kind of first answer on my mind is just this fire hose of like white papers and podcasts about education and AI.

Cady Ching: And then he screenshots them and sends them to the whole team.

Dan Effland: Yeah, drive everyone nuts with them. But I do have a more, maybe a more fun one on the personal side. Kind of finally reading the Foundation series, the Isaac Asimov kind of classic sci-fi. It’s honestly about connection for me. My siblings are sci-fi readers and I’m very late to the party. And then my father is retired now, and one of his, it seems like, main activities as a retiree is to reread everything Asimov ever wrote multiple times.. And so for Christmas this year, I got a stack of these really great, Half Price Books paperbacks of all the Foundation novels, and I’m starting to work through them.

And we have a text thread about them, and they are, it’s a wonderful story, it’s very complex, and it certainly does also make me think a little bit about the future of our world and AI and, and what, you know, where, where young people fit in that, but it’s also just been a really fun way to connect to the family.

Michael Horn: That’s cool. Wow.

Diane Tavenner: What about you, Diane? Well, picking up on that. So first of all, apparently this is not going to be a novel recommendation because this Apple TV series, I guess, is the most watched at this point. But we watched Pluribus, which was created by Vince Gilligan, who — yes, Breaking Bad. Yes, Better Call Saul. I didn’t watch either of those, but I was a huge X-Files fan

Michael Horn: Back in the day.

Diane Tavenner: OK. And so there is very much some X-Files feel here in Pluribus. But to what Dan said, and I think Foundation is related, I just find this series to be so provocative in the questions that it’s bringing up and sort of the contemplation of where we’re going as a society and how the choices we’re making each day might affect that and what we actually want. And I will— I told you I would report back my goal. I did finish Ian McEwan’s novel that I pre-promoted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was everything I expected and more.

It was just extraordinary. And I did both of those over the holiday. And I will tell you, I feel like I’m sort of in surround sound right now of asking these big existential questions along with everything from what’s happening in the news on a day-to-day basis to all the work in AI. So, but I would highly recommend it. Super provocative and interesting.

Michael Horn: Perfect

Diane Tavenner: Perfect. Crazy. Like, you never know what’s gonna happen next.

Michael Horn: That’s fun when you can’t predict it coming.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Michael Horn: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say, so the brain rot theme that you brought up, Cady, I mean, we talk about it all the time with our 11-year-olds, here at home. But I was — this is not where I was going to go at all with this, but I — something one of my kids said made me think of the Animaniacs theme song, if you all remember that cartoon from back in the day, and I pulled it up and showed it, and my wife just dismissively said, this was brain rot when we were growing up. so, there you go. the one I’ll say is, we all went with another family and saw Wonder, at the American Repertory Theater. Many people may know the book, Wonder, which follows the story of Auggie Pullman, a 10-year-old who has Tretcher Collins, syndrome that presents as disfiguration of the face and sort of how going into a school environment for the first time and all the things that it does. And there’s a movie about it as well, but now there is a musical too.

And Diane, you will not be surprised, I was crying from the opening number and I kept it up through the whole thing. So it was, I was true to form. That’s a good one to cry over. It was good. I represented well, but it was fantastic. We’ll see if it makes the jump from sort of off-off-Broadway to something bigger, but until then, if you’re in the Cambridge area, definitely check it out. And for all of you, just huge thanks, Cady, Dan, for joining us, getting us to have a peek under the cover of what’s coming next at Summit and the broader — as usual, you all are thinking about the broader ecosystem as well, which I admire so much about the work you all do at Summit. It’s not just our model, but how does our model spur this greater change across education.

So huge thanks for joining us. And for all of you listening, keep the questions, comments coming. Diane and I feed off them, and we really appreciate all of you. We’ll see you next time on Class Disrupted.

Disclosure: Diane Tavenner founded Summit Public Schools and served as its CEO from 2003 to 2023.��

This episode is sponsored by LearnerStudio.

John Danner, the cofounder of Rocketship Public Schools and now the founder of Flourish Schools, an emerging network of AI-native microschools, joined Michael Horn and Diane Tavenner to share what’s now possible when it comes to school design in the age of artificial intelligence that wasn’t previously possible. Danner explained how Flourish is leveraging AI to deliver foundational skills like reading and math through conversational tutors to free up teachers to focus on building relationships and nurturing students’ passions and “superpowers.” 

He also shared how they’re using the technology to provide real-time assessment and feedback on student projects. The conversational models can be much more powerful, he says, than previous edtech applications. 

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. It is good to see you again for our continuing conversations on AI.

Diane Tavenner: You too. This one’s going to be a fun one. You know, our most recent episode, we talked with Alpha School founder Mackenzie Price. Most people have heard of Alpha at this point. It’s getting a ton of attention. And so what we tried to do there was really move beyond the talking points and the marketing to really dig into the model itself, including specifically how they’re using AI, which is turning into a bit of our quest this season. And so this conversation today is a part of that exploration on who’s building what I would call maybe AI-native school models, if anyone. And, you know, what might they look like? What are they starting to look like? And it’s a really fun conversation today because we get to have a chat with an old friend.

Michael Horn: Yes, that is indeed correct, Diane. Today we’re going to get to chat with none other than John Danner. John, for those that don’t know him, has had a decorated career in tech before turning to education, as he co-founded and led NetGravity, the first ad server company, I believe. And after taking it public, selling it to DoubleClick, John went back to school and then became a teacher, and he taught in Nashville for a few years there. And then I think a lot of folks know him because he co-founded, of course, Rocketship Public Schools in 2006, which we, of course, talked about also in our last episode. But Rocketship was a buzzy school for a good while there, marked by its student outcomes, its use of technology, its expansion. And then after leaving Rocketship in 2013, John did a number of other things, including founding an online math tutoring company, creating some very interesting education investment vehicles and more. But I want to skip ahead to his most recent venture, Flourish Schools, which is what we’re going to hear about today.

Michael Horn: So, John, hopefully I did some justice to the bio, but, welcome. It is always good to see you.

John Danner: Thank you, Michael. Great to see both of you. Long time.

Michael Horn: This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. So let’s start with grounding our audience. My assumption is that a lot of folks know Rocketship and what you did there. Far fewer know about the Flourish Schools model itself and what these schools actually look like. So maybe give us the basics, like what is Flourish Schools, how many of them are there today, how big are they, what’s the grade levels, what does a day in a student’s life look like at these schools? You know, paint the picture for us.

John Danner: Yeah, yeah. So we started Flourish about a year ago. We opened our first school last August. In Nashville, one microschool so far. They’re middle schools, so grades 6 through 8. I’m out in Phoenix today. We’re opening a couple more schools in Phoenix next year, next August. And I’d say the reason for doing it, you know, Diane knows this well, like doing schools is quite difficult work.

Enhancing Foundational Learning with AI 

John Danner: I often prefer being on the software side where, you know, life is good. But, you know, schools are hard work and sometimes you have to do them. I think the big motivator in starting Flourish for me was that I had started a couple of AI companies, Project Read, probably the most notable doing reading, which is in a lot of classrooms. And I just noticed that most schools are using AI in a very supplemental way right now, very much the same way they used edtech. And that bothered me because, you know, in reading, for example, I think there’s a pretty good argument that AI for reading is going to be better than the best human reading teacher within the next year or two. It’s not a long way off at all because teaching reading is really hard. Training teachers to teach that is hard. It’s hard to be patient with kids when they’re making lots of mistakes.

And it’s hard to remember everything a kid has ever done when they’re reading with you, right? All of which just is default for AI. So, you know, in watching Project Read roll out and seeing everybody kind of use it, you know, in those last 15 minutes in the class when they were kind of, you know, a kid was done with the assignment and needed to do something else. Like, I was like, you know, that doesn’t seem like how AI should, affects schools. It should be used more strategically. You know, what can AI do, and therefore what do you do with teacher time? I think, you know, for me, teacher time has always been kind of the scarce resource. It’s like whatever teachers focus on is really what schools do. No matter what schools talk about, it’s like, OK, what, what are your teachers doing? That’s what’s going to have the most impact. And so Flourish we, we started with the assumption that what we call foundations, kind of the basic skills, reading, writing, math, are going to be better taught by AI.

The way we kind of look at it is if you think of like Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 instruction, it’s really the move from technology as a Tier 2 or Tier 3 product to a Tier 1. So, you know, can you use AI to do kind of tier 1 basic skills and standards-based instruction? And so that was what we did from day 1 at Flourish. We’re 6 months into it now. I would say the lesson learned is, of course, you’re going to have students in any school that like, you know, whatever. We have several special ed, several ELL students they need more time and attention. But during our foundations block, which is an hour long, teachers have time to work with them one-on-one. And a teacher working with a student one-on-one on reading or whatever is like a luxury that like no other school has because that you can’t have them doing that. But when all the other kids are making great progress with AI, having a teacher spend that time, that luxurious time is actually possible.

AI’s Impact on Schooling

John Danner: So that’s the fundamental thesis is that we can do that in a way that that’s what our teachers are not doing and spending all their time preparing for and teaching during the day. And that allows us to kind of come up with a new curriculum. And I think actually, you know, you guys want to focus on AI and we should. I think the actual interesting question with schools is once you make the commitment that AI is going to do a lot of this basic instruction, then you’re confronted with the now what problem, which is like, oh gosh, what’s school for like moving forward? And I guess that’s, that’s what we’re kind of excited about is we’re in this super serious time of change for students. They’re not going to grow up to a world that we all experienced. You know, my daughter just got out of college. She was a pre-med, but didn’t really want to be a doctor. She gets out in the job market and gosh, there are no jobs.

And like all those other things that she learned along the way about hustle and, you know, you got to go put yourself out there and whatever played out and she found a job. But boy, like if you had just spent all your time in school, like learning algebra or whatever, she wouldn’t have done well. So, I think, you know, our point of view at Flourish is we, we talk about 3 things mainly, relationships. So these are middle schoolers. So how do you get along with other people? And we do an hour we call circles, which is really as kind of therapeutic as it might sound, where kids are sitting in a circle talking about their feelings, how other kids affect them, et cetera. And for many, many of our students, I’d say it’s pretty mind-blowing to actually understand how other people are thinking, you know, as you’re talking and saying things and stuff like that. Really powerful.

So relationships are a big piece. And then we talk about two others, superpowers and passions. So superpowers is kind of our word for what people have called soft skills. I hate the term soft skills because it’s kind of denigrating in a world of like standards-based instruction. Oh, that’s the other stuff that, you know, makes you a human, but it’s not nearly as important as high school chemistry or whatever. Like, we actually think it’s the opposite now that knowledge is pretty abundant and accessible, like the things that make you human are the more important things. So, do you have agency and curiosity and these other things that make you awesome? That’s important. And then the passion side is really, what do you want to do when you grow up? What are you excited about? What are your big interests? Which, you know, as you know, for upper-income families tends to happen at home.

You know, you’re sitting around the table or you go, you know, on a little family field trip or whatever, and kids are discovering lots of different things that they might be excited about. Happens a lot less in working class and lower income families. We’re purposefully mixed income. We took a page out of your book for that, Diane. I think that’s really the right way to do this. And so for our kids who are, you know, working class and lower income, we think like discovering, what the world is and what you might want to be in is super important, especially in middle, so that you kind of enter high school with some idea of like what you’re excited about and some kind of path you might want to pursue. Even if that changes, that’s OK, you’re not just kind of clueless showing up in high school, which, you know, a lot of kids are.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, super helpful, John. You know, one of the ways I’ve been trying to have conversations with people about what these sort of AI-native models will look like or can look like or do look like is I don’t want to have a conversation where we compare what they’re doing compared to like the old industrial model classroom, right, that’s like not useful to me.

John Danner: We’ve had that conversation. Yeah.

Diane Tavenner: So I keep using the sort of Rocketship and Summit because I know them the best of like best-in-class sort of personalized learning models that we were doing the very best we could at the time with the resources we had, and doing a lot of what you just described, right? Like, I’m assuming circles maybe comes out of Valor, which, you know, it has, you know. So like, a lot of that great stuff we were doing before. So what I’m really, and you’ve alluded to this, I think, with shifting Tier 1 instruction out of the classroom model and the AI is doing that. But let’s dig in a little bit deeper. Like, literally, what’s possible today that we just didn’t do 10 years ago and now we can do it? And what does that specifically look like in the model?

John Danner: I think the big change here is really one from point and click to conversational, right? Like, that was the eye-opener for me, really, you know, back in the ChatGPT moment was you kind of just immediately it became clear that a conversational agent would be able to kind of work through things with a student in so much better way than, you know, kind of what we all did with kind of edtech back in the day. So, you know, we all, we call it personalization, but there’s kind of a difference between a program more or less knowing where you are and what you need versus what an AI does, which is it knows everything. You know, like in Flourish, we more or less pour everything about a student into it. We have transcripts from everything students say. Like, the AI just is all-knowing about what’s happened with that student at the school. And so when it’s personalizing, it’s 100 or 1,000 times deeper level than like this basic categorization that edtech used to be able to do. So I think it’s much more aware of what students need. And I just think the mechanism of talking to a student conversationally is so much better than kind of navigating through a bunch of screens and the stuff we used to do.

Diane Tavenner: So I’m assuming then you’re building your own. It sounds like you’re building, you called it curriculum, but like that tier 1, because I have yet to see sort of off-the-shelf products that are really, that I would be like, yeah, they’re great. They can do the tier 1 instruction. Talk about what you’re building, what that looks like for middle school kids, you know.

John Danner: Yeah, right. And remember, we’re 6 months old, so anything I tell you is like total work in progress. But, you know, we’ve got good people and we’re working pretty hard on it. So the, you know, the fundamental idea, so I’ll tell you where we started with this and then kind of where we are now. We kind of had this idea that we’d have an agent on our side that was very good at sending kids to the right place to get the right help, right? So kind of like a hybrid between the old ed tech world and kind of this AI-driven world. And we pretty quickly discovered the kind of things that we had discovered at Rocketship, or I’m sure you did at Summit, which is there’s so much friction and stuff involved in manipulating another program. It’s like basically not worth it. And so that probably took a couple months for us to just realize like this is a waste of time.

Tutoring via Adaptive Dialogue

John Danner: And so really the way our system works today is as a student, I’ll tell you today and then where we hope to be in 2 months. So today, the way it works is that we have kind of a pre-assessment where we’re looking for what a student knows. Based on what they know, they enter a conversation with our AI. We often will have a 1 or 2 minute video of like just what that thing is, kind of an old edtech type thing, right? Just because I think a framing is often helpful for a new concept, but that the majority of the real instruction is kind of this dialogue between the AI and the student on like, OK, well, let’s talk about, you know, two-digit addition just for lack of anything better. Here’s a problem, you know, solve this problem for me, tell me how you’re doing it. And then basically just digging in as the student doesn’t get it. And it’s so easy to prompt for, I mean, you know, Zeal, my third company, the math tutoring company, we had figured out all the misconceptions that every student has in math. And so when you prompt an AI with that, OK, here are the 10 likely things that a student’s going to do wrong, when they’re doing two-digit math, it just goes, oh, OK, that’s it, and then it goes deep there, right? So if you think about it, it’s very fluid.

It’s very much what a human tutor would do in that case. They’re kind of responding in real time to what that student’s doing and going, oh geez, you don’t really understand how to carry the tens place, so let’s go deeper there or whatever. So that interaction with the AI happens, and then we go out and post-assess. And so the student’s kind of manipulating where they want to go and what they want to do through that process. Where we’re going, where I hope to be in a couple months, is that that’s all, all the pre- and post-assessment is kind of gone. We’re finding that the AI through that dialogue has just as good an understanding of what that student is capable of doing as kind of any formal assessment process. And it’s much more natural to just have the students sit down with the AI, you know, when they start and talk about what they want to work on. And then, you know, kind of the AI drills into that and shows them a video and does things like that.

So I think it could feel quite a bit like, you know, a student showing up at a tutoring center and that tutor kind of just working with them. It feels like that’s going to work. But that’s where we’re at with it.

Diane Tavenner: Is that voice or are they typing or both?

John Danner: We’re doing typing now. We’d love to do voice. We started there and we really worked hard on it. I would say that the biggest problem with voice for us is that we have never figured out the kind of noisy classroom problem. Very hopeful that somebody does because of the issue, you know, even if you’re off in a corner of a classroom or even outside in the hallway, the AI hears everything. And so it you know, and if you think about it, like when you’re in one of these sessions, the AI hears something and somehow inserts that in the conversation. That’s just weird. It kind of ruins the whole flow.

So it’s easier with middle schoolers to do kind of a text-based one right now. But I, you know, what I’ve told the team is I think the main interface for AI will probably be audio at some point. Like it’s just the most natural way. And so as the industry kind of builds better and better models for that, I hope that this problem gets solved and we can go to audio.

Diane Tavenner: That makes sense to me. And do you then have a knowledge graph underneath that? So even though the students sort of like flowing where it makes sense to them, at the end of the day, you have kind of the macro plan of where you want them to go.

John Danner: And yeah, so we built a super elaborate one for Zeal and unfortunately are more or less rebuilding it now for all of our stuff. Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, as you guys know, the real challenge with AI is often that it’s so good in the moment at these things, but you kind of have to bring it back to reality sometimes. And so, you know, having a prompt that says, hey, pull the knowledge graph and see what’s the most important thing to work on is helpful. It’s kind of like this, you know, savant type tutor that can help a kid in the moment with anything, but kind of loses the picture of like what’s the most important thing to do. So you kind of have to bring it back.

And I think the knowledge is the way to do that.

Diane Tavenner: John, how does this connect with, I know you’re very committed to project-based learning and sort of that approach, which you know that I am as well. And, you know, it sounds a little bit like what you’re describing. You know, at Summit Learning, we have the playlists where you were doing the content knowledge. What you’re describing, I think, is a stronger version of that and what AI can do. How are you connecting it to the projects? What’s the intersection there? What’s going on there? And are you using AI in the projects?

John Danner: Yeah, the answer to the second is definitely yes. And let’s talk about that in a second. So we have a theory as a, as a school system, that’s probably the opposite, at least the opposite of like my alma mater. I’ve been talking to Bellarmine. It’s my alma mater in San Jose, talking to teachers about that. And, you know, AI is a problem for a lot of schools and teachers, right? Like it’s the cheating and stuff like that. We have basically the opposite approach, which is like, assume any kid can use anything that will help them read, write, understand, research better, and then like uplevel what you’re teaching so that you assume that yes, everybody’s writing is going to be perfect now. Don’t worry about that.

That’s not your job anymore. So with projects, you know, the link really is when you’re in a project, you’re trying to apply knowledge to build something to do something. And it’s extremely common to not understand something well enough to do that well. And so you need to go off and kind of research and understand it. So the link that will exist that doesn’t exist yet, which I’d like to see, is foundations lives in its own block right now at Flourish, but we’d like foundations to be accessible kind of basically all the time for students so that that’s the main way that you research as well through kind of an AI interface. So that’s the ideal. Right now what happens is that a student kind of struggles, they go off and use Gemini or something for things. And then we know, you know, the AI knows because it’s paying attention to the project and what’s going on.

‘Oh, this student struggled with this,’ and then in Foundation that kind of bubbles to the top the next day. But like, why wait? Like, just make it real time. If a student’s struggling with something, just go ahead and do it. We do have to figure out kind of the, you know, the tier 1 versus tier 2 of this. Like, if a student’s really struggling and they’ve got a real issue and you just wipe out project time doing that, that doesn’t feel right either. So we’re gonna have to figure out like what level of intervention happens if, you know, they’re still not getting it. But certainly at least the tier 1, like, oh, I just don’t know about this, let’s learn more, should happen through that Foundation system, we think.

Diane Tavenner: That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Tell me about what the educator is doing in these times.

John Danner: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the most important thing really is And I know for many, many teachers, the concern is, gosh, well, maybe you just don’t need me anymore or something. And that’s just completely not true. I mean, I noticed this at Rocketship, you know, people go into teaching because they love kids. That’s like, you know, that’s the common thing that you always hear. Some people go into teaching because they want to be content experts, but not that many, at least at kind of elementary and middle, like, it’s still really driven by like, I really wanna connect with kids and be with kids, not like I wanna be the best reading teacher or whatever. And so, you know, when you kind of push a lot of this like content knowledge and instruction to AI, what really happens is a little bit of like what I was describing with tier 2 and tier 3 during that time where a teacher now has a lot of time. So, you know, a lot of the stuff is going on. Project-based learning is nice that way.

Building Teacher-Student Connections

John Danner: Kids are working on things, which feels kind of like a big Montessori classroom or whatever, where like everybody’s being industrious and getting things done. But like, you know, the question is always, OK, so like what’s the best and highest use for the teacher at that point? So I think, you know, our opinion in general is kind of building trusted relationships is the most important thing you can do as a teacher, right? Like anytime you think about teachers that affected you, it’s because for whatever reason they spent the extra time to kind of get to know you, understand what you were going through, and like became kind of a trusted friend and advisor. And I think buying time back to allow teachers to do more of that is by far the highest value. Of course, interventions and things like that are awesome. Having students reach to do higher-order thinking once they’ve finished a project, all that’s great, but I think it’s all in kind of service of making that connection between our teacher and our students such that the student is more excited and interested to, you know, learn and think with that teacher about other things, you know, especially with superpowers and passions and things like that. Like, we have it, I’ll just brief aside, you know, we have these report cards that have superpowers on them. And so they say things like, you know, organization or self-awareness or whatever. So you can imagine our parent-teacher conferences are pretty amazing because while a parent is like, yeah, I don’t really know much about middle school math and frankly don’t care that much.

Boy, when you bring up self-awareness or something like that, they can go on for a long time. And so you have these really deep discussions about these kinds of things and kids by middle school, certainly in high school, they’re not really listening to their parents about these things very much. They’re kind of sick of hearing this. So I really do think schools have a way better chance of kind of influencing how children are doing these things, especially around superpowers and passions. But that requires trust and trust, you know, it’s hard to build. So we think that the best thing for teachers to be doing is kind of like getting into deeper conversations with students and talking to them about like, you know, what their interests are, what they like. And building that in the hope that they have influence over that student’s trajectory.

Michael Horn: Well, so, John, I think this actually is perfect translation into the other thing that AI is doing to free up teacher time for that, which is, as I understand it, at least from, from what you’ve written, is that you have this AI coach that is quite involved in the project-based learning piece of this equation. And I think two distinct ways. So, maybe talk about that.

John Danner: Yeah, I mean, again, work in progress, so I’m not super happy with how it’s being involved right now, but I’ll tell you what I want it to be doing well. So I think that, you know, and Diane, you live this, that the real challenge with project-based learning is there’s kind of like this huge amount of really mechanical stuff that happens in project-based learning, whereas students are confused about what they’re doing, or they’re tired and not motivated, or whatever, and you watch project-based classrooms and like actually like 80% of the teacher time is like walking around doing that stuff where they’re like, come on, Joey, let’s get going, you know, blah, blah, blah. Which of course there will still be some of that, but to what extent can you create a really awesome thought partner that kind of does a lot of those things? Like, hey, Joey, you know, what we need to focus on here is this. Have you thought about, like, you know, kind of re-engaging the way a good teacher does. Because if you can free them of a bunch of that kind of, you know, really mechanical time, I think not only does it free time, it also like kind of frees your mind up as a teacher to kind of think deeper and like look for relationships and, you know, these kind of things that we really want teachers to do. So I think that’s a big piece of what we’re hoping that this coach does. The other thing it really does for us, and you asked about this before as well, Diane, is it listens. So we’ve got mics all over the place, students are talking, it’s all anonymized, but basically the system knows what bucket to throw all the comments that students are making, etc.

Teaching Soft Skills

John Danner: And when you think about like superpowers, these soft skills. One of the other difficult things in that kind of curriculum and approach is like, and you see it in kind of SEL-type schools all the time, it kind of devolves into like playtime sometimes where it’s not as rigorous. And what AI can really do there is by looking for evidence of, you know, perseverance, for example, when did the student show that they didn’t just stop, they kind of asked the next question and kept going? Like when the AI can provide those examples in each student’s kind of superpowers report card of those things and the teacher can review it, that is so helpful because, you know, when it comes to like pushing for students to improve in these areas. Teachers really have to know, like, kind of where everybody is, where is John on these different skills, where should I focus. And so helping to provide data so that teachers can do that is, is really, really important. I would say it’s pretty good. Like, here’s one thing that kind of surprised me, we did this like a month and a half ago, the AI assessing these, we have 24 of these superpowers across all the students in the school. And we did the AI-rated students on a scale of 1 to 5, and then 3 teachers rated those same students.

And it was only off from kind of the lead teacher by about 10%. So like you know, that to me, that’s like, it’s close enough. It’s kind of like stuff where it’s like, you’re probably right, like a super expert teacher can absolutely do a little bit better. But like, we kind of want to get it to the point where the teacher’s like, yeah, you know, I pretty much trust this. I’ll look at the evidence, but more or less, it says that, OK, like, what should I do about that?

Diane Tavenner: And John, that assessment from the AI was just sort of that natural capture of all they’re doing and assessing based on, yeah, to me, like, then assessment is a no-brainer. That should, I think it’s a conflict of interest for teachers to be assessing, quite frankly, but that’s another conversation. But,.

John Danner: I mean, the other point here, right, is that when you do assessment that way, I think it’s both more valid and stops taking classroom time, right? It just happens naturally. And that’s how it happens in the real world too. It’s not like you sit down and.

Michael Horn: You go, right, we don’t stop and say, now here’s your time.

John Danner: You don’t give somebody a 5-question assessment. 6 months or so. It’s crazy.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, yeah. So, can I just play back to you what I think you’re just, saying, just to make sure I’m getting a real picture of what’s happening or what you are moving towards happening? And you’ve only been at it for 6 months, but you’re making pretty quick progress, it sounds like. So this, like, if I’m a student in my project time, and we all know this happens a lot, there’s some kids who, like, literally, you know, the teacher’s bumblebeeing around, and every time the teacher bumblebees around, maybe I’m productive for that moment, but then the teacher bumblebees away, and then I’m kind of playing or I’m whatever. But AI knows what I’m doing in those in-between times, and so I’m getting some sort of feed or feedback of some sort, and the teacher’s seeing it, my family’s maybe seeing it, of like, hey, this is what’s going on in your time, and so we’re going to hold the mirror up, give you some feedback, tell you like, this is the stuff you could be doing to be more productive. Is that kind of what you’re describing? And If so,

John Danner: Yeah, we’re all going to have that. So this is another thing, like one of the things we think about a lot at Flourish is like, is this different than the real world’s going to be or the same? And I think we all basically need that. Like, you know, if you had a voice that was kind of going like, John, what are you doing? You’ve been doom scrolling. You know, like it’d be pretty helpful, really.

Diane Tavenner: Well, one of the big conversations is about motivation, right? And like, oh, you can’t, you have to like motivate kids to use the technology to learn. But actually, I think you’re flipping the script here and saying like, no, the technology is like literally helping, young people be motivated because someone’s paying attention and they’re noticing what they’re doing and they’re giving them feedback on it. And you know,

Feedback and Rewards Drive Success

John Danner: The feedback thing is the important thing. It’s like basically if something’s giving you feedback, like even if the feedback’s not perfect, it’s so much better than not getting feedback. You know, like the classroom where everybody’s got their hand up and they’re just waiting for the teacher to call. Like that’s a bad place to be. So now you’ve basically got this continuous loop. The other thing I would say that I think is just almost for free in this world is, you know, the gaming world has figured out a lot of things that they do when you’re doing a pretty basic task to play the game, and you might not be that excited about it, but like, you know, they’re setting up rewards. We use badges, um, you know, so like an example is you might do 2 or 3 different projects, and by doing those 2 or 3 different projects that was built up to a badge. And so the badge is kind of hanging out there and some other student in the class got it.

And so you want it and things like that. And, and those like really kind of basic game things are very helpful at different times during the day, right? Like we kind of all need a little bit of push. We’re very conscious of intrinsic versus extrinsic. motivation. And so like projects are a good example where the default is intrinsic. We want students to be kind of working on that project because they’re interested in that, because they want to do it. But there are definitely times where the AI is paying attention and kind of prompting and even, you know, doing some rewarding and things like that is actually quite helpful for them to kind of persevere.

Diane Tavenner: John, I want to talk to you about, I think you’re the perfect person to talk to about this. So one of the things I hear out there a lot is like, oh, the hyperscalers are just going to build this. Like, number one. Number two, most schools and school systems have zero ability to actually build what you’re building. So you’re sort of this unique person because you sit at the intersection of like opening, operating schools and the ability to build sophisticated technology. Is that, are the hyperscalers going to build what you’re building? Like, are you, like, how do you think about the building of the technology here for schools?

John Danner: Yeah, I mean, we’d be pretty happy if the hyperscalers built it, first of all. We’re, you know, so I think that the main challenge over the next 20 years in education is going to be how quickly do we move to a world where students are living in the current world as opposed to the, you know, 20 years ago or whatever. Like, and, and so these basic things we’re doing like foundations, I think it’s important for students to live in that world now. And so what does it take school systems to move towards that world? I know that your approach at Summit, our approach at Rocketship in the beginnings of the edtech world were, hey, let’s just build these kind of basic model schools and hopefully people will come visit and go, oh gosh, you know, that doesn’t look too bad. Like I could probably do that as well. So I think a lot of the point of Flourish is creating this proof point where people can come and see and go, huh, that, that actually works well, and it’s definitely not dehumanizing. I see the teacher interactions with the students as being more human, um, than my classroom. So I think that’s like actually our point, our reason for being is to kind of be that model.

And, you know, we’ll build a network and we’ll get as big as we can, but, but really kind of purposefully influencing school leaders, district leaders, state leaders to think about, like, you know, what they could do as well. On the technology side, I’m generally of the opinion that a lot of this will get easier and easier for everybody who’s not at the foundation level over time. I will say, like, there are some exceptions to that. So, like, with Project Read, with phonemes and graphemes. When you’re doing kind of deeper reading stuff, they may get there. I mean, the AIs may know everything at some point, but like there’s not a super strong reason for them to get there earlier. So there are pockets like that that probably will be specialized for longer. But, you know, as a school, it’s just better for us the faster all of that becomes a commodity.

And the more we can just, you know, get off-the-shelf stuff, like there’s no real joy in building all of this stuff. And for the change to happen, we don’t want people to have to think about all this stuff, really.

Diane Tavenner: No, I have to ask about scale because your point that the faster we can get kids to be living in today’s world versus the old world suggests that we need to scale as quickly as possible for that to happen, to get as many kids there. You and I both bear a lot of scars around different efforts to scale both mortar schools and influence type things. This time you’ve gone with a microschool network. What’s your, you had grand ambitions with Rocketship and clearly Rocketship’s great and Preston’s done an amazing job since you left, but it never reached sort of the scale that I think you originally hoped. What is your thinking now? Why microschools?

John Danner: Yeah, I mean, you know, putting it like just putting it bluntly, I think politics killed charter schools more or less. Like, you know, you look at most high-performing charter schools, they tend to look more and more like the districts that host them. You know, they actually, like, I look at RocketShips around the country. They actually look as much like the district they’re hosted by as they look like RocketShips sometimes. You know, it’s like, ’cause you know, your authorizer authorizes you and they have a lot of influence. So it was kind of like this cool experiment that at the beginning probably created a lot of innovation and then over time kind of has this like bringing it back to the, you know, kind of what the districts are doing. I think that microschools, certainly microschools, are starting in a very different place, you know, where the way I think about charters is the compromise happened right at the beginning. Where we would like to receive public funding and for that we will like to fit into the system.

Whereas the microschool movement kind of started with a different point where the stronger position was taken early on when the laws were formed that like these things are independent. They’re way more like private schools than they are like district schools. And of course, there will be some influence from states and others on that, but nowhere near like, you know, what we saw in the charter world where it was like, you know, I remember the story I always tell is Rocketship had specialized teachers for math and reading in elementary school, which was not normal at all. And I was just tortured for years by districts over this. You know, the main thing was like, no, it’s, you know, a student needs one trusted adult, you know, when they’re that age. And if they have two, it’s going to like, you know, all fall apart, which was, of course, total bogusness. But I had to go through that anyway. Like, you know, that was just time of my life spent arguing something silly.

Whereas with microschools, you just don’t have to argue that. So I think the big question is, what will be the ultimate, like, kind of political destiny of microschools? Will they get capped in the way that charters did? Will they somehow kind of get influenced in a way they aren’t now? Right now they’re pretty great. I mean, you know, you basically build a school that parents and students love and, and you build the curriculum and the program you want. That’s nice. Something you would have enjoyed, Diane.

Reimagining Teachers’ Roles

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s tempting. I will say Michael’s always so kind because when we start talking schools, I just take over. So he’s being so patient. The thing that’s coming to me, and maybe this will lead us to wrap up, is, you know, you and I both taught, and were passionate about teaching. And as you start talking about politics, one of the sort of sad elements of that politics to me is I think teachers get involved in kind of, or, you know, blocking some of these changes, a lot out of fear, a lot of out of like but my identity is teaching a classroom of students and writing great curriculum and like doing all, you know, being a hero. And I think what you’re offering is a new identity for a teacher that might actually be more aligned with why they got into it in the beginning, which is instead of judging myself by the quality of my classroom instruction, I’m like literally focused on every single kid learning and growing and, you know, in your words, flourishing, right? It’s such a profound

John Danner: In general, I think that professions that go in the direction of being more human, where the human elements are like the differentiator, they’re going to do so much better. So I, you know, wrote a piece on this. I just think, you know, while most parents would not have counseled their kids to become teachers in the last 20 years, I think that conversation is likely to change because I think it’s going to be both a more enjoyable job and probably more resilient to kind of the whole AI apocalypse than most jobs.

Michael Horn: Agreed.

John Danner: Yeah.

Michael Horn: I think that is a good place to part us. But John, I feel like we have like 10 other questions like sitting in our dock that we could have dug in with you. But let’s pivot. This is fascinating. It’s really cool to see what you’re building and hear both the frustrations, but also frankly, the North Star for where it’s going. And one day maybe Massachusetts will have you here. But I’ll pray for now. But let’s pivot.

This season of Class Disrupted is sponsored by Learner Studio, a nonprofit motivated by one question. What will young people need to be inspired and prepared to flourish in the age of AI as individuals, in careers and for civil thriving? Learner Studio is sponsoring this season on AI in Education. Because in this critical moment, we need more than just hype. We need authentic conversations asking the right questions from a place of real curiosity and learning. You can learn more about Learners Studio’s mission and the innovators who inspire them at www.learnerstudio.org.

We have this section that we always talk about things we’re reading, watching, listening to. We try to do outside of work. People track us on this stuff. Diane and I occasionally fail. I’m going to fail today. So you can go wherever you want.

John Danner: So, yeah. I’m rereading the Culture series, Iain Banks, right now. So my brother works for Tesla and Tesla just, as you probably heard, kind of made this transition where they knocked off the Model S and Model X and are building robots. So he’s building robots right now. So that makes it much more personal to me that like the future is coming soon, and so, you know, I’ve always been a science fiction reader, but, but I think one of the cheat codes in Silicon Valley is like the amount of science fiction consumed equals your ability to be comfortable with like what’s coming. So yeah, culture series.

Michael Horn: Good rec, good rec.

Diane, what’s on your list? You said you’re cheating.

Diane Tavenner: So, I’m cheating, I’m failing today. Sorry. Ted Dintersmith has his latest book out and sent it along. I couldn’t resist. The title is very provocative. It’s called Aftermath: The Life-Changing Math That Schools Won’t Teach You. And, you know, this is really, you know, for those who don’t remember, Ted, like, goes hard on the things we’re doing wrong and really tries to bring public awareness to them. And, I think lots of us have been concerned about how math is taught and not taught and whatnot for a long time.

So, that’s what this one’s about.

Michael Horn: I have an email from him in my inbox to send him my address, so I will do it after this conversation, uh, so he could send it to me as well. But, I’m also cheating. I’ve been really interested in, not just how schools start doing new things, but how do they stop doing old things? Like, they are just really bad. And it’s not just schools, by the way. Like, all organizations are really bad at deimplementing or pruning, like, old things that don’t make sense anymore, whether they’re bad habits or frankly habits that just aren’t fit for the current age. So I’ve started, like, trying to read some of the academic literature and just learn about that. And there’s a book, Making Room for Impact: A Deimplementation Guide for Educators, by Aaron Hamilton, John Hattie, and Dylan William. And so I’m just cresting the end of that book right now, and, and then looking at all the healthcare studies that they’re citing.

And I haven’t decided if I’m going to read those, but that’s where I am right now.

Diane Tavenner: So is it a recommend, Michael, or no?

Michael Horn: I mean, it’s, it’s like a, it’s a deep workbook, right, on the topic, um, is what I would say. So like, if you’re a school and you’re trying to work through this, definitely dive into it. I was more interested in like, who’s, who’s thought about, like, how do you de-implement? How do you prune, right? And because there’s just not a lot of conversation except for educators griping about it. And so I wanted to learn more and it was a good starting point. So huge thanks, John, again for joining us. We appreciate it. Really check out his Substack as well if you want to just sort of follow along on the journey, I guess is what I would say. And we’ll watch as Flourish opens two more in Arizona in August and keep up the good work.

We appreciate you. And for all of our listeners, keep the emails, notes coming. We love it. We learn a lot from it as well, and it inspires us on our future topics. And so, as always, thanks for joining us on Class Disrupted. We’ll see you next time.

This episode is sponsored by LearnerStudio.

These ideological battles replace meaningful progress and distract from the work that matters most: building schools where kids feel they belong, are pushed to grow and are understood as individuals.

Unfortunately, the longer adults argue, the longer kids wait.

At in Indiana, this ongoing discourse prompted a growing number of families to leave the district and homeschool their kids. Rather than debate these parents about the merits of traditional public education, district leaders chose to learn from and collaborate with them to create the supportive, student-tailored learning environments they were looking for. 

Eastern Hancock administrators and educators began working with families, state leaders and community partners after two parallel realizations emerged. First, conversations with parents who chose homeschooling made clear that they were not dissatisfied with the school system, but were seeking alternatives that offered more flexibility, individuality and personalized learning. 

At the same time, district leaders had spent years rethinking how learning could be organized through personal pathways, competency-based progress, real-world learning experiences and closer collaboration with community partners. That work pointed to the value of starting fresh, without being locked into rigid bell schedules, one-size-fits-all lessons and a system where students move forward based on age and time spent in class instead of what they actually know and can do.

Together, these insights sparked the idea for a new learning model. And in 2025, Eastern Hancock formed a board, started a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and secured approval for a new school from the Indiana Charter School Board.

The result was the . On paper, Eastern Hancock and the collaborative are independent organizations. They operate under different statutes, use different funding models and are governed by different boards. But in practice, they are two sides of the same coin, each based on the shared belief that students deserve schools that feel like they were designed just for them.

This fall, the collaborative and the district opened Indiana’s first publicly funded rural microschool. Serving 60 students, Nature’s Gift offers an education at each child’s individual pace, without lowering expectations. Students learn through hands-on activities and real-world projects designed by , building skills step by step until they’re ready to move on, rather than advancing simply because the calendar says it’s time. In addition, educators work closely with families to set goals, track growth and create a tailored path for their child. 

The district provides operational support to the microschool — taking on responsibilities such as payroll, compliance and infrastructure — so Nature’s Gift teachers can focus on relationships and learning. In return, the collaborative serves as a testing ground for new ideas that Eastern Hancock can learn from, including more personalized, clearer goal-setting with students and ways to measure progress beyond seat time. Several of these practices are already shaping conversations and decisions across the district. 

The flow of innovation moves in both directions because the focus is on outcomes, not ownership. The question isn’t, “Whose idea is it?” The question is, “Does it help kids succeed?”

Families are recognizing that it does. Nearly 40% of Eastern Hancock students now enroll from outside the district under Indiana’s public school choice option, embracing either the expanded hands-on instruction and work-based programs offered by our traditional schools or the flexibility and individualized pacing of our microschool. 

And, in the near future, the draw could be an entirely new, student-centered learning environment, designed in conjunction with families and community partners.

Because at the end of the day, students care about whether they feel successful. Whether they’re growing. Whether they love coming to class each day. Whether they are surrounded by adults who believe in them. Whether they are on a path toward something meaningful. Whether learning feels relevant. Whether the school experience feels as though it was created just for them.

The work ahead is not about fighting one another. It’s about fighting for kids. That should be a cause everyone can stand behind.

Fox tried to communicate with the school, urging changes and more personalization, but she found the teachers and administrators to be unresponsive. “They were unbendingly focused on their programs and agenda for fifth graders that they weren’t willing to accommodate for meeting him where he was mentally,” said Fox, who has a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education and served for over 20 years in the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserve.  

She began to look for other educational options for Gavin, and his younger brother Gabriel, a second-grader. When she discovered , a K-12 microschool launched in 2022 by former public school teacher Hannah Holguin, Fox knew it was the perfect place for her children. “When I walked in, the environment — the spirit — was just so peaceful and happy,” she recalled. Fox pulled her children out of their private school in December, and immediately enrolled them in Masterpiece Academy, where they are technically considered homeschoolers but attend the onsite, half-day program five days a week, surrounded by peers and taught by experienced educators.

Fox is among a growing number of parents who decide to switch their children’s school midyear, something that is becoming easier to do as microschools and related learning models become more widespread. Unlike many traditional private schools — which typically have set admissions and enrollment cycles, lengthy application processes and hefty tuition price tags — today’s emerging schooling models are usually low-cost, flexible and highly personalized. They often have rolling admissions, with students able to enroll throughout the year — which I write about extensively in my latest book.

In states with generous school-choice policies that allow a portion of state-allocated education funding to follow families to their preferred learning environments, students can attend these innovative schools for free or with reduced tuition. That’s the case for most of the students enrolled at , a K-12 microschool in Wendell, North Carolina. It was founded in 2024 by Lisa Swinson, a longtime public school teacher who was working at the state Department of Public Instruction when she decided to become an education entrepreneur. “As I was helping people across the state, I knew that I needed to come back home to help local families because I was starting to hear a lot of conversations about people just needing something different,” said Swinson.

She was accepted into the , a one-year paid fellowship to support promising founders launching new schools, with a commitment to serving low-income students. Swinson’s school has grown from 10 students last year to 34 students today, along with three full-time teachers and an instructional assistant. 

Creative Minds is a licensed private school with a full-time tuition of $7,600. Ninety percent of Swinson’s families attend with free or reduced tuition using the state’s Opportunity Scholarships, a school-choice program that became universal in 2023, enabling all North Carolina K-12 students to be eligible for private school vouchers. The remaining 10% of Creative Minds students are homeschoolers who attend the microschool three days a week at an annual tuition of $4,900, or full-time students whose parents pay full tuition out of pocket. 

Swinson says that more families in her area are looking for alternatives to conventional schooling—both public and private. She welcomed seven new students to Creative Minds this month. “What I hear from parents is that we provide individualized instruction to their students. 

“We individualize everything, from choosing electives, to how they go about learning, to what curriculum to use. Everything is very personalized,” said Swinson, who uses nationally-normed standardized tests to determine a student’s skill level upon enrollment, and then customizes a learning plan based on the child’s needs and interests.

Microschool founders across the US are reporting midyear enrollment boosts, as families switch from conventional schools toward smaller, more personalized learning environments. At in Sarasota, Florida, founder Justine Wilson enrolled five new students this month, bringing her total K-12 enrollment to 70 students. She says that 97% of her students attend her program tuition-free using Florida’s school-choice programs, which became universal in 2023.

Even in states without robust private school choice programs, microschool founders are reporting midyear enrollment boosts. At the , a middle school microschool in Las Vegas, co-founder Christina Threeton welcomed several new students this January, as did Amanda Lucas, founder of in New Jersey.

Tom Arnett, a senior fellow at the Christensen Institute, has why families are attracted to microschools or similar learning models. “Our research shows that many families who switch schools are driven by the reality that school has become a persistently negative experience for their child,” said Arnett, citing a variety of reasons from bullying to boredom. “We also see many families who haven’t switched yet but are actively considering it. Microschools often resonate with these families because they offer a more human-scale environment that reduces friction rather than asking children to endure it.”

If parents and caregivers are dissatisfied with their child’s current school, they don’t need to wait until next year to make a change. The growth of microschooling, alongside the expansion of school-choice policies in many states, makes creative schooling options more abundant and accessible — enabling families to find the learning environment that is the best fit for their kids. 

For Kara Fox in Nebraska, the midyear school-switch has been positive for her boys. “It’s much better because they have been able to just relax and be themselves,” she said. Fox encourages more families to consider changing schools sooner than later if they aren’t happy. “I wouldn’t wait. I would just do it. It’s so worth it because it’s your kids,” she said.

Supporters want the program to be uncomplicated, both for nonprofits granting scholarships and the private schools participating. Others want to ensure that students who remain in public schools can benefit from the program, while critics oppose the basic concept — a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for those who donate up to $1,700 annually to a scholarship-granting organization.

They want the Trump administration to focus instead on supporting public schools.

 “The federal government should invest in strong, inclusive, well-resourced public schools — not incentives that drain support and weaken safeguards,” one Tennessee man wrote in a letter to the Treasury Department and the IRS, among the more than 2,100 comments on the new law submitted by the Dec. 26 deadline. 

With the tax credit already on the books, the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit Coalition, which represents more than 200 school choice advocates, private schools and scholarship organizations, wants the administration to keep the program simple. 

The organization wants officials to make it “as easy as possible” for scholarship-granting organizations to participate, for taxpayers to contribute and to “maximize” the number of students who will benefit.

Their letter calls for the administration to clear up some potential confusion.They want officials, for example, to keep recordkeeping requirements for participating nonprofits from being “overly burdensome or onerous.” 

John Schilling, a consultant who lobbied in favor of the program, said he hopes Treasury officials will release rules by summer. 

‘Very well prepared’

President Donald Trump signed the new program into law in July as part of a large tax cut and spending package. Because it’s hard to predict how many taxpayers will donate and claim the credit, it’s not yet clear how much the program will cost the government. Kristin Blagg, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, that after an initial “ramp-up period,” the program could generate between $2.7 billion to $6.1 billion annually.

Scholarship groups could begin awarding funds to students in early 2027, but it might take until that fall for them to raise enough money.

“The ones that are serious about doing this are going to be very well prepared,” Schilling said. “I’m hopeful that they will line up a lot of donors who will give in the first quarter of 2027.”

So far, of Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas have said they intend to opt in, while those in New Mexico and Wisconsin have announced that they won’t. But Schilling said he thinks that’s a mistake��because donors could just send their money to a scholarship organization in another state.����

“If you’re a blue state governor, why would you want taxpayers in your state sending their money to some other state?” he asked. “I think that’s a political liability.”

Despite Democrats’ longstanding opposition to vouchers for private school and education savings accounts, which can be used for homeschooling, some, like North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, say the program is a chance for more public school students to receive tutoring and afterschool programs.. 

That’s what the Afterschool Alliance emphasized in its submission. The advocacy organization suggested that perhaps some scholarship programs could focus on students who need afterschool activities while others could stick to granting private school scholarships. 

According to a December , conducted for the National Parents Union, more than three-fourths of parents support the tax credit if it’s targeted only to public school students for tutoring, summer learning and afterschool programs. But that figure drops to 40% if the benefit is restricted to private school tuition.

In the spirit of “returning education to the states,” the advocacy group, , wrote that states should be able to design and run the programs in a way that reflects “their unique policy landscapes, community needs and family priorities.”

The organization also wants the Treasury Department to allow states to evaluate schools and providers “to assess whether the programs participating are delivering meaningful, measurable results.” Such data, including average scholarship amounts and the demographics of students served, should be publicly available, the comment said.

Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the conservative , told �鶹��Ʒ that he’s not opposed to public school students receiving scholarships for tutoring or afterschool enrichment, but he doesn’t want the program to become “a backdoor diversion of funds to public schools themselves.”

To religious groups, one chief concern is that states might attempt to require private schools to change their admission policies. In its comment, the Christian Legal Society, an organization of Christian attorneys, referenced litigation in Maine, where religious schools are suing over a requirement that they accept all students, regardless of religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity, if they want to participate in a private school choice program.

“It is important that federal regulations prevent governors from yielding to the temptation to play politics with the program by adding additional regulations to distort it,” the group’s comment said. “Such regulations,” they wrote, would lead to “inevitable lawsuits” and limit options for families.

Microschool founders and advocates have additional concerns. A section of the tax credit law says that a K-12 “school” is whatever a state law defines it to be. The problem is that most states don’t legally recognize microschools even though they represent a fast-growing sector within the private school landscape. A published last year showed that most schools participating in state school choice programs enroll around 30 students — the size of many microschools.

“Families turn to programs like ours because their children’s needs cannot be met in traditional settings,” Alexandra Batista. the owner of Steps Learning Center in Orlando, Florida, in a comment to the Treasury Department. “Excluding these types of learning environments due to narrow or outdated definitions would further disadvantage students who already face significant barriers.”

Some organizations, like the left-leaning , want the federal government to adopt an official definition of microschools as a way to better track them and monitor the quality of education they provide. 

But those in the movement are “not excited about that prospect,” said Don Soifer, CEO of the National Microschooling Center. Some microschools in states with education savings accounts operate like small private schools, while others are more like homeschool co-ops. Some are required to earn accreditation in order to receive state funds; others aren’t.

In his to the Treasury Department, Soifer said that it would be “highly inappropriate and contrary to legislative intent” for officials to adopt an official definition of a microschool when “the industry itself has no consensus.”

Schilling, the lobbyist, said he hopes the Treasury Department addresses the issue in the rules. 

“Microschools feel like they ought to be able to participate in this and we completely agree,” he said. “The intent of the legislation was for a student, in any educational environment, to benefit.”

Although she had a doctorate in educational leadership and extensive teaching experience, she quickly discovered that passion and pedagogical expertise were necessary but insufficient ingredients of her new school vision. As it turns out, the business side of running a school – from securing facilities to establishing a sustainable financial model – presented hurdles she hadn’t anticipated. 

Among microschool founders, Wallace’s story isn’t unique. They face the same startup challenges as small business entrepreneurs – facilities procurement, building and zoning regulations, not to mention standing up payroll and other administrative tasks. The difference is that most small business entrepreneurs benefit from volumes of self-help guides, experts and influencers. Perhaps most importantly, they have access to guidance and counseling from both banks and federal small business development centers.��

Most microschool founders simply don’t.

For traditional lenders like banks, a new, small school is simply too risky and the return too small to justify the effort necessary to qualify the applicant and underwrite the loan. Their processes are designed for larger, more established ventures, and it can cost just as much to underwrite a $10K loan as a $500K loan.

Earlier this year, our nonprofit launched the nation’s first open-access loan program for microschools. The idea was simple: offer relatively small, low-interest loans of $5,000 to $50,000 for each entrepreneur to provide the helping hand these small schools need to get up and running. 

In the first 30 days, the program attracted interest from 258 schools across 36 states. The demand was overwhelming. But what we learned while reviewing the applications might surprise you: Of the 54 schools that ultimately submitted full applications, 80% didn’t even meet underwriting criteria to qualify for the unsecured loans we offer. In those instances, we shared specific denial reasons with each applicant and connected them to technical assistance, depending on whether they’re for-profit or nonprofit organizations.

The mismatch between the significant interest in the loan program and the lack of financial and accounting acumen signaled to us that this critical, burgeoning sector needs much more focused support than we had thought. Here were some of their biggest barriers:

•  Business Fundamentals Gap: Most founders excel at education but struggle with basic business operations. In reviewing applications, we found consistent problems with financial planning: unrealistic budgets, inadequate pricing strategies and poor accounting practices. Many resort to personal credit cards or retirement savings to fund operations, a practice that threatens both personal and school finances. Our analysis shows that even experienced educators often lack the business-modeling skills needed to build sustainable institutions.
• Building Code and Zoning Challenges: Finding appropriate, affordable space remains a major hurdle. While many founders eye church facilities as a solution, they quickly encounter complex zoning restrictions – Sunday school rooms rarely meet weekday classroom requirements. The regulatory maze includes building codes, occupancy limits and safety requirements that can overwhelm new founders. Some states are developing solutions, including public-private partnerships and revised zoning laws that could ease these barriers.
•  Sustainability: Early financial missteps, particularly around facilities and debt, can create nearly insurmountable challenges for growth. Schools operating with high debt loads or unfavorable leases struggle to achieve the scale needed for stability. What’s missing is the kind of technical support that traditional small businesses receive — guidance on financial planning, facility management and operational efficiency that could help these innovative educators build lasting institutions. 

For founders like Wallace, the Microschool Loan Program offers more than just capital: It provides a pathway to establish proper facilities and implement sustainable business practices while maintaining focus on their core mission of transforming education. With the loan, she has a strong start, serving her initial 17 students who need alternative learning environments.

The challenges that microschools are facing are so intimately related to the hurdles charters faced in the early days of that sector: There’s so much energy, so many important ideas and so many dedicated and enthusiastic people. But many lack good business fundamentals. We must help ensure people do things the right way so they are positioned to launch successfully and flourish.

The next three to five years will be monumentally important in cementing this sector. This grand experiment — supporting microschool startups — shows the importance of building scalable, sector-wide support for nontraditional school models. There is a critical need here, and we can, in fact, help solve their biggest challenges.

As of this past April, nearly three-fourths of the more than 64,000 students eligible for the state’s universal education savings accounts were homeschooled or enrolled in a private school before they participated in the program, researchers from the Rand Corp. found.

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ESA students are also more likely to live in districts with higher median incomes, more white families and schools with better test scores.

“If the goal is to have tax dollars follow students, then a universal policy can achieve that,” said Susha Roy, lead author of the report. But if the goal is to reach the neediest students or those in failing schools, she added, “what we’re seeing in Arizona suggests that a universal policy is not the best way to expand access.”

To skeptics of ESAs, who see them as handouts to wealthier families, the findings provide further evidence that conservatives’ preferred school reform policy often leaves lower-income families behind. But supporters predict that use will spread over time to those with greater needs. In Arizona, for example, 57% of students who enrolled in the ESA program over the past year attended a public school just prior to switching — up from 21% in 2023, state data shows. In Indiana, over half of ESA students live in families earning $100,000 annually or less. Advocates working to promote school choice in lower-income communities say Rand’s findings just mean there’s more work to do.

“We’ve seen the national studies and we’re not dissuaded at all,” said Ryan Hanning, a fellow with the San Juan Diego Institute, a Phoenix-based organization that supports faith-based and nonprofit groups. “How do we make sure that ESA is fully adopted by marginalized communities, specifically Spanish-speaking and Black communities?”

Application windows too early

One consistent argument against ESAs is that the dollar amount doesn’t cover the costs at many private schools. of parents who didn’t use their ESA showed that nearly 20% said the funding wasn’t enough to afford tuition at their preferred school. Another 20% of parents were concerned that even if they could pay the tuition, they would struggle to afford additional fees, and almost 10% said lack of transportation would be a barrier.

Stephanie Parra, executive director of All in Education, an education advocacy group focused on Latino families, sees the same challenges in Arizona, which she called “the most choice-rich school environment in the country.”

“Eighty-five percent of our families are choosing their neighborhood public schools,” she said. “It is really a choice rooted in logistics and what is accessible to them.”

Proponents of private school choice say one solution is to build up the supply of schools, like those in the rapidly expanding microschool sector.

The San Juan Diego Institute promotes school choice to underserved communities, but has also provided start-up funds for new private schools where tuition costs no more than the amount of the ESA, generally in the $7,000 to $8,000 range. They include Hands2Teach in Peoria, which serves deaf and hearing students and teaches American Sign Language, and Vita High School, a Montessori-style program in Phoenix where students learn A.I. skills.

“Awareness is the biggest barrier. Many families don’t know ESAs exist, and early materials weren’t in Spanish, limiting accessibility,” said Andrew Lee, Vita’s founder and CEO. “Documentation requirements, such as proof of residency, can also create obstacles.”

The school provides scholarships to cover additional costs like transportation and school supplies.

The Indiana-based Drexel Fund has a similar mission and has helped launch new, mostly faith-based schools in multiple states that primarily serve students who qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch or have disabilities.

Microschools are more approachable to parents who have no experience with private schools, said Naomi DeVeaux, a partner with Drexel. Another way to open up ESAs to lower-income families, she said, is to allow parents to apply as late as a month before school starts, or to add late application windows.

“In some states, the window to apply for your voucher is too early. Families that are mobile or who just aren’t thinking ahead to the next school year will miss it,” she said. “That’s a big thing that states really could improve upon.”

The growth of super small schools has expanded access to private education, said Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University. He published research earlier this year showing that voucher-like programs have led to a 3% to 4% increase in private school enrollment. Most schools that receive ESA funds enroll about 30 students.

But he warned that more schools doesn’t always mean better student performance. In fact, with microschools, there’s no way to tell, according to another recent Rand study. Researchers concluded that there is insufficient data to determine how students who attend microschools compare academically to their peers in traditional public schools.

‘A case study’

Rand’s latest findings, said lead researcher Roy, have implications not just for states with existing ESA programs, but for those considering whether to opt in to a new federal tax credit scholarship program included in President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending package.

The Treasury Department and the IRS are now collecting public comments in advance of issuing regulations for the program next year. It’s unclear whether governors will have a say in how the programs operate or whom they serve.

“It’s our hope that we can use Arizona as a case study for other states that are now potentially considering ESA programs because of the federal policy,” she said.

The potential to open more educational options for underserved students has captured the support of some Democrats, a departure from how the party typically views vouchers and ESAs. Arne Duncan, education secretary during the Obama administration, and Democrats for Education Reform CEO Jorge Elorza urge states to participate.

“For both current and incoming governors, it’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

There are key differences between ESAs and the new federal program, which won’t start until 2027. ESAs, like most voucher programs, are state funded. Taxpayers will fund the federal Educational Choice for Children Act by donating up to $1,700 annually to a nonprofit scholarship-granting organization in their state. In exchange, they’ll get a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes.

The size of the scholarships will depend on how much those groups can raise. Families earning three times their area’s median gross income will be eligible for funding, meaning that those making as much as $500,000 in some parts of the country will be able to participate.

Critics argue that the tax credit is still expected to cost the government at least $10 billion annually and will increase over time. Additionally, if higher-income families end up benefitting more from the new program, that would “totally run contrary to the way that we have understood the federal role in education to be for decades,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank.

He added that there’s no guarantee that private and religious schools would offer the same civil rights protections for LGBTQ students or those with disabilities as public schools.

“What are we losing when we move away from what has been our universal public education system?” he asked. “Who could really slip through the cracks?”

Talking about college

In a September paper, he pointed to North Carolina as an example of a state that is ensuring lower-income families get first crack at school choice dollars. The state gives its highest Opportunity Scholarship payment of $7,686 to the lowest-income families and gradually reduces the amount for families who earn more.

Until the state made its program universally available in 2023, “private school was never an option for us,” said Tabitha Lofton, whose two younger sons attend Amandla Academy, a microschool with locations in Greensboro and High Point.

She moved Jamaal and Jackson out of Dudley High School in the Guilford County district, where they often skipped class and struggled to keep up. As a welder who often travels for work, and had to stretch her income to pay the bills, Lofton felt she couldn’t devote enough time to her kids’ education.

All Jamaal wanted to do was play basketball — at churches, local gyms, wherever he could, Lofton said. It was that passion that caught the attention of a coach who worked for Amandla and recruited Jamaal to play. Eager to get her boys out of Dudley, she applied for the Opportunity Scholarship and soon realized that they were thriving in the smaller environment.

“I see A’s and B’s and C’s on their report cards, which is something I’ve never seen,” she said. “My children are talking about going to college. Before going to that school, that was not a conversation at all.”

Marcus Brandon, a former state legislator who pushed for the universal program, founded Amandla in 2022. As executive director of CarolinaCAN, part of the 50Can advocacy network, he’s well-versed in ESAs.

As in the Rand study, state data still shows that most students in North Carolina’s program were already enrolled in private schools before they received state funds, but that doesn’t deter him.

“You still have people who were making sacrifices,” Brandon said. Maybe they were working two jobs or put off buying a second car, he said. “Just because they were [paying tuition] doesn’t mean they were doing it comfortably.”

As AI threatens conventional careers, some that their children need agency — choice, risk-taking, problem-solving — in their learning environments. As early childhood education scholars, advocates and Black mothers, this “discovery” evokes frustration, irony and the weary sense of privilege repackaged as innovation.

On its face, this embrace of child-led, relational learning should feel like vindication for those of us who’ve spent decades advocating for for all children. Instead, it feels like watching the goalposts move once more — just as our children were learning to kick.

Let us be clear: Agency in child-rearing is not a Silicon Valley innovation. It is ancient wisdom that colonization, civilization, capitalism and industrialization have spent centuries trying to erase from Indigenous and minoritized communities.

Developmental researchers have always known that children’s learning and human development are fundamentally a, as across the globe foster children’s agency through real participation in community life.

Mayan mothers teach weaving by, rarely forcing compliance. Navajo parents practice non-intervention, without explanation. In Mazahua families in Mexico, the “responsible child” emerges not through coercion but through paired with community responsibility.

Across African societies, similar patterns emerge: embrace the proverb “a single hand cannot nurse a child,” with the entire village participating in children’s upbringing through shared responsibility and collective wisdom. In, children develop through meaningful participation in real community tasks — from caring for siblings to contributing to household economies — learning agency through graduated responsibility rather than artificial instruction.

In other words, in historic Indigenous communities, autonomy and interdependence are not opposites; they co-produce one another in healthy cultural ecologies. Children belong not just to their parents but to the entire community, creating networks of relationships where elders can guide, correct and nurture them — a system that builds both individual agency and communal belonging simultaneously.

It was only with industrialization and the rise of age-graded schools that we began segregating children from real-life’s work, breaking their will to fit them into assembly lines.

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Native children were forced into boarding schools to strip them of their languages and communal learning traditions. Enslaved Africans and their descendants were denied the right to assemble or teach their children skills outside plantation work.

In colonized countries like our country of origin, Nigeria, our languages were called vernacular by the colonizers and spanking was the norm for those who dared to speak their dialects in school, while farming and apprenticeships were considered backward.

Now, after decades of being told that standardized tests are the only path into “American Dream” prosperity, elites announce that traditional schooling is obsolete—at least for them. They’re that look suspiciously like the community-based learning that other elites spent centuries systematically devaluing and destroying in our communities.

For years, those of us in early childhood education have been shouting into the void that—it’s the engine of learning. We’ve known that relationships and belonging—not worksheets—anchor learning.

Yet while micro-schools build entire pedagogies around these play-based principles— some with tuition that exceeds many families’ annual income—public schools continue drilling facts into our children.

Black children in U.S. schools face what anthropologist and author Barbara Rogoff calls an “adversarial model”—behavior policing and compliance—while wealthier peers pursue passion projects. The families of venture capitalists can pay where kids cross oceans and “run Airbnbs,” and where teachers coach rather than control. But most families—especially immigrants working multiple jobs and those in generational poverty—can’t gamble on which careers matter or rely on a trust-fund cushion.

For generations, communities of color were told education was the ladder out of poverty. We sacrificed so our children mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic—and learned to code not for “joy” but stability. Yet we remainmost vulnerable when . As we near the top, those who never needed ladders kick them away and declare the game irrelevant.

We cannot assume our children will thrive in an or that their creativity will be rewarded in a society that still sees their skin color first. Public education has not earned our trust: still face disproportionate exclusion, biased discipline, and uneven access to well-prepared educators and high-quality early learning.

Like all anxious parents, we, too, lie awake wondering what world awaits our children. But our fears are compounded by the knowledge that whatever that future holds, they will navigate it as Black men and women in America. We must prepare them to be twice as good to get half as far.

If AI truly makes cognitive work obsolete, embodied skills —  creating, building, caring — will matter more. But will our children’s embodied skills be valued equally? History suggests not, unless we act now to dismantle the systems that have always sorted children into winners and losers based on ZIP codes and skin tones rather than potential. We must:

• Protect the time of childhood with opportunities for play in every school day
• Invest in outdoor and community-based learning that connects children to real work and real purpose
• Pay early educators living wages that reflect their expertise in fostering development
• Provide universal child care and paid family leave so all families can afford to engage with their children’s learning
• Fund continuous adult learning—time for rest, reflection, community—so teachers can truly act as guides and co-constructors of knowledge
• Replace one-size-fits-all accountability with culturally sustaining measures of children’s participation, growth, and belonging

These aren’t radical ideas. They are implementations of what research has shown for decades and what Indigenous communities across the globe have known for millennia. But they require something techno-optimist individualism resists: collective investment in all children, not just one’s own.

The question now is whether we’ll let this moment deepen educational apartheid or use it to finally build the equitable, humanizing system all children deserve. As Nelson Mandela reminded us, “The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.”

The timing was good. A growing number of families choose the small learning models and millions in public funds support them through school choice programs. An added bonus: The project would have been among the first from an independent research organization to measure the impact of microschools on student learning.

A year later, the researchers came up empty.

In fact, Jonathan Schweig, a Rand senior scientist, concluded that determining the impact of attending a microschool on student outcomes is “nearly impossible” because of a lack of useful assessment data. Parents often flee traditional schools and opt for unconventional models precisely because of a perceived over-reliance on testing. 

Nonetheless, Schweig added, testing “is important to understand how students are doing relative to other similar students.”

Co-researcher Laurel Covelli was scheduled to present preliminary findings from the study, shared exclusively with �鶹��Ʒ, at this week’s Harvard University conference on Emerging School Models. But instead of solid conclusions, she’ll focus on the challenges of studying a sector that even supporters say is . 

Microschools — small learning centers that meet in homes, renovated storefronts and churches — have been popping up across the country since the pandemic. In fact, recent research from Tulane University, shows that they represent  of private schools serving students on vouchers or education savings accounts.

According to the National Microschooling Center, nearly 40% of the small schools serve students using state-funded school choice programs. Microschools now number nearly 100,000, with the sector expected to expand  further when states opt in to the new federal tax credit program for school choice. There are anecdotal accounts of parents who say their children thrive in the close-knit, personalized settings, as well as examples of start-ups that fizzled. But objective achievement data can be much harder to find, even as their growing numbers are sparking calls to hold them to the same academic standards as public schools.

In May, Lisa Tarshis, part of the Primer microschool network, said she was looking forward to Rand’s findings. 

“As a movement, we have to be successful in what we’re doing … and we have to have data to show that what we’re doing is working,” Tarshis said. As head of the Primer Foundation, which provides financial aid to families and support to schools in the network, she said she’s a “big believer in full transparency” and the power of the free market. “Any business that isn’t meeting the needs of its customers will go out of business. The same should be true for schools.”

One leading supporter of the sector said she isn’t surprised Rand wasn’t able to do a “comprehensive comparison.” 

“Many families tell me that they chose a microschool or similar model because they wanted less testing and more focus on the whole child,” said Kerry McDonald, who recently released a new book on microschools and often contributes to �鶹��Ʒ. But she doesn’t consider the lack of data to be a “setback” for the movement, noting that microschools increasingly serve students with autism and other special learning needs “whose academic abilities may not be adequately reflected on traditional tests.”

Missing data

The Rand team initially approached the project as if they were evaluating charter or private schools, intending to examine how microschool students performed in reading and math on the MAP Growth tests. Because the tests from NWEA, an assessment company, are widely used in public schools, a comparison should have been possible.

But the data didn’t exist.

Rand gave NWEA a list of 271 microschools, compiled with the help of the Las Vegas-based National Microschooling Center. NWEA could only find 10 with fall and spring scores. Without both, Rand couldn’t determine if microschool students learned any more or less in a year than their counterparts in traditional schools. 

From the 10 schools they did identify, preliminary data shows that microschool students grew, on average, a third of a percentage point less in math and one half of a point less in reading than non-microschool students.

But the bigger takeaway is the absence of a large enough sample to produce meaningful results.

“Microschools are not little charters. A lot are really new and don’t yet have two test events per student,” Schweig said. Another issue is that because the schools are so small — with a median size of 22 students — parents might register for MAP assessments on their own and are never linked to a specific school.

But the primary reason for the lack of data, he said, is that “ a large number of microschools are not opting in to do these assessments in the first place.” 

Schweig and his co-authors hinted that they were running into trouble in March. In an , they said that information on students’ backgrounds and academic performance was often unavailable. The “lack of data poses a threat” to the validity of any studies on the impact of microschools, they wrote. 

Rand isn’t the only research organization trying to measure student achievement in microschools. Mathematica is currently analyzing data conducted with Rock by Rock, a project-based learning company based in New York City. The goal is to pair reading data from i-Ready, another commonly used public school assessment, with videos and student work to offer a more well-rounded view of what kids are learning. 

Schweig said the Mathematica project may have more success because microschools had to administer i-Ready three times a year in order to participate and get a discount on a Rock by Rock subscription. Jeffrey Imrich, CEO and founder of Rock by Rock, said he didn’t know if the researchers were having any complications. A Mathematica spokesperson declined to comment on the status of the study.

‘Parents are happy’

Some microschools assess students with traditional tests. According to a from the National Microschooling Center, a third of leaders say they use standardized assessments to measure student progress, but observations and portfolios of student work are more common. There’s also a shift toward accreditation, largely because some states require it from microschools that serve students using ESAs. In August, KaiPod, a microschool network, a partnership with accrediting agency Cognia to release accreditation standards specifically for the sector.

Adina Victor, vice president of non-public school services at Cognia, said they’re not trying to make microschools “give up” what makes them attractive to some families. But if leaders don’t gather student achievement data, their school may suffer.

“If you want state funding, there is a level of accountability that comes with that,” she added. 

Comparisons between microschool students and their counterparts in district schools do exist. They’re just not always easy to find. 

Prenda, one of the first microschool networks, published an “” for the New Hampshire Department of Education based on 2022-23 i-Ready data. It showed that Prenda students outpaced other New Hampshire students and the nation. But Kelly Smith, founder and CEO, said it was a one-time requirement for a contract with that state. 

Most states don’t require students on ESAs to take the same annual tests as kids in public schools. Indiana is an exception, but the state only reports data from accredited microschools. Most are not. 

In West Virginia, microschool students receiving the Hope Scholarship, an ESA, are required to take a standardized test or submit a portfolio of work. Most parents choose the second option, according to the state treasurer’s office, which runs the program. But officials only track whether students meet the requirement, not specific results. 

Michael Parsons, a microschool founder in the state, said he’d like to see some kind of “public-facing dashboard” with data on what test microschool students take and how their results compare to national norms. He gives students the Iowa Assessments, commonly used among homeschoolers, and said “it’s a disservice to students whose first time sitting down for a standardized test is when their admission to college depends on it.” 

Left-leaning think tanks, skeptical of private school choice, argue for stronger testing requirements. A February questioned the quality of education in microschools because many founders are not professional educators and often develop their own curricula. 

EdChoice President Robert Enlow, and other advocates, tend to point fingers back at public schools. In , Enlow said families are leaving traditional schools because they’re “not performing up to snuff.” 

Others argue that parents are the best judge of whether their children are learning.

“The number one measure that we have to demonstrate that these programs are working … is that their parents are happy,” Lindsay Burke, now with the U.S. Department of Education, said last year in an . At the time, she was still an education expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Rachel Good, another Rand study participant, founded the in Chattanooga in 2022.  A former public school special education teacher and reading specialist, she believes students need “foundational academics,” but she wants them to do more than “regurgitate” facts on a test. 

“I want to inspire these kids to find their voice,” she said. In public school, “we didn’t have time to teach any meaningful social and emotional awareness. That’s something you’re going to use every day of your life.”

The lack of knowledge about how students perform on academic tasks has implications, not just for the public, but for foundations supporting school choice, said Schweig, with Rand. The Walton Family Foundation funded the study as part of a larger grant supporting choice research.

“Some schools are doing great things,” he said, “but there is value in understanding and helping schools that are not doing great things do better.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to the Rand Corp. and �鶹��Ʒ.

Abby had been since birth. She and her siblings were granted the freedom to chart their own educational pathways as self-directed homeschoolers and, more recently, as students at the , an alternative private school in Framingham, Massachusetts, that since 1968 has embraced noncoercive, democratic education with no curriculum, tests, grades, or homework. It has inspired the growth of dozens of Sudbury-model schools around the world.

No, I told her. Traditional schooling, with its standardized curriculum and testing mandates, is not an option. 

After all, I had spent the previous several months crisscrossing the country visiting founders of emerging schools and similar models, such as microschools, learning pods, and homeschooling collaboratives. The majority of these founders were former public school teachers who felt that their creativity and autonomy were stifled within a conventional classroom. They left to build something different. Parents left, too. Frustrated by frequent testing and a one-size-fits-all curriculum, the parents I interviewed pulled their children out of traditional schools and enrolled them in these alternative ones because they wanted more freedom and flexibility in education. 

No, I wasn’t going to allow Abby to give up that freedom.  

Gratefully, for her and me, I soon realized my error: If educational freedom is truly my top value, then Abby deserves the freedom to choose the educational option that is right for her. We all deserve that freedom.

Students, parents, and teachers today have more K-12 education options than ever and they are increasingly able to find the best fit. For Abby, our traditional public high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is undoubtedly right for her. It is clear to me now that this is where she belongs, while my other children currently have no interest in attending a conventional school. When my ninth grader joined the other 2,000 high schoolers earlier this month, she quickly felt at home in the large, bustling environment with access to hundreds of clubs and activities, a wide assortment of academic offerings, a talented team of educators and a breathtakingly diverse group of fellow students from across our city. She loves it.

But for some children and teens, a traditional school may not be the best fit. They may be lost in large schools, feeling either held back or left behind by a curriculum meant for the masses. Others may confront bullying or feel unsafe in a conventional classroom. Some may struggle with anxiety and depression, or have special learning needs, and desire a smaller, more personalized learning environment. Some kids might just want a change. Now, there are many more of these personalized learning environments to choose from, and they are more accessible than ever.

in Arizona is an example. One of the dozens of innovative schools I spotlight in my book, it was founded in 2021 by Tamara Becker. She was a public school teacher and administrator for nearly 30 years who became attracted to microschools during the COVID pandemic due to their small size, individualized curriculum, and focus on each child’s academic growth and emotional wellbeing. “Microschools are the wave of the future because they provide an environment focused on the child, not the system,” said Becker, who runs one of Adamo’s microschools out of her home in Queen Creek, a suburb of Phoenix.

Adamo currently enrolls more than 70 K-8 learners across multiple locations, who are all taught by certified teachers, including Becker. One-third of her students are neurodiverse or have special learning needs ranging from dyslexia and dysgraphia to ADHD and autism. Her students have grown both academically and socio-emotionally since joining Adamo, and all of them attend the microschool using the state’s education savings account (ESA) program. Becker ensures the tuition is fully covered by the ESA program, so that no parent has to pay out of pocket.

In 2022, Arizona became the first state to enact a school choice policy enabling every K-12 student in the state to be eligible to access a portion of state-allocated education funding to use toward a variety of approved educational expenses, including microschools like Adamo. More than a dozen states have since followed Arizona’s lead.

Microschools and other creative schooling options are spreading quickly in states like Arizona where students can often attend tuition-free, but they are appearing all across the country as more families look for low-cost, highly-individualized alternatives to traditional schools — both public and private.

More students today are able to enjoy an educational environment that is right for them. For Abby, that is shifting from homeschooling and alternative education to a traditional public school. For others, it could be the opposite. As parents, we should look at our children’s distinct educational needs and interests, and say “yes” when they want a change.

In 2019, I gave a keynote presentation at the Alternative Education Resource Organization’s (AERO) annual conference in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1989 by Jerry Mintz, AERO has long supported entrepreneurial educators in launching new schools and spaces, with a particular focus on learner‑centered educational models. It was about a month after my previous book was published, and I was talking about the gathering interest in unconventional education. Homeschooling numbers were gradually rising, and more microschools and microschooling networks were surfacing. I predicted that these trends would continue, but I said they would remain largely on the ­edge— as alternative education had for decades. They would offer more choices to some families who were willing to try new things, similar to those of us who eagerly embraced Netflix’s mailed DVDs when they first appeared. But I didn’t think these unconventional models would upend the entire education sector the way Netflix ultimately did with entertainment. I thought they would remain small and niche. I was wrong.

The COVID crisis catapulted peripheral educational trends into the mainstream, not only creating the opportunity for new schools and spaces to emerge but, more importantly, permanently altering the way parents, teachers, and kids think about schooling and learning. The pre‑pandemic tilt toward homeschooling and microschooling has converged with five post‑pandemic trends that are profoundly reshaping American education for families and founders. Together, these trends are shifting the K–12 education sector from being an innovation laggard to an innovation leader.

Trend #1: The growth of homeschooling and microschooling

The nearby microschool for homeschoolers that my children attended before COVID was one of only a sprinkling of schooling alternatives in our area. Now, it’s part of a wide, fast‑growing ecosystem of creative schooling options— both locally and nationally— representing an array of different educational philosophies and approaches. Families today are better able to find an education option that aligns with their preferences. From Maine to Miami to Missouri to Montana, the majority of the innovative schools and spaces I’ve visited have emerged since 2020, and many already have lengthy waitlists, inspiring more would‑be founders. The demand for these options will grow and accelerate over the next ten years, as will the number of homeschooling families, many of whom will be attracted to homeschooling as a direct result of these microschools and related learning models. Indeed, data from the Johns Hopkins University Homeschool Hub reveal that homeschooling numbers continued to grow during the 2023/2024 academic year compared to the prior year in 90 percent of the states that reported homeschooling data, shattering assumptions that homeschooling’s pandemic‑era rise was just a blip. Parents that otherwise wouldn’t have considered a homeschooling option will do so because homeschooling enables them to enroll at their preferred microschool or learning center.

One particularly striking and consistent theme revealed in my conversations with founders as I’ve crisscrossed the country is that their kindergarten classes are filling with students whose parents chose an unconventional education option from the start. These parents aren’t removing their child from a traditional school because of an unpleasant experience or a failure of a school to meet a child’s particular needs. They are opting out of conventional schooling from the get‑go, gravitating toward homeschooling and microschooling before their child even reaches school age. This trend is also likely to accelerate, as younger parents become even more receptive to educational innovation and change.

Trend #2: The adoption of flexible work arrangements

Today’s generation of new parents grew up with a gleeful acceptance of digital technologies and the breakthroughs they have facilitated in everything from healthcare to home entertainment. These parents see the ways in which technology and innovation enable greater personalization and efficiency, and expect these qualities in all their consumer choices. It’s no wonder, then, that parents of young children today are generally more curious about homeschooling and other schooling alternatives. They are often perplexed that traditional education seems so sluggish.

The response to COVID gave these parents license to consider other options for their children’s education. The school closures and extended remote learning during the pandemic empowered parents to take a more active role in their children’s education. That trend persists, as does the remaking of Americans’ work habits. The number of employees working remotely from home rather than at their workplace has more than tripled since 2019.��

As more parents enjoy more flexibility in their work schedules, they will seek similar flexibility in their children’s learning schedules. While remote and hybrid work generally remain privileges of the so‑called “laptop class” of higher‑income employees, the growing adoption of flexible work and school arrangements is driving demand for more of these alternative learning models, including many of the ones featured in Joyful Learning that offer full‑time, affordable programming options for parents who don’t have job flexibility. Remote and hybrid work patterns are here to stay, and so is the trend toward more nimble educational models for all.

Trend #3: The expansion of school choice policies

The burst of creative schooling options since 2020 is now occurring all across the United States, in small towns and big cities, in both politically progressive and conservative areas, and in states with and without school choice policies that enable education funding to follow students. 

Education entrepreneurs aren’t waiting around for politicians or public policy to green‑light their ventures or provide greater financial access. They are building their schools and spaces today to meet the mounting needs of families in their communities.

That said, there is little doubt that expansive school choice policies in many states are accelerating entrepreneurial trends. Founders I talk to who are developing national networks of creative schooling options, are intentional about locating in states with generous school choice policies that enable more parents to choose these new learning models. Other entrepreneurs are moving to these states specifically so that they can open their schools in places that enable greater financial accessibility and encourage choice and variety. Jack Johnson Pannell is one example. The founder of a public charter school for boys in Baltimore, Maryland, that primarily serves low‑income students of color, Jack grew discouraged that the experimentation that defined the early charter school movement in the 1990s steadily disappeared, replaced by an emphasis on standardization and testing that can make many—but certainly not all—of today’s charter schools indistinguishable from traditional public schools. He saw in the choice‑enabled microschooling movement the opportunity for ingenuity and accessibility that was a hallmark of the charter sector’s infancy. In 2023, Jack moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to launch Trinity Arch Preparatory School for Boys, a middle school microschool that families are able to access through Arizona’s universal school choice policies. 

Trend #4: The advent of new technologies and AI

New technologies are also accelerating the rise of innovative educational models, while making it harder to ignore the inadequacies of one‑size‑fits‑all schooling. The ability to differentiate learning, personalizing it to each student’s present competency level and preferred learning style, has never been easier or more straightforward. It no longer makes sense to say that all second graders or all seventh graders should be doing the same thing, at the same time, in the same way—and failing them if they don’t measure up.��

Emerging and maturing technologies help prioritize students over schools and systems, but the widespread introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and bots like ChatGPT, will hasten this repositioning. New AI bots can act as personal tutors for students, helping them navigate through their set curriculum. The real promise, according to founders focused more on agency‑ based or learner‑directed education, is for AI tools to work for the students themselves, helping them to control their own curriculum.

“We don’t have a set pathway for our learners. It’s personalized,” said Tobin Slaven, cofounder of Acton Academy Fort Lauderdale, which he launched with his wife Martina in 2021. Part of the global Acton Academy microschool network, Tobin’s school prioritizes student‑driven education in which young people set and achieve individual goals in both academic and nonacademic areas, participate in frequent Socratic group discussions, engage in collaborative problem‑solving and shared decision‑making, and embark on their own “hero’s journey” of personal discovery and achievement. 

When we spoke in 2024, Tobin had recently founded an educational technology startup building AI companion tools that act as a personal tutor, life coach, and mentor all in one. He sees AI tools like his as being instrumental in helping learners have more independence and autonomy over their learning. Rather than AI bots guiding a student through a pre‑established curriculum, Tobin thinks the truly transformative potential of AI lies in tools that help students lead their own learning—answering their own questions and pursuing their own academic and nonacademic goals.

“When I hear the visions of some other folks in the education space, their visions are very different from mine,” Tobin said, referring to many of today’s emerging AI‑enabled educational technologies. He offered the example of a device known as a jig, used often in carpentry, to further illustrate his point. “The jig tells you exactly where the curves should be, where the cut should be. It’s like a template. The template that most of the AI folks are using is traditional education. It was broken from the start. It’s a bad jig,” Tobin said.

Instead, he sees the potential of AI to help reimagine education rather than reinforce a top‑down, traditional model. He is helping to create a new and better educational jig.

Trend #­ 5: Openness to new institutions

The final trend that is merging with the others to transform American education is the shift away from established institutions toward newer, more decentralized ones. Some of this is undoubtedly due to emerging technologies that can disrupt entrenched power structures and lead to greater awareness of, and openness to, new ideas, but the trend goes beyond technology. Annual polling by Gallup reveals that Americans’ confidence in a variety of institutions has fallen, with their confidence in public schools at a historic low. Only 26 percent of survey respondents in 2023 indicated that they had a “Great deal/Quite a lot” of confidence in that institution. The good news is that confidence in small business remains high, topping Gallup’s list with 65 percent of Americans expressing a “Great deal/Quite a lot” of confidence in that institution in 2023. The falling favor of public schools occurring at the same time that small businesses continue to be well‑liked creates ideal conditions for today’s education entrepreneurs. Families who are dissatisfied with public schooling may be much more interested in a small school or space operating or opening within their community. 

For another signal of the shift away from older, more centralized institutions toward newer, more customized options, look at what the Wall Street Journal calls the “power shift underway in the entertainment industry,” as YouTube increasingly draws viewers away from traditional television networks. Individual YouTube content creators, such as the world’s top YouTuber, MrBeast, who has some 300 million subscribers, appeal to more viewers than the legacy media networks with their more curated content. New content creators are particularly attractive to younger generational cohorts like Gen Z, who prefer decentralized, user‑generated content over traditional, top‑ down media models. Consumers today are looking for more modern, responsive, personalized products and services, especially those being developed by individual entrepreneurs who bear little resemblance to legacy institutions. This is as true in education as it is in entertainment and will be an ongoing, indefinite, and transformational trend in both sectors.

Shortly before completing this manuscript, I spoke again at the annual AERO conference, this time in Minneapolis. Gone was my measured optimism of 2019. In its place was a mountain of evidence showing how popular alternative education models have become since 2020, and how steadily that popularity continues to grow. This isn’t a pandemic- era fad or an educational niche destined for the edges. This is a diverse, decentralized, choice‑filled entrepreneurial movement that is shifting American education from standardization and stagnation toward individualization and innovation.

We are only at the very early stages of a fundamental change in how, where, what, and with whom young people learn. Over the next decade, homeschooling and microschooling numbers will continue to grow, work flexibility will trigger greater demand for schooling flexibility, expanding education choice policies will make creative schooling options more accessible to all, AI and emerging technologies will help create a new “educational jig” fit for the innovation era, and declining confidence in old institutions will enable fresh ones to arise. The future of learning is brighter than ever. Families and founders are finding freedom, happiness, and success beyond conventional schooling, inspiring the growth of today’s joyful learning models and the invention of new ones yet to be imagined.

McDonald predicted that even a few weeks of displacement from school for millions of kids could fundamentally change education. 

And while most kids would eventually return to school once the epidemic faded, she wrote, “some parents may discover that learning outside of schooling benefited their children and strengthened their family.” They might begin to consider homeschooling or other alternatives as a longer-term option. “They may realize that education without schooling is not a crisis but an opportunity.”

Five years later, it seems, something fundamental has changed: As many as 125,000 microschools now operate nationwide, according to the National Microschooling Center, and several states now support homeschooling and microschooling with public funds.

McDonald, a Massachusetts mother of four, frequent contributor to �鶹��Ʒ, host of the and the author of a about self-directed education and alternatives to traditional schooling, set out to capture what the movement looks like now in her new book, . It’s out Tuesday.

She charts an ideologically diverse group of parents and teachers who are striking out on their own to essentially start small education businesses. The common thread, she finds, is a “desire to bring to education the level of personalization that we increasingly enjoy in all other parts of our lives.”

McDonald talked to �鶹��Ʒ’s Greg Toppo recently about the book and the microschooling movement.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

�鶹��Ʒ: I wanted to start with this quote in your book from a Kansas mom who launched a microschool. She says, “The fringe is becoming the cloth.” That’s quite a statement, quite a realignment, if true. Do you agree that that’s what’s happening?

I’ve been covering unconventional education — homeschooling and microschooling — for over a decade now. This movement really began prior to 2020, and at the time I thought that we would continue to see slow but steady growth in homeschooling and alternative education more generally. But I always thought it would stay in the margins.

When COVID hit in 2020 and there was that massive educational upheaval, it enabled families to start to think more creatively about education options, to maybe look more openly at homeschooling and microschools and other ways of approaching teaching and learning. And many families liked what they saw. Some families even built these new alternatives. Since 2020, we’re really seeing a much more mainstream push towards alternative education.

I think it’s fair to call these folks disruptors. 

Peaceful disruptors. 

But I wonder if we’re getting ahead of ourselves to start calling it mainstream. I mean, there are still in public schools.

If you look at some of the data in Arizona, for example, so many families are of traditional district schools. Obviously, charter schools would be their primary alternative at the moment, but certainly with the expansion of school choice programs and universal programs in places like Arizona, you’re seeing more and more families realize that they have other options, and they’re able to find schools and spaces that are aligned with their values and viewpoints in ways that they haven’t before.

We have to give it a little bit of time, because we need to let these entrepreneurs do their work. As more and more entrepreneurship takes hold, we’ll see more options for families, and families will be able to find just what they’re looking for.

I want to define just who you write about in this book, because it’s a really specific kind of person. As you say, they’re people who “built what they couldn’t find.” You’ve got folks who start religious microschools, Montessori microschools …

LGBTQ+ microschools, Afrocentric microschools …

You talk to folks like , who opens this in Massachusetts, and it’s interesting that he’s in the mix because he blanches at the “coercive qualities” of traditional schooling, even the compulsion to attend at all. That’s a pretty broad coalition. And I wonder: What do these folks have in common?

It is a broad coalition. What’s so exciting about this current decentralized, entrepreneur-driven educational moment, is that it’s extremely diverse. There are founders of every demographic and ideological persuasion, and different motivations for creating programs, whether it’s that they can’t find what they’re looking for for their own children and they want to create something better, or they just think that there’s a different way of approaching education. 

I think about Tamara Becker, the founder of in Arizona. Her microschool, which now has 73 students across several locations — she didn’t build that for her children. She doesn’t have children, but was a long-time public school teacher and administrator, and just felt that COVID provided this moment to individualize education and move away from a one-size-fits-all learning model into something more relevant and personalized for the 21st century. That’s the common thread among these entrepreneurial parents and teachers, that desire to bring to education the level of personalization that we increasingly enjoy in all other parts of our lives.

The other common thread, and why the book is titled Joyful Learning, is that despite the tremendous diversity of these models — from secular, progressive microschools to conservative, faith-based, microschools, and different educational philosophies and approaches, from classical to Montessori to unschooling and everything in between — these programs are places where children are happy to be learning. I saw that as I crisscrossed the country and interviewed the founders and families on my podcast and interviews related to the book. That was a very apparent characteristic of all of these spaces: Children are happy to be there. They are often sad when snow days hit or when summer vacation approaches. 

As you were going through this list of different kinds of schools and all these founders, I wondered, “How did you find all these folks?” Obviously, you have this podcast. Were they coming to you? Were you going to them?

Great question. I’ve been in the alternative education movement for a long time. I wrote my 2019 book, Unschooled, which is where I first connected with people like Ken Danford. So I have, thankfully, a rich network of folks in the alternative education world and in homeschooling that crosses political and ideological lines. In many cases, folks have come to me. 

Then, of course, COVID hit, and there was more and more interest in alternative education. In early 2022 I decided to launch my LiberatED podcast, because I wanted a multimedia approach to storytelling beyond the articles I was writing, and was able to connect with many of these founders there. For the most part, founders have come to me. I’ve been able to visit many of these founders, either by reaching out to them because they’ve been on my podcast or featured in articles, or by them inviting me to come. I also have done a lot of collaboration with the [a group of entrepreneurs supporting alternative learning models] that’s now supporting over 4,000 of these innovative educators across the country.

My work now is just sort of an extension of the work that I’ve been doing in alternative education for over a decade.

As much as anything, this book is an instruction manual for future founders and, I guess, for policymakers as well.

And parents.

What are you hoping readers come away with in terms of real instruction?

The book is primarily geared towards founders and families. Obviously, I’d love it if policymakers read it as well, and members of the media like yourself who are curious about this movement. But it’s primarily a book for parents and founders of programs. And there’s often a lot of overlap between those two groups. A lot of the founders that I talked to had no intention of becoming education entrepreneurs, or opening a school or a microschool or learning pod, and either because of COVID and the disruption caused by that, or just being unable to find exactly what they were looking for for their own children, ended up making that leap into entrepreneurship. In most cases, they found the experience to be incredibly rewarding. 

The majority of the founders are former public school teachers who were disillusioned with the standardization and test-driven learning environment that they found in conventional schools. Many of these teachers found their own creativity and autonomy stifled within a conventional classroom and wanted somewhere where they could be free to educate the way they felt was most effective and beneficial to the students they’re serving.

There’s got to be a very steep learning curve for the parents who are not trained teachers, and I wonder if you saw that in your reporting. Did you see parents struggling to make school come alive?

Most of the founders in the book are former teachers. Some of them became homeschooling moms after being public school teachers and then opened homeschooling collaboratives. I think about Alicia Wright in Richmond, Va., who runs . She was a longtime public school teacher-turned-homeschooling-mom-turned-founder. So there’s also that trajectory. A lot of these founders who are parents and who launch programs are highly successful in their own right.

I think about Sharon Massinelli, who runs in Georgia, a physician associate as well as a long-time homeschooling mom who has balanced work and homeschooling for years. She was really attracted to a hybrid homeschool model that enables part-time enrollment off-site with trained educators working through a curriculum for half the week, and then the other half students are at home working through that same curriculum with their parents. That has been a model that’s been around since the 1990s and continues to gain popularity, especially over the last five years. She was able to create her own hybrid school after her children had been attending another hybrid school program that was far away and not quite what she wanted. She was able to use that model and create something new. 

That’s what we see with many of the entrepreneurial parents who may not have a background in education but are incredibly successful in their own professions. Now, they have so many resources to help them launch and grow their programs, largely because of the network effects from more and more of these programs existing. You have these microschool startup programs like or that really work with these everyday entrepreneurs to create successful, sustainable programs.

I want to be sure to address this issue, which a lot of people coming to your book might be wondering about: This idea that the choice movement itself is not as simple as just joy and entrepreneurialism. There are a lot of people who feel like it’s a play to undermine public schools, and I wonder how you approach that.

What we’re seeing now is the expansion of choice, variety and abundance in education that we enjoy in so many other parts of our lives, but that we haven’t had much of in education because it’s been largely dominated by traditional public schools. It’s a good thing that we see more options for families, more ways of approaching education beyond a conventional classroom. It’s no surprise that more families are gravitating to and and outdoor learning environments, because they want something that’s much more play-based, that’s much more learner-centered, and that’s much less restrictive and standardized than a conventional classroom. That’s a key piece of this: We see so much innovation in the 21st century in so many other segments of society, while K-12 education has largely been standardized and stagnant.

For folks who might not know about you, it’s fair to say you lived this. During the pandemic, your oldest set off on her own to do distance learning, and you enrolled your younger three in the private . Talk a little bit about your experience — right in the middle, by the way, of doing the reporting for all this.

My kids were unschooled, homeschooled since birth — never attended a conventional classroom. They were attending a microschool a couple of days a week when COVID hit and the microschool shut down. All of the classes that they were taking throughout the city were shut down for months in many cases, more than a year in some.

I write in Joyful Learning about how at one point I realized that all of this education disruption that I was documenting among other families was hitting my family as well, and we were making education changes as a result, including, as you say, my older daughter, Molly, who had always been homeschooled. She began taking online classes and then ended up enrolling in a full suite of high school online classes through while remaining legally a homeschooler in Massachusetts. She’s since graduated and is off to college. Next Saturday she moves in. And then the younger three enrolled in the Sudbury Valley School, which I had written about extensively in my Unschooled book and always really adored, but it’s far away from us, and also is a state-recognized private school. We were comfortable with homeschooling, but changes among our education ecosystem during that time of disruption led us to pursue other options, and they were thrilled to join Sudbury Valley.

Do you envision us ever going back to the way things were before COVID? And how do you think this movement is going to change the system itself?

Do I think we’re going to go back to the way it was before COVID? No, and my answer is related to your second question. What we’re seeing is a much greater focus around decentralized, choice-enabled, entrepreneur-driven education that’s responsive to the needs and wants of parents in local communities. One of the things I talk about in the book is the contrast between the education disruption and reform that happened in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which, of course, we’re coming up to the 20th anniversary later this month and what we’ve seen in terms of education reform and change in the wake of COVID. 

After Hurricane Katrina, the change largely came from the top. It was the state of Louisiana that took over the New Orleans Public School district to orchestrate change from the top, albeit with the goal of eventually returning New Orleans schools to local control, which would take more than a decade to accomplish. By contrast, the educational change that we’ve seen since COVID is the opposite. It’s an entirely bottom-up, decentralized movement of entrepreneurial parents and teachers creating the kinds of schools and spaces that enable young people to flourish and be happy. 

“My mind was blown,” said Fagerburg. “I had no idea education could be this good.”

She applied to open her own Acton Academy, and was accepted into the fast-growing network of approximately 300 independently-operated schools, emphasizing learner-driven education. Fagerburg launched last fall with 13 students, including four of her own children. Today, she has 26 K-6 students enrolled in her secular microschool, with plans to add a middle school and high school program in the coming years. “Parents want this. They love it,” said Fagerburg, adding that some families drive up to 45 minutes each way for their children to attend her program. 

She says she sees enormous demand for the Acton Academy model, and hopes to open more locations in Tennessee, but access is a key concern. “I grew up poor,” said Fagerburg. “I never would have been able to attend a school like this.” 

With the current expansion of school choice programs, such as Tennessee’s new universal education savings accounts (ESA), many more families are able to access innovative schools and learning models. “It’s a complete game changer,” said Fagerburg, explaining how the ESA program enables Tennessee families who previously had limited education choices to now use a portion of state-allocated education funding to select the school or learning space that is best for their child. 

But there’s a catch. In order to participate in Tennessee’s ESA program, Fagerburg’s school must be accredited, and its current accreditation by the , isn’t recognized by the state. 

That is why Fagerburg jumped at the opportunity to participate in a fledgling program offered through the (MSA), one of the four major K-12 accreditation entities, with 3,200 member schools worldwide. In with Stand Together Trust, MSA’s Next Generation Accreditation pilot program seeks to offer a faster, more affordable, and more flexible route toward accreditation for today’s emerging schools. 

“We created this flexible protocol around how a school actually works,” said Christian Talbot, President and CEO of MSA. “That gives mostly microschools, but really any innovative school, the opportunity to tell their story with the production of evidence that makes the most sense to them.” 

Talbot offered the example of a hypothetical urban “place-based” learning environment, with no designated school building and students taking classes at various museums, public parks, and historic sites throughout a city. “That school is going to have the opportunity to describe the learning environment in ways that existing accreditation protocols really don’t allow because you have to have a certificate of occupancy, or a lease, or some other thing that is tied to this mental model we have that school has to be in a building,” said Talbot. 

He emphasized that these innovative schools are “meeting all of the exact same standards of accreditation” as conventional schools, but they are able to demonstrate these standards in ways that reflect the ingenuity of their models. 

MSA is the world’s second-oldest accrediting agency. It launched more than a century ago, as interest grew from schools and colleges for independent, third-party verifiers of quality. For higher education, accreditation eventually became a requirement for U.S. colleges and universities to participate in federal student financial aid programs, but at the K-12 level, mandatory accreditation is less common. 

Most states don’t require schools — public or private — to be accredited, but some schools choose to become accredited to earn an external “seal of approval,” which may help them to attract and retain students and educators. With the expansion of school-choice programs nationwide in recent years, certain states, such as Tennessee and Texas, require accreditation in order for a school to participate in these programs.

Cammy Herrera had been exploring the possibility of accreditation for her secular microschool , in Mansfield, Texas, well before the state introduced a new universal school-choice program this spring. A former public school teacher, Herrera had been running a licensed in-home preschool for more than a decade when she decided in 2021 to add a Montessori-inspired school-age program. She now serves over 50 students through middle school, with plans to open a high school if she can find a larger space to accommodate more students.

For Herrera, accreditation was appealing as a signal of quality, but she felt that most existing accrediting organizations took a traditional view of education that didn’t reflect her personalized, flexible approach. 

“Our school is so different. We are not trying to fit into a one-size-fits-all box when it comes to schooling,” said Herrera, whose students are technically considered homeschoolers. They can attend her school full-time at an annual tuition of $10,250, or customize their enrollment based on their own learning needs. Tuition for Herrera’s two-day-a-week option is about $4,000 annually. “Whoever we get accredited through has to believe in our vision and has to be on board with what makes our school special because we don’t want our school to lose that special part that makes us different from a traditional school,” she said. 

When Herrera learned about the MSA’s pilot accreditation program for microschools, she eagerly applied. Next Generation Accreditation would offer Herrera that third-party validation she has been seeking while retaining her program’s originality. It would also enable her to participate in Texas’s new school choice program, should she choose. 

MSA hopes to run the Next Generation Accreditation pilot with 10 to 15 innovative schools over the next several months to learn more about these schools’ distinct needs and structures, and then iterate and adapt protocols to provide a valuable accreditation pathway for today’s creative schooling models. 

As the creator of the Facebook group, Herrera sees mounting interest in microschooling and the diverse educational models and methods that the movement fosters. She thinks that accreditation options that reflect this diversity can be beneficial to founders and families who value that credential, or who need it to participate in certain school-choice programs. But she also warns of potential drawbacks: “There are all these special schools, and if everybody has to follow the same standards to be accredited, then I think they’ll be more alike than different. That’s the only thing I could see being a downfall.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to �鶹��Ʒ.

A new network of charter microschools east of Indianapolis hopes to give rural families separated by acres of farms and woods a choice of schools similar to what’s available to urban families. 

Starting this fall, the new Indiana Microschool Collaborative will create several small schools of 30 to 75 students around the Eastern Hancock school corporation, a rural district about 30 miles from the state capitol. 

The schools will add to the fast growth of microschools both nationally and in Indiana, which has the third-most in the country after Ariziona and Florida, according to the , a Las Vegas-based advocacy group. 

The charter microschools In East Hancock won’t be the first in Indiana: The well-regarded Purdue Polytechnic High School has a microschool spinoff in Indianapolis. Charter networks and school districts have also created microschools in other states, but the mix of factors in the collaborative’s plan — a public school district starting a network of charter microschools — is rare. 

Eastern Hancock Superintendent George Philhower, creator of the collaborative, said parents in Indiana increasingly want to be able to pick schools that fit their children.

“Our vision is that every kid should get to go to a school that feels like it was designed just for them,” Philhower said. “We think we can create that.”

Most of the estimated 140 microschools in Indiana are private, but the new collaborative will start all its schools as charters that will qualify for about $7,000 per student in state funding each year. Students will take state tests with the school’s results open to the public. 

While cities like Indianapolis have many charter and private schools, there are few in rural areas. Rural students can go to other districts or online schools, but students are too scattered to support many charter or private schools. 

Many parents choose to homeschool instead to give their children personalized teaching they want, he said.

 Indiana state school board member Scott Bess, who will also serve on the collaborative’s school board, called the collaborative “a way to get school choice and options for students into areas where there isn’t one today.”

“In a rural area, the population is such that you can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re going to open up a 400 student elementary school’, but you could open a 40 student school,” said Bess, founder of the Indiana Charter Innovation Center and board member of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. “We think there’s a huge amount of potential for this across the state of Indiana.”

Several families have already said they are interested in the first school, which will launch at a youth camp about 10 miles from district headquarters, Philhower said. Others will start nearby soon, though likely in 2026 and after, with the sites and academic model still to be determined..

He said that all the schools, small enough for personal attention, will use some form of a mastery or competency-based approach in which students learn lessons at their own speed until they master them, rather than moving ahead to new material at a scheduled time. It’s a plan that Indiana’s state school board and legislature are encouraging schools to try out while the state researches ways to use it broadly.

Philhower envisions the collaborative eventually growing by 1,000 students or more each year as his plan lowers two big barriers to launching new microschools — finding revenue and managing administrative tasks. The collaborative offers help from the Eastern Hancock school district’s human resources and other administrative staff to handle those tasks for a fee well below what it would cost a school to do on its own.

The “shared services” model saves microschools money, while also helping the school district pay its administrative staff.

There’s no consensus definition of microschools, which sprung out of both homeschooling and the learning pods families formed during the pandemic. 

While some look like homeschooling shared by a few families, others have separate buildings or rented storefronts as schools. Some have only a handful of students, but some have more than 100. Some are private schools, while others are charter schools — a form of public school operating independently. 

The chair of the Indiana Charter School Board called the plan an innovation for the state as the board voted to authorize the schools in May.

“Microschools are growing rapidly, but primarily through private school choice, through things like education savings accounts,” said Beth Bray. “This is the first charter sort of structure that I’ve seen, and so I think this is incredibly creative and really has the potential to be a model for the country.”

Today’s challenges are increasingly urgent and complex. Learner gaps. Enrollment shifts. Educator shortages. Political flashpoints. Family demands. And beneath it all, a widening chasm between what students experience in school and what they need to thrive in a world shaped by automation, AI, and accelerating change.

Public microschools offer a focused, actionable path forward in this era of uncertainty and opportunity. These small, purpose-built, learning environments give public schools and their communities the power to design experiences that are deeply personalized, flexible, and malleable without waiting for entire systems to shift. They can serve students, empower educators, and address community needs.

While the idea isn’t new, today’s reality is. This is not about boutique innovation. Public microschools are a turning point and an invitation to broadly reimagine how we design for relevance and responsiveness inside public systems. They can restore the connection between what students need and what schools provide to transform how we deliver on the promise of public education.

At , , and , we are not only observers of the microschool movement, we are active partners in shaping it. Our organizations are deeply embedded in designing, launching, and supporting microschools that are centered on learners and grounded in community context.

We came together to create the because we know that innovation is possible when leaders and educators are trusted to design with clarity of purpose and with learners at the center. We’ve worked alongside system leaders, leveraging public microschools to serve disengaged students, pilot bold learning models, or meet unique needs within their communities. 

These efforts aren’t side projects; they’re strategic priorities that reflect a broader shift in what’s possible. These are places where educators rediscover purpose, students go from feeling invisible to being known, families are empowered, and communities are connected.

Across the country, public microschools are addressing student needs and catalyzing broader transformation across rural, suburban, and urban areas. In Pitt County, North Carolina, district leaders launched microschools that blend virtual and in-person learning to re-engage chronically absent students. In Los Angeles, microschools support youth experiencing homelessness and newcomer students through deeply personalized support and wraparound services. At Myrtle Elementary School in Lamont, California, the district created a public microschool grounded in project-based learning (PBL). 

Escondido Union School District in San Diego County launched microschools at Central Elementary and Hidden Valley Middle School, which feature interdisciplinary schedules, advisory and wellness blocks, community-connected PBL, and exhibitions of learning. : Out-of-school suspensions are down 60%, attendance is up 10%, and i-Ready test scores show academic improvements in both ELA and math. 

In Wisconsin, educators designed three interdisciplinary PBL-focused microschools within Kettle Moraine School High School. In Edgecombe County, North Carolina, a rural district launched a microschool to pilot a student-centered model grounded in identity, community, and purpose. What began with 30 students led to multiple design iterations, ultimately transforming the student experience at North Edgecombe High School and Phillips Middle School, serving hundreds of students in grades 6 to 12, and inspiring redesign efforts across the district rooted in belonging and relevance.

Demand is growing for resources to support the creation of public microschools like these. As we’ve begun to share the playbook with leaders nationwide, their response has been clear: Microschools offer a realistic and hopeful path forward. System leaders recognize the need to transform how learning happens, but they’re also navigating constraints that can make wholesale change feel out of reach. Public microschools meet this moment by making it possible to start small, stay grounded in community needs, and move more rapidly toward meaningful, learner-centered innovation.

The is a practical guide for leaders who are ready to move from idea to action. It walks through three critical phases: planning, designing, and implementing. Each section includes guiding questions, tips, and real-world examples to support thoughtful design and strategic decision-making. There are strategies for leveraging policy flexibilities, designing staffing and scheduling models, aligning new approaches with financial plans, and launching with a strong culture and clear purpose. Attention to opportunity and access is woven throughout, helping ensure that microschools are designed to serve the students who need them most.

Public microschools are among today’s most promising strategies for creating a future-aligned education system. They allow leaders to create focused, learner-centered environments that can inform and inspire broader transformation across the system. The playbook is available in multiple formats to meet leaders where they are at various entry points. 

The work can’t wait. And neither can we. Use what you need. Share what you learn. And let’s keep building the future of public education together. 

Explore the interactive digital version, download the 75+ page PDF, or use the editable digital workbooks. Access everything and sign up to receive updates at:

�鶹��Ʒ and Getting Smart both receive financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Stand Together, Walton Family Foundation and XQ Institute.

But now she’s got company. 

Down a hallway lined with artwork, backpacks and storage bins, there’s a small Montessori school for 3- to 6-year-olds. A middle and high school operates on the same floor. And across from Blassingame’s two classrooms, Maya Corneille runs Nia School, which serves children with autism and apraxia, a disorder that affects movement and speech.

“Everyone has their own niche and strength,” said Corneille, a former college psychology professor.

Together they demonstrate how the microschool movement, which took off during the pandemic, continues to grow and adapt to students’ needs.

Microschools are also less “micro” than they were last year, according to the of the sector from the National Microschooling Center, shared exclusively with �鶹��Ʒ. In 2024, the median number of students in a typical microschool was 16. That figure has jumped to 22 — a reflection of the increased experience of school founders, said Don Soifer, CEO of the center. Some now serve as many .

The center’s report provides a comprehensive look at the trend as it continues to mature. Microschools — small schools that typically operate out of homes, commercial spaces or churches — now serve an , or about 750,000 students. Current or former teachers, or those with administrative experience, are increasingly running the programs. Eighty-six percent of founders have an education background, compared with 71% last year.

But some aren’t leaving public schools to join the movement.  Charter microschools and those affiliated with districts are generally larger, with a median size of 36 students, according to the report. 

They include , a project of BridgeValley Community and Technical College in South Charleston, West Virginia. This year, 20 seniors graduated from the charter microschool, where students earn college credit toward degrees in nursing or manufacturing. 

“The families we serve just see the huge amount of money they are saving on college tuition and the incredible learning opportunity this is for their kids,” said Casey Sacks, the college’s president. With small groups, real-world experiences and a personalized approach, the school, she said, “exemplifies many of the core elements of microschooling.” 

In another development, the Indiana Charter School Board recently granted a charter to a within the 1,200-student Eastern Hancock district, outside Indianapolis. Superintendent George Philhower expects one to three sites to launch this fall, with more opening across the state in the coming years.

“There’s a growing number of families looking for something in between the traditional public school experience and homeschooling,” he said. “Some are already homeschooling and doing amazing work, but they’re also looking for community, guidance, or access to certified teachers and additional resources.”

‘Financially sustainable’

The vast majority of microschools operate outside the public system, but the expansion of state-funded programs supporting private schools, like education savings accounts, has further fueled their spread. Primer, a for-profit microschool network, currently has schools in and Arizona, and will add schools in this fall. 

Over the next two years, the company plans to add five to six states, said Lisa Tarshis, head of the Primer Foundation, which provides financial aid to families and support to schools in the network. With ESA funds , she added that some microschool entrepreneurs are replicating their programs.��

“Once you get it down, it’s not that hard to open a satellite campus or to bring on another teacher,” she said. “Then you can become the owner and oversee these two schools.”

Of the 800 schools represented in the center’s survey sample, 38% receive state school choice funds, up from 32% in 2024.

This fall, Blassingame’s Ferguson School could be enrolling students on Georgia’s new Promise Scholarship, a $6,500 ESA targeted to students who live in a zone with a failing school. Others, she said, may qualify for the state’s separate ESA program for students with disabilities. 

ESAs make microschools “more affordable for parents and financially sustainable for me,” said Blassingame, who is accustomed to offering discounts on her $9,000 annual tuition and working out payment arrangements when families struggle. “I ask, ‘How much can you pay?’ But I have to be able to pay teachers and the rent.”

Democratic critics argue that ESAs not only hurt public schools, but also offer false hope to the 1 in 5 students who attend school in rural areas. Those communities often don’t have private options and the schools that exist may not , the left-leaning Center for American Progress argued in a . 

Microschools, easier to launch than a typical brick-and-mortar school, provide an alternative, said Amar Kumar, CEO of the KaiPod network. 

Even choice-friendly states like Indiana and Ohio still have “school choice deserts,” he said at a recent gathering in Atlanta for leaders running “hybrid homeschools,” which often combine microschools with at-home learning. “We can pass as many ESA programs as we want, but until we increase the supply of schools, we won’t really have choice.” 

‘Broader than just a reading score’

As more microschools tap public education funding, they’re drawing increased scrutiny from organizations outside the sector. Whether motivated by curiosity or criticism, growing interest from researchers and policy experts is another sign of the model’s expansion.

At least three studies are underway to examine microschools and report student performance on some of the same measures public schools use, like iReady assessments and MAP tests from NWEA. 

“There’s a lot of appetite for figuring out how we measure outcomes without being spaces that are tailored 100% towards a standardized test,” said Jeffrey Imrich, CEO and co-founder of Rock by Rock, which sells project-based learning curriculum and materials, primarily to microschools and homeschoolers. The company is working with Mathematica, a research organization, on one of the studies. “There’s an interest in making sure kids are learning and growing, but the interest is in a set of outcomes that is broader than just a reading score.”

But critics warn that the microschools still lack adequate government oversight. In a , the Center for American Progress characterized the unconventional programs as potentially unsafe spaces that often “bypass” building codes and are not required to follow civil rights laws, like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, even if they receive public funds. 

In a , Soifer pushed back against the authors’ call for greater accountability and locking into a federal definition of microschools. Founders in this “many-flowers-bloom movement,” he said, already navigate “complex and often arbitrary” regulations designed for large, traditional schools. For example, in March, the Arizona fire marshall told a microschool founder she would have to spend thousands of dollars for building upgrades even though local authorities had already approved the school’s opening. After the libertarian Institute for Justice got involved, . 

As with last year’s report, founders getting ready to open schools say their number one need is understanding the rules and laws that apply to their programs.

‘Like a four-letter word’

With Texas recently passing a voucher program, Soifer and others are closely watching how the microschool model fares in the nation’s second largest state. Currently, he said, there’s no reliable count of the number of Texas microschools. 

“There are just too many that have been doing things under the radar for a long time,” he said.

But if they want to serve students on ESAs, they’ll have to meet the as other private schools. That means staying open for at least two years and getting accreditation. 

Earning accreditation continues to be a costly, and often insurmountable, barrier for many microschools. The process, which typically includes a financial audit, staff background checks and building inspections, can run up to $15,000. 

But most accrediting organizations haven’t always been what Soifer calls “microschool friendly.” Less than a quarter of microschools in his survey are accredited, but 80% percent said they would be interested in a process geared toward their non-traditional programs. At least one accrediting body, Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, recently announced a for “innovative school models.”

The issue came up at the Atlanta conference, organized by the National Hybrid Homeschool Project at Kennesaw State University. 

“Accreditation is like a four-letter word in this community,”  said Sharon Masinelli, a lead science teacher at St. John the Baptist Hybrid School, outside Atlanta. She led a session describing why she sought recognition from Cognia, the nation’s largest accrediting body. High schools, she said, wouldn’t accept course credits for students leaving the hybrid school until it was accredited.

Other microschools seek accreditation so they can accept students on ESAs, just like well-established private schools. Mitch Seabaugh, senior vice president of the Georgia Promise Scholarship, also spoke at the conference, inviting attendees to give their input on the new program.

To Eric Wearne, who runs the Kennesaw project, the moment offered yet another sign that microschools had made it into the mainstream.

Addressing the group the next day, he said, “If you had told me that we would one day have a state official in a room full of school founders asking for advice, I would have lost money on that bet.”

WASHINGTON — During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he was reluctant to speak boldly about school choice.

That’s according to Kellyanne Conway, an aide to the president back then, and one of his former campaign managers. “He would say ‘Aren’t we the ones who say it [education] is local? Why would the president of the United States bigfoot all that?’”

Expect that reticence to be a thing of the past, Conway told the audience  devoted to promoting the benefits of school choice — from  in the style of programs in West Virginia and Arizona to charter schools and . On the campaign trail, Trump already has been vocal about his embrace of parental choice. “We want federal education dollars to follow the student, rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,”  at a rally in Wisconsin last month.

(To be sure, Trump did  near the end of his first term offering states the opportunity to use federal money to create school choice programs. When I looked into it a few years ago, I couldn’t find any state that had taken him up on the offer.)

Conway urged participants at the post-Election Day gathering to speak a certain way in their advocacy to lawmakers going forward. “Lead with solutions not problems. The problems can be the second part of the sentence, or maybe the second paragraph.” The panelists — including the founder of a group of charter schools for students with autism in Arizona, the leader of a private school for boys in Alabama and the head of a foundation that supports microschools — were all winners of , fueled by  and run by the Center for Education Reform.

She also urged the crowd not to make school choice about teachers unions, “which is fun to do, especially this week but it doesn’t educate another child.” (The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, generally has opposed private school vouchers and has been celebrating the . “The decisive defeat of vouchers on the ballot across multiple states speaks loudly and clearly: The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.) 

Lawmakers who need convincing aren’t holding out just because of union pressure, Conway said. In Texas, for instance, rural lawmakers worried about the effect of vouchers on their schools  or torpedoed plans in that state that would allow parents to use public money for private school tuition. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott helped elect enough new members in place of those rural holdouts, however, that .

The school choice event at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C. was notable for the range of people it featured, including parents and pastors, people who are white, Black and Latino, and several Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Pennsylvania. Some of the speakers told stories about opening their own charter schools and private schools. They urged the president-elect to take action on choice, including allowing  for children in low-income families to follow those kids to private schools or other settings outside public schools.

In Congress, with Republicans taking hold of the Senate and expected to retain control of the House, lawmakers already have proposed legislation that has, until now, mostly been a nonstarter. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is likely to become chair of the committee that oversees education in his chamber, introduced  this session that would give families and corporations tax credits if they contribute to groups that give scholarships to students to attend private or parochial schools. It would target students whose families earn no more than 300 percent of the area median gross income. Cassidy’s wife, Laura, runs a charter school for children with dyslexia in Baton Rouge.

“I think that there’s going to be a real opportunity to promote innovation in school choice,” Cassidy said. “There is great promise in this administration, and I am looking forward to working with them.”

This story about  was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for .

“Families are looking for something different,” GROW Program Director, Elizabeth López, told me when I visited the learning center last month. Located in the New Life Worship Center, a large, fast-growing, predominantly Hispanic Christian church in New England’s second largest city, GROW is part of the congregation’s mission to support families in and around their community. Similar church-based learning centers for homeschoolers are sprouting across Massachusetts, as more families seek alternatives to conventional schools. 

“These centers are inspiring not just the parents to engage more in the education of their children, but grandma and grandpa and auntie and uncle. The church is truly rallying together the family to raise up the children,” said Michael King, CEO of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative advocacy organization that is helping to catalyze the creation of low-cost, church-based learning centers like GROW. Over the past three years, King’s organization has supported the launch of 15 of these learning centers across the Bay State, serving approximately 600 students. 

This may help to explain why Massachusetts is one of at least 19 states reporting an increase in 2023-24 homeschooling numbers compared to the prior academic year, according to analyzed by Dr. Angela Watson at Johns Hopkins University. While Massachusetts, like many states, experienced a large surge in homeschoolers during the pandemic and related school closures, this recent uptick in homeschooling is being caused by unknown factors. 

“What is clear is that this time, the growth is not driven by a global pandemic or sudden disruptions to traditional schooling,” Watson concluded. “Something else is driving this growth.” 

According to López, families are attracted to homeschooling with GROW because it provides a safe, nurturing, family-centered, values-affirming learning environment. “Students here feel like they’re in a safe and trusting environment, and their parents feel the same way,” López told me. Indeed, the most recent federal on homeschooling released in September reveals that a top reason why parents choose homeschooling is that they are “concerned about the school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure.” 

Homeschooling allows GROW families — most of whom are Hispanic — to have much more control over their children’s education. They collaborate closely with the learning center’s nine staff members and seven additional adult volunteers, who work to individualize learning to meet children’s specific academic needs. 

I talked with some of the parents of students who attend GROW to find out why they chose homeschooling over conventional schooling in recent years. “I think that there has definitely been a big shift in the curriculum, what is being taught in schools, and how that doesn’t align with my values and my beliefs,” said Tanya Tovar, a behavior analyst whose son Sebastian is a full-time first-grader at GROW. As Sebastian neared kindergarten age,Tovar looked into conventional public and private schools — including traditional Christian ones — but none appealed to her. She decided instead to enroll Sebastian at GROW last year, due in large part to its emphasis on faith-based education along with high-quality academics targeted to each child’s academic ability. 

GROW’s customized approach to education has enabled Sebastian to do advanced coursework, challenging him in ways Tovar thinks wouldn’t be possible in a conventional classroom. But for Tovar, GROW is about more than just Sebastian’s academics. “He’s happy, he loves his classroom, he loves his friends,” she said, adding that she plans to keep her son, and eventually his one-year-old sister, at GROW through high school. “I want them to be able to think independently, have autonomy for themselves and for their life. I think GROW does that. I think homeschooling does that.”

Erika Serrano agrees. She has an eleventh-grade daughter and a second-grade son at GROW, along with her three-year-old daughter, who attends part-time. A full-time community health worker, Serrano’s two older children attended Worcester Public Schools before enrolling at GROW last year. It was when her daughter began her freshman year at the public high school that Serrano realized she had to make a change. “That was a tough year for us,” she told me, explaining how her daughter’s behavior changed from middle school and how she was encountering negative peer pressure. 

Since attending GROW, Serrano has noticed a transformational change in her daughter. “Honestly, it makes me so emotional because she has flourished into such a beautiful, kind young woman since she’s been going to GROW. Words can’t even express how thankful I am. This has been such a great opportunity for us,” said Serrano, adding that her daughter plans to attend college after high school and become a teacher. Last year, GROW had its first high school graduate who received multiple college acceptances, beginning his freshman year this fall. 

Some students attend GROW a couple of days a week, but the majority are enrolled full-time, five days a week at an annual tuition of $2,400. To defray tuition costs even further, GROW has recently partnered with Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF), a national nonprofit founded in 1998 that provides low-income families with partial scholarships to attend private schools. CSF is now offering scholarships to students who attend creative schooling options, such as microschools and learning centers. (Parents are encouraged to check if their school participates in CSF’s scholarship programs)

The parents I spoke with expect GROW and homeschool learning centers like it to continue to gain popularity, both in Massachusetts and across the country. They say that more parents are looking for alternatives to traditional schooling and, as more of these alternatives sprout, it makes it easier to choose something else.

“I grew up in the public school system,” Serrano told me. “I raised my daughter mostly in the public school system. That’s all I knew, but I knew I needed to shift. I was so scared because you think this is the only way, right? But then I said, wait a minute, there are so many other ways that our kids could be educated.”

Serrano urges parents to consider new and different educational models. “Be open-minded,” she said. “Take that leap of faith and do what you know is right for your children.”

Dominique Bryant made the switch for her 10-year-old after two years of watching him struggle with reading. She first noticed how far behind Malcolm was in second grade when he couldn’t read the instructions on a homework assignment. 

“I looked in his face and he just was so defeated. I said ‘I’ve got to do something else,’” she said. Now her two daughters, Ebony and Aviana, attend the school as well.

One way Burbrella stands out in a growing marketplace of unconventional school options is by grouping students of similar ages and learning needs together in pods — a format that a lot of families became familiar with during the pandemic. The school, however, takes a more mainstream approach to measuring how well students learn math and reading. Teachers turn to some of the same assessments still used in traditional public schools, like the Iowa tests to pinpoint students’ skills when they first enroll and i-Ready to monitor progress throughout the year. 

“We look for their strengths, their interests, and we integrate that into play, nature and projects — just to really make learning fun — but also to close the gaps they have academically,” said Dominique Burgess, the school’s founder.

Her reliance on widely used assessments is not unique in the expanding universe of school choice options, according to a from Vela, a nonprofit that promotes and provides grants to such programs. Most leaders of unconventional schools use methods like observation, student presentations and projects to track progress, but more than half also use standardized tests or assessments built into online curriculum — like DreamBox and Zearn. Leaders of such programs say parents are their number one audience for the data. But with more states allowing families to use public funds for tuition at microschools and other private school programs, there’s also for greater transparency into how students stack up against their peers in district schools.

Burgess, previously a public and charter school educator, doesn’t have a problem with that. 

“I think we’re at a very pivotal point in this whole movement,” said Burgess, who also has an online program that serves students from 19 states. “A lot of what we’re doing needs a light shined on it — not just for parents to say ‘Oh, it’s something different. Let me go try it’ — but more so the country can see this might be the new way of educating kids and providing families with choice.”

Vela, with a network of 3,000 founders of alternative schools, was “uniquely positioned” to survey leaders on how their schools define and measure student success, said Meredith Olson, president and CEO. 

Of the 223 programs that responded, 70% said they track academic progress, but ranked developing students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills as more important than reading and literacy skills — 74% and 66%, respectively. Nearly 40% of the school programs said they measure math skills, and 13% said they don’t track anything. 

Programs using digital tools are more likely to capture student assessment data using education technology from Khan Academy than any other program, Vela found in its survey. More than half of school founders said they use the popular website, with much smaller percentages using Lexia for reading (24%) or Zearn for math (15%).

Laurie Hensley, who runs the Learning Essentials microschool on an acre of property southeast of Phoenix, doesn’t let her students move to the next level until they score at least 90% in Lexia. Sometimes she “has a little chat” with parents if their child still can’t master a lesson after multiple attempts.

“But most of the time kids are progressing,” said Hensley, who worked as a paraprofessional in a charter school before launching her own program five years ago. “The whole point of being out of a public school is that they progress, even if it’s slower. As long as they’re moving forward, I don’t worry about them.”

Doug Harris, a Tulane University economist who studies school choice, including education savings accounts, said he’s not surprised that many microschool leaders rely on Khan Academy to tell them how students are performing. 

“Microschools have only one or two teachers and they can’t be expert in, or create assessments for, such a wide variety of material,” he said. But even if public funds are paying for students to attend a microschool, the public won’t necessarily see that data. “Khan doesn’t provide useful info to anyone but those families and educators in the school.” 

That’s not good enough for many opponents of ESAs, especially those in Arizona, which places no academic requirements on private programs that serve students with public funds. Criticism has spiked in recent months as the state makes to accommodate growth in the program. 

Holding microschools accountable

“Microschools propped up by taxpayer funds should be held to the same standards as public schools, which means they should take the same tests and post the same level of results,” said Beth Lewis, executive director of Save Our Schools Arizona, a public school advocacy organization that strongly opposes the state’s ESA program. “Otherwise, it’s not really about school choice at all, since parents don’t have access to any information about the microschool’s academics. And taxpayers have zero information about their return on investment.”

Jenn Kelly, who runs Education Through Adventure microschool in Scottsdale, agrees that ESA-funded programs should be held accountable for student achievement. But she thinks portfolios full of student work provide a more accurate picture than tests. The question, she said, is who would review the assignments.  

The state education department’s ESA staff “is already overloaded with purchasing and vendor pay requests,” said Kelly, a former special education teacher in district, charter and Catholic schools. “What happens if a child does not show any growth … from year to year? Does the state pull the ESA funding for that child? Every answer raises more questions.”

Unlike Arizona, some states with ESAs or vouchers, like West Virginia and North Carolina, require programs to administer either state tests, or another standardized assessment, and submit the data to the state. 

In West Virginia, Michael Parsons, who runs Vandalia Community School in Charleston, said he’s interested in how students in his school compare with those in other microschools, as well as those in public schools. But he’s most concerned about his students making progress. 

“Most important as a teacher is accountability to my students and their growth, and as an administrator, accountability to my staff,” he said. “If I can keep those two things on par, then accountability to parents, taxpayers, regulators happens by default.”

At Burbrella, Burgess said she could have given the same end-of-grade assessments that students in North Carolina public schools take, allowing for a direct comparison, but she described them as “not kid-friendly” and decided against it. 

One reason parents seek out is because they feel public schools have a narrow focus on testing. 

Bryant remembers how stressed her oldest daughter Ebony would get before state tests in New York City, where they lived before relocating to Burlington.

“She freezes up and does terribly. Compared to her performance in school, it was like night and day,” she said. At Burbrella, assessments don’t create the same level of anxiety. “It’s more like, ‘We’re going to assess where you are, and then we’re gonna work from there.’ ”   

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Stand Together Trust and the Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation provide financial support to Vela and to �鶹��Ʒ. 

They signed a lease with the local historical society for the and checked with the city to ensure that a tiny alternative school could occupy the building, erected in 1905 by a son of the city’s founder. They opened in February 2021 and moved in with just four students.

A month later, city officials broke the bad news: The Bryan House was actually zoned as a “learning center,” an informal space for tutoring and exhibitions — not a school. It had a sprinkler system, fire alarms and a fire escape. But if they were to stay, the historical society would have to install massive metal fire doors, among other changes. 

When the historical society balked, the couple persuaded it to let them back out of their lease. The change forced them to go virtual for the rest of the school year as they searched for a new space.

“That nearly broke us,” Slaven said.

But new regulations, approved last year by state lawmakers, could save future microschools from similar headaches. The regulations say private schools can occupy existing spaces from museums to movie theaters without seeking local government approval. 

Making more locations accessible to microschools could help the movement grow nationally, just as education saving account laws in places like Florida and elsewhere have opened them up for consideration by families who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

The new Florida regulations, Slaven said, “are a really big deal for the ecosystem.” If they’d been in place two years earlier, he and his students could have stayed at Bryan House. 

Florida was already a leader in the burgeoning microschool movement — the group counts more than 250 programs in its current directory. But the new regulations, first reported by , could be groundbreaking, advocates say, tempting lawmakers elsewhere to do the same. passed the first law limiting state regulation of “learning pods” in 2021 and similar changes have since taken place in .

“The first generation, so many of these were in church basements or people’s homes,” said Michael McShane, director of national research at , a policy organization. If the sector is to grow, he said, “they need to be able to operate in more readily available spaces.”

McShane and a colleague that between 1.1 and 2.1 million school-aged children nationwide, or 2% to 4%, used microschools as their main provider.

But microschools often face maddening regulatory challenges. McShane recalled hearing from an educator converting a commercial space into a microschool who installed half-inch drywall. Regulators said he had to rip it out and install the three-quarter-inch variety. In another instance, a microschool seeking to set up shop at an old mini-golf course had to not just decommission a play windmill but raze it.

Nathan Hoffman, senior legislative director for the , a policy group founded by former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the changes build on Florida’s 2023 that “really blew the doors open on what’s possible” in different forms of schooling. He noted that upwards of 400,000 to 450,000 Florida students are now receiving taxpayer-supported scholarships to attend private schools, including microschools. “It’s created, I think, a whole new way that parents are interacting with K-12 education that we’re only just now getting to understand.”

But policymakers are also realizing that if microschools are to thrive, they can’t be regulated the same as larger schools, Hoffman said. “They’re only serving 30, 40, maybe 50 families. They’re not serving hundreds of families. The size of the buildings that are necessary, the land that’s necessary, is not going to be the same.”

In that respect, microschools are reminiscent of a similar movement that began more than 30 years earlier.

Don Soifer, CEO of the , said the new microschooling founders remind him of “those life-changing educators that we had in the beginning of the charter school movement — it’s fun to be around them.”

A longtime school choice advocate, Soifer opened his own microschool near Las Vegas during the Covid pandemic. In the process, he began consulting with other operators and soon realized they needed help navigating the technical, legal and pedagogical obstacles they faced. He now trains school leaders and offers them access to digital learning and student management tools from providers that typically deal only with school districts. 

Families taking on all the risk

Not everyone welcomes the new changes — or the explosive growth of the sector. 

The Florida League of Cities the legislation, saying it would prevent cities and counties from having a say in school rezoning.

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and author of the The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, noted that Florida, like other states, requires students to be de-enrolled in public school to be eligible for education savings accounts, which give families state funds for tuition or homeschooling expenses. These accounts have helped microschools flourish, since they offer families “one more place to spend that money.”

To that end, Cowen called microschools “the food trucks of the new education industry.” 

As with food trucks, he said, these new models may allow for schools to quickly open and offer students new options. But even if they’re appealing, he said, safety monitoring “is probably poorer.” The hours are sporadic, and even in the best case, he said, it “could pick up and leave tomorrow — or close altogether because the margins didn’t work for the business model.”

That risk-reward equation, he said, “is fine when you’re shopping for a taco. Not when you’re shopping for a school that’s intended to give your kid a strong start in life.” Families also take on virtually all of the financial risks associated with microschools, he said, especially those backed by .

Hoffman, the Florida legislative director, said the food truck analogy is “extremely outdated,” invoking fears similar to those of early homeschooling as serving isolated rural, off-the-grid families. “That’s just not the case anymore,” he said. “The fastest growing segment of the homeschool population are ” in urban areas.

Likewise, he said, microschools “are fine options for families that want to use them.”

Soifer said microschooling will likely never be competitive with options like charter schools and private-school vouchers, noting that ESAs have typically been designed to help make Catholic schools more affordable and that many states saying programs must hold accreditation to participate. He pointed out that many microschools closed in Washington, D.C., because parents couldn’t take advantage of the city’s longtime . It requires schools to file, among other things, two years of audited financial statements. 

“Broadly speaking, the frameworks need to modernize,” he said. The changes in Florida are “one important lever that lets us do that.”

Hoffman, the Florida policy advisor, added that state regulations prevent “fly-by-night” operators who can “come in and come in on Tuesday and say, ‘I want to serve students,’ and by Wednesday you’re serving students.”

On occasion, however, microschool parents have had bad experiences, as with a West Virginia operation that one parent called “a glorified babysitter.”

‘Mystical alignment of the universe’

Not far from Fort Lauderdale, in Coral Springs, Fla., Frank Farro and his wife Natalie in 2020 were looking for a place to start their own microschool. Like the Slavens, they wanted to bring an Acton Academy network school to their neighborhood. And like the Slavens, they struggled to find a building. “Location has been the hardest thing for us,” Frank Farro said. “Not even close.” 

The couple found a suitable space in a commercial building, but ended up getting kicked out when another school reclaimed it after the pandemic. Looser regulations would open more spaces for consideration, he said.

Like many others, the Farros’ school has grown quickly, from just six students in 2020 to 32 this fall. They’re currently renting about 5,000 square feet from a church, but Farro anticipates they’ll reach capacity in about six months, with a planned enrollment of around 60 students.

“Then we’ll be looking for our forever campus,” he said. “And that’s when things will get even more interesting.”

In 2020, he recalled, they looked at a five-acre tree farm in nearby Coconut Creek. It had a few houses that could serve as classrooms and seemed perfect. But at a selling price of $1.5 million, it didn’t seem practical for just six students.

Farro noticed recently that the property is back on the market this summer — for a cool $4 million.

Finding the right space, with playgrounds and outdoor spaces, he said, is “near impossible,” but he hopes the new regulations open up other options. As it is, “you have to find some mystical alignment of the universe in order to land a place that is zoned for a school — or you have to be massive, with a massive amount of capital, to go find another place.”

The vision was a school focused on a classical educational philosophy, embracing the traditional liberal arts, within a Catholic religious worldview that would be both joyful and affordable.

What began as a tiny school with only 10 students now enrolls more than 150 high schoolers. That flagship school is one of more than 70 independently operated high schools within the fast-growing , educating more than 2,000 students.

Wildflower Montessori Microschools

Joy and access were two of the guiding principles that spurred Veronica Vital into teaching. Growing up in Mexico, Vital had seen teachers hit their students in class and employ other harsh practices. She decided early on that she wanted to be a teacher who would respect and honor children with kindness. After college, Vital moved to the United States and began working as a teaching assistant in a Montessori preschool where she fell in love with the Montessori philosophy and its child-centered approach to education. She became certified in Montessori education, teaching in both private and public charter Montessori schools in Minneapolis, but she kept feeling the tug toward education entrepreneurship.

“I always wanted to have my own school,” Vital told me. She got that opportunity in 2018 when she launched , a bilingual preschool and elementary public charter school in South Minneapolis. Cosmos is part of the national  microschool network that began in 2014 to support smaller, community-embedded, more accessible Montessori schools. Wildflower helps teacher-entrepreneurs like Vital who want to launch their own schools. The network now has more than 60 microschools across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Most are private schools, but Wildflower public charter schools operate in Colorado, Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C. Today, Vital is leading another Wildflower microschool, , also in South Minneapolis.

Skola Microschool

Just outside of the city, in Roseville, another longtime educator, Kristin Fink, launched  in 2022. A classroom teacher in a conventional private school for 16 years, Fink was growing increasingly frustrated by the standardization and rigidity of traditional schooling. When Covid hit in the spring of 2020 and her school went remote, Fink, like so many parents across the U.S., created an informal “pandemic pod” for her two young children and a couple of neighbors.

“That sparked everything I knew to be true,” said Fink about the learning pod. “Kids want to learn, and if you fuel their fire, they’ll go much further than you could ever take them.” When she returned to in-person teaching in the fall of 2021, Fink was hopeful that there could be meaningful changes in how schooling was done. She was disappointed.

“Everyone was just trying to get back to the way it was,” said Fink, understanding the eagerness for a return to normalcy. “But I thought that this was our chance to build something new. I felt so philosophically alone in my workplace. Why would anyone ever want to go back to the way it was?”

The next fall, Fink and her longtime colleague Ginger Montezon, opened Skola as a faith-based K-8 microschool. All students are recognized homeschoolers who attend the program up to five days a week at an annual cost of $6,250. With about 25 mixed-aged learners, Skola is as big as Fink wants it to get. “I want to be kid-facing not admin-facing,” said Fink, explaining that if she grew bigger or scaled to new locations she may lose the time to teach, which is her driving passion.

Retaining the intentionally small, individualized atmosphere of Skola is a key priority, but Fink is supporting the growth of more schools like hers in other ways. “We’ve hosted 12 current educators in our space and four of them have launched or are planning to launch their own microschools,” she said, adding that she will be welcoming five public school teachers from southern Minnesota later this month who are also interested in opening their own school.

Homeschooling Collaboratives

Fink’s full-time microschool for homeschoolers is representative of many of today’s emerging educational models. Parents and teachers alike crave more educational autonomy and flexibility and are seeking and starting alternatives to conventional schooling.

This is particularly true for parents of children with special learning needs. In Stillwater, Amy Marotz launched a full-time homeschooling collaborative, , to serve the distinct needs of gifted and neurodiverse learners. After earning an education degree and teaching at a Minneapolis charter school early in her career, Marotz began homeschooling her own children and saw a need for a dedicated program to address neurodiversity within a holistic, nurturing environment. She now runs the program from her home with about a dozen learners and, like Fink, is helping other aspiring founders to create their own microschools, homeschooling collaboratives, and similar learning models.

Veteran homeschooling parents have known for years how homeschooling and its various iterations can support customized, creative education. Some of them, such as Rebecca Hope, are helping a new generation of parents navigate alternative education options. After homeschooling her five children through high school, Hope launched  in 2020 as a twice-weekly, faith-based homeschooling program offering a la carte classes to local middle school and high school homeschooled students. Located in Roseville, Hope’s program now serves more than 200 homeschoolers and continues to grow.

This small sampling of innovative schools and spaces in and around the Twin Cities demonstrates the variety and breadth of emerging learning models I am seeing across the U.S. From faith-based programs to secular options, Montessori models to classical, home-based and storefront, school, homeschool or something in between—entrepreneurial parents and teachers are creating a medley of more personalized, low-cost learning options for families.

As Awakening Spirit’s Marotz told me: “When I started in 2017, no one had heard of a microschool. Now, there are so many options. That is what we need.”

In a decision last week, the Hope Scholarship Board also directed state Treasurer Riley Moore’s office, which runs the program, to turn their findings over to the state auditor for possible criminal charges. 

�鶹��Ʒ first reported in March that Hive Learning Academy, an education startup operating out of a rented house, was part of a state investigation into scholarship violations. One parent said the school abruptly stopped serving his son’s age group after only three days, made no mention of a refund and didn’t answer questions. Another said there were no set meal times and students just grabbed their lunches from the refrigerator.

Parents alerted officials to the problems, but Kaela Zimmerman, the homeschool parent who opened the program, said the state bears some responsibility.

“I feel like they are trying to make an example out of us to set a precedent even though the system truly failed us last year,” she told �鶹��Ʒ. She added that she had no plans to reopen anyway. “It was a learning process for everyone. I wish they were willing to admit that and understand that we all did the best we could with the resources we had at the time.”

While the Martinsburg-based school ultimately served just eight students, the controversy raised larger questions nationwide about the expertise of those who start schools with public funds. Critics of such programs, known as education savings accounts, say there is and that students suffer when programs abruptly close. But school choice supporters used the school’s failure to argue that market-based approaches like those in West Virginia work.��

“This is the flashpoint for the conversation about what is accountability with education savings accounts,” said Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a nonprofit think tank. He on the topic at a conference in April and said drawing attention to problems and solutions will make programs better. 

Don Soifer, who leads the National Microschooling Center, an advocacy group, noted that West Virginia lawmakers voted last year to allow families to spend at microschools, but didn’t follow up with clear guidance on how the unconventional programs could participate.

“West Virginia simply had not anticipated a microschooling movement, and government was slow to respond,” he said. While the requirements on school founders are minimal — they must subject staff to criminal background checks and notify districts when students enroll — Soifer said the level of awareness in the state about the small programs has grown. “Things seem a whole lot better now. But the start was tricky.”

‘Everything was returned’

Launching the Hive was a greater risk than Zimmerman anticipated. She and a business partner opened the program last August and, lacking sufficient startup funds, dipped into their own money for furniture and supplies. Parents quickly spotted signs of trouble. The school’s schedule was inconsistent as operators worked other jobs to pay bills. Parents who visited the schools saw little evidence of academic work.

Ultimately, Zimmerman repaid the state over $15,000 and said she doesn’t understand why officials say she could face criminal charges. 

“Everything was returned that needed to be returned,” she said. “No one from the Hope board has reached out to me a single time since they received our refunds.”

Jared Hunt, spokesman for the treasurer’s office, said the board sent Zimmerman notice of the official action and information on how to appeal. But he declined to answer additional questions due to the ongoing investigation. 

To observers like Horn, the episode prompts additional questions for both parents and entrepreneurs seeking to open microschools.

“We’re in an environment where you’re seeing so many different microschools pop up with so many educators of different stripes starting them,” he said. “What’s the role of the state? What’s the role of parents? What’s the role of marketplaces in which students and families are making choices?”

Like so many of the microschool founders I visit across the U.S. and interview on my semiweekly LiberatED , Hayes never expected to run a school. She had been a mathematics professor at Montana State University for more than a decade, fully intending to stay in that role until retirement. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” said Hayes. 

Covid was the catalyst. When her children’s schools shut down in the spring of 2020, and her college classes went online, Hayes began hearing from parents who wanted tutoring services. She also wanted to help her own three children stay on track academically, and find a way for them to have small, safe social interactions. 

In fall 2020, Hayes leased a gym downtown with large garage doors that opened wide, providing for maximum ventilation. She spaced children six feet apart, enabling them to meet in person while working through their remote public school curriculum. In addition, Hayes offered all kinds of enrichment activities, focused on project-based learning and frequent outside expeditions. 

Parents and learners loved it. So did Hayes, who connected with some experienced educators who were also passionate about outdoor, experiential learning mixed with core academics. “Covid offered a moment to reflect on what was important to me and how I spent my days,” said Hayes, who realized that the abundant time outside in nature working on meaningful educational projects was just as important for her as an educator as it was for the children in her program—including her own kids. 

In early 2021, several parents approached Hayes, saying that if she created a full-time school, they would pull their kids out of public school and send them there. Hayes was in. She resigned from the university and established Peak Academy as a nonprofit private school. 

“Teaching at the university was a great experience, but my world opened up when I started this school,” Hayes told me when I visited Peak Academy earlier this week as part of my trip to survey the growth of Montana microschools, or small schools and spaces that are typically less expensive and more individualized than traditional private schools. Located in a pastel green-painted home on a quiet residential corner just a couple of blocks from Bozeman’s quaint downtown, Peak Academy currently serves 16 middle school students who spend their days learning academics, doing projects, and enjoying frequent field study with two full-time teachers, in addition to Hayes and other part-time instructors from the community.

For high school, many of Peak’s students attend the nearby , one of the area’s first schools to focus on project-based, outside experiential learning along with high-quality academic instruction. It launched in 2017 and has become an inspiration for new Bozeman-area microschool founders who share a similar educational vision. 

In the nearby town of Belgrade, Lindsey Vose also plans to recommend the Bozeman Field School as a high school option for her microschool students. Vose worked as a California public school teacher for eight years before leaving that job in 2018 to be an instructor for a secular hybrid homeschool program. It was her first exposure to homeschooling and alternative education, as well as the hybrid homeschool model in which homeschooled children attend a full-day, drop-off program several days a week for academics and enrichment while working through the program’s curriculum at home with their families on the remaining days. 

She pulled her kindergartener out of public elementary school and enrolled her in the hybrid homeschool as well, appreciating its smaller, more personalized learning model. Her preschooler also came along. 

During Covid, the Vose family moved to Montana seeking a different, more farm-based lifestyle. Her husband worked remotely for his California-based engineering firm, and Vose began to search for hybrid homeschool programs. “When we came here, I knew we weren’t going to go to public school, and there were no outdoor, nature-based, academic-focused, secular hybrid homeschools here. It didn’t exist, so I had to do it,” said Vose, who began running her program, , out of her garage in 2022 with four children, including her two children.

Today, Wild Wonders is located on a leased, five-acre farmstead property near Vose’s home. It has 22 K-6 students who attend the mixed-age, drop-off program Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Vose currently employs two full-time teachers, but with 35 students registered for this fall, and a future middle school expansion in the works, she will be hiring additional staff. Vose says the local demand for her program has been enormous. 

“I get inquiries every day. I can’t keep up with the growth,” she said, adding that she plans to retain the “micro” aspect of her microschool. “Staying small is really important to me. I value the small classes and the strong sense of community here. Everybody knows each other. I’m not willing to give that up,” she said. 

Another former public school teacher, Rusty Bowers, was also attracted to the microschooling model and its focus on individualized learning. A high school math teacher and principal in Montana public schools for over 10 years, Bowers launched , a K-8 Acton Academy affiliate, in fall 2023. Acton Academy is a fast-growing microschool network focused on learner-driven education. Founded in 2009, the Acton network now includes over 300 independently-operated schools, serving thousands of learners. “I started an Acton Academy because I left the public education sector as a discouraged educator. After being out, I kept asking myself what the best education environment would look like if I could truly inspire each student to become the best they could be. In that search, I found Acton and fell in love with their model and high standards of excellence,” said Bowers, whose two children, ages 10 and 5, attend his school.

East of Bozeman, Emily Post has a similar commitment to high standards and student-empowered learning. She launched as a recognized K-8 private school in fall 2020 in a storefront location in downtown Livingston. It currently enrolls about 20 students, including Post’s two children. Access is a key priority for Post, who told me that the school’s $10,000 annual tuition is financially out-of-reach for many local families. She used part of the grant she received from , an education philanthropic nonprofit and entrepreneur network, to fund scholarships for students, and is also a partner with ACE Scholarships that offers partial scholarships for low-income students to attend a private school of their choice.

These scholarships help but they are not enough to meet the overall demand she sees from local parents who want new and different educational options. Last year, Post applied to open a tuition-free public charter school, Yellowstone Experiential School, under Montana’s new charter school legislation. Of 26 applicants, she was the only one who wasn’t a public school district and the only one who was because she didn’t receive local school district permission before applying to the state to be a provider, as the charter law requires. “I tried to get local approval first but I could never get on the local school board agenda,” said Post, frustrated by the bureaucratic barriers. 

She plans to try again, but is also hoping that Montana expands its new education savings account (ESA) program to include more students. Currently, this limited school choice program applies only to special needs students in the state. Since 2021, 11 states have passed universal or near-universal education choice policies that enable all or most K-12 students to access a portion of state-allocated education funding to use on a variety of approved learning options, including innovative schools like Educatio.   

“It absolutely makes sense for funding to follow students,” said Post. 

“I didn’t want her to get lost,” Jenny said.

But private options fell short. A Montessori school she attended for kindergarten let her sleep all day. When she reached sixth grade, the Christian school she went to stopped providing extra help with schoolwork. The principal, Jenny said, explained that extra services weren’t important because “99% of our kids go [on to] higher education.”

That’s when the Balbaughs tried Streams of Hope Christian School, a smaller, unconventional program based in an Anglican church that lets students move at their own pace. Now in eighth grade, Ali can use a calculator for math problems and gets help with writing assignments.

“Every single child’s plan is individualized,” Jenny said, “and they don’t move on until they have mastered whatever they’re working on.”

Families like the Balbaughs, who have children with autism, ADHD and dyslexia, are seeking out small programs like Streams of Hope — part of a growing education sector known as microschools. Almost two-thirds of operators say their programs draw students considered neurodivergent, according to the latest snapshot of the movement from the National Microschooling Center, an advocacy organization. The survey of 400 microschool founders in 41 states also shows that children with other disabilities represent one of the next largest populations served, with 53% of school operators reporting that these students are enrolled in their schools. 

Like all private schools, however, microschools don’t have to accept students with disabilities or provide the same services as public schools, putting some parents who might otherwise take advantage of school choice in a tough spot.

The report, released Monday and provided exclusively to �鶹��Ʒ, is the center’s second since it launched in 2022. It shows that half of operators said they opened their programs to help students who are “systemically underserved.” The results also point to a sharp increase in microschools receiving public funds for tuition: A third of microschools now accept education savings account funds, according to the survey, up from 18% in . 

To Don Soifer, executive director of the Las Vegas-based center, the results show that the tight-knit settings microschools offer provide a better fit for some students. Educators launching microschools, he said, demonstrate a “deeper knowledge” of such needs and are responding to them in “deliberate, well-informed ways.”

‘Didn’t have the resources’

Jill Haskins, the executive director of Streams of Hope and a former teacher in the Fort Wayne public schools, said her program is flexible enough to provide some of the accommodations students couldn’t get in public schools. She recently accepted a student whose individualized education program required him to get one-on-one instruction in math, written lecture notes and help transitioning between classes — services his public school didn’t provide. 

“It wasn’t through any fault of the teachers. They didn’t have the resources,” she said. With tighter student-teacher ratios, she added, meeting students’ needs becomes easier. “A lot of what we do is just kind of natural.”

Other school leaders say needs or behaviors that might have been more pronounced in public school diminish in smaller settings. Kenisha Skaggs, who launched Soar Academy in Augusta, Georgia, in 2011, has accepted students who were suspended multiple times for incidents such as throwing a chair in class.

“When you change that environment, that stuff goes away,” said Skaggs, who ran a tutoring program out of her attic before launching the school. “Nine times out of 10, we do not have those behavior issues.” 

The national center’s data provides a view of the sector from the perspective of operators and potential school founders. But more complete data can be hard to come by as most states generally don’t count them as a separate type of school. They might be grouped with traditional private schools or with families that homeschool. Soifer estimates that there are anywhere from 95,000 to 125,000 microschools nationally. He described the sector as “very much a growing and evolving movement,” and one that is attracting a more diverse mix of families and educators.��

The median number of students in each microschool is 16, up from 12 when Soifer began tracking the movement. Forty percent of microschools operate in commercial spaces, a quarter in churches and 20% in private homes. 

According to the operators surveyed, about a third of families using microschools earn below the average income in their area. Fifteen percent of students they serve are in foster care, and 21% have unstable housing situations or don’t have enough to eat.

The largest segment of students attending microschools, 40%, attended public schools before they made the switch. A third were homeschooled, and only 4% previously attended charter schools, according to the report.

But there’s been little change in the demographics of microschool founders. About 65% are white, and almost three-fourths are current or former educators. 

Some teachers — 41% according to the survey — drew their inspiration to start a school from their own children’s struggles to learn. That’s why Haskins, who homeschooled her three children, enrolled her son in the microschool she now runs. When he turned 7, she realized he wasn’t learning to read at the same pace as her two older children. As a teacher, she was stumped.��

“I’ve taught in public school. I know how to teach reading, but I wasn’t making progress with him,” she said. A doctor diagnosed him as “profoundly” dyslexic. “He’s doing really well, but I think he would drown in a public school.”

Public funds for tuition

While microschools are private, some parents of children who attend them are able to for tuition through state scholarship programs and education savings accounts.

Some of those programs are only available to students with disabilities, like , which provides an average of about $6,600 toward tuition. Mary Gorlich, whose daughter Cora has learning disabilities and severe hearing loss, uses the scholarship to attend Soar Academy. 

“She was just so lost in her previous school. She’s not a problem and doesn’t make any noise, but they ignored her,” Gorlich said about the Catholic school Cora attended. “I used to pick her up crying every day … because of just how miserable she was. Now I pick her up smiling and she tells me about the math she understood.”

Indiana’s ESA program is also restricted to students with disabilities. Currently, two Streams of Hope students, including Ali, use the program to pay tuition. Another five were recently evaluated for special education services, which would qualify them for the ESA. 

But even though some microschools specialize in serving students with disabilities, as private schools they have to do so. Critics of ESAs and other voucher-type programs stress that students’ rights under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act aren’t guaranteed once they leave the public schools. 

A on Georgia’s scholarship program, for example, states: “If you choose to remove your child from the public school — even if the state is providing some funds for the private school — then you are refusing parental consent to services under IDEA.”

Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, an organization that works to protect the rights of students with disabilities, noted that even if microschools provide some services, parents might not have any recourse if there’s a conflict. In most cases, she said, there is no right to due process.

“This still leaves families unable to push back if they disagree with the IEP or it is not followed,” she said. 

That’s why many West Virginia families opt to stay in the public schools even though the state has the Hope Scholarship, a universal ESA program, said Jamie Buckland, who leads West Virginia Families United for Education. She advises both families and providers on school choice.

She has no doubt that some children with dyslexia and sensory needs could benefit from attending a microschool. But she said there are “so many families whose kids’ accommodations prevent them from choosing private options.”

Southeast Florida has a thriving microschool community that includes , led by Susan Safra, who previously taught in a large Broward County high school. Now she teaches about 50 students through field trips, farm work and surfing lessons. But she said her program is not equipped to serve students with behavior issues, major learning disabilities or “any kind of impulsivity.”

“It’s not because we don’t want them. Our teachers are not trained,” she said. 

Skaggs, with Soar Academy, said she can only accept a few students who need one-on-one support throughout the day. But there’s still strong demand for her program. With an enrollment of 100, Soar is larger than most microschools; another 200 students are on a waiting list. 

With Republican-led states continuing to advance ESA legislation, some leaders in the microschool community are also strong proponents for expanding eligibility to all families. 

In Indiana, Haskins hopes lawmakers are successful next year. If that happens, she said she’s going to “desperately push” families to apply for it.

“Then we can raise tuition to become sustainable,” she said. Tuition ranges from $2,500 to $5,000 annually, with additional fees for curriculum and “à la carte” offerings like a Lego club, Pickleball and Bible classes. The rates are as much as she can charge “without completely breaking our families.”

And in Georgia, Soar students and staff lobbied for passage of the state’s , which will provide students in the lowest-performing 25% of public schools with $6,500 to attend private schools. 

“We’re super excited about bridging that gap for students that just can’t afford to attend a private school but don’t qualify [for the special needs scholarship],” Skaggs said.

Gorlich’s daughter, now a sophomore, made the trip to Atlanta to of the bill. 

Attending Soar has given Cora a “mad confidence boost,” she said. “This is my extremely miserable, won’t-talk-to-anybody, very closed-off kid who now testifies in front of the state Senate for educational rights.”

Because the school did not fulfill its promises, parents moved their children to other schools. And because West Virginia has an education savings account program that lets families use state funds for tuition and other education expenses, many asked for — and got — their money back. The school is now closed, and the state has launched an investigation.

This is real accountability with real consequences, and it is quite different from the classic notions of school accountability from the last 40 years. 

Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, accountability has meant standardized testing with little or no regard for the individual students’ needs. But testing is not accountability. As an example, look at Baltimore City Public Schools, where did not produce a single student proficient in math last year. Did Baltimore officials close the schools that yielded such terrible results and give parents their per-pupil funding so they could send their children to other schools? No. Instead, kids are stuck attending the same schools, and the district intends to spend $1.5 million on math tutoring — less than 1% of its $1.7 billion budget.

The lack of accountability doesn’t end there. Over three years, the Maryland Office of the Inspector General for Education found, the district for rides that were never provided. Additionally, the inspector general discovered a case of a Baltimore city schools employee engaging in double-dipping — working full time for both the school system and for the city, resulting in an extra $104,354 in pay. In both cases, taxpayers were burdened with covering the resulting losses. And these types of abuses are not unique to Baltimore schools.

But what options do parents have to send a signal to Baltimore City Public Schools? Can they choose another option? Maryland law is not clear, according to , because there is no guarantee that students may enroll in public schools other than the one they are assigned to based on where they live, and Maryland’s only school choice program is extremely limited. 

Contrast that with what happened in West Virginia. When The Hive failed to meet expectations and parents became rightly frustrated, they were not left stranded, like those in Baltimore or many other places where education funding isn’t flexible. Instead, parents were refunded the tuition fees paid through the state’s Hope Scholarship program and were able to access other providers.

What happened in the case of The Hive Learning Academy demonstrates principles of transparency, responsiveness and consequence that should be universal.

Imagine if every education provider — public, private or alternative — were held to the same standard of accountability. Students would benefit from a system where their needs were prioritized, where failure to deliver would result in swift action and where parents would have the freedom to choose the best possible education for their children. 

Accountability is what should happen to a school when it refuses to deliver for its students. The Hive Learning Academy closed. And all those Baltimore schools are still open. Which were more accountable?  Disclosure: yes. every kid. is a grantee of the Stand Together network. Stand Together Trust provides financial support to �鶹��Ʒ.