The National Microschooling Center has released its latest nationwide analysis of the sector, which it estimates accounts for roughly 2 percent of all K-12 education in the U.S.
The full report is worth read, but here are five charts that show how these small learning environments break conventional assumptions about schooling.
- Microschooling is often an extension of parenting.
Nearly half of microschool founders are, or were, educating their own children. This is a different profile of motivations than drive conventional classroom educators. The report also shows more than a quarter of founders don’t draw a salary, and among those who do, the average pay is around $50,000. - They attract job-switchers and classroom refugees.
More than a third of microschool educators are career switchers. But the majority are classroom teachers looking for new ways to apply their craft. - They’re small.
Of course, microschools are small by definition. But the typical scale, of about 20 and 30 students, breaks many assumptions about public education. If they serve multiple grade levels (as is often the case), the typical microschool would be too small to publicly report test scores under a conventional school accountability system. The small scale also means founders typically, though not always, don’t manage other educators in their roles. They can focus on teaching. - Microschools challenge conventional sector boundaries.
Most microschools cater to homeschoolers. Others are small private schools. Some place themselves in both categories. Some are linked to charter schools. Two states, Georgia and West Virginia, define microschools in statute. But microschools, by their nature, tend to blur definitional boundaries. - Families often pay tuition, and often do so without public subsidies.
Microschooling is a 50-state phenomenon. It often appeals to the middle class: families who can afford modest tuition but might find a tonier private school out of reach. And while over a third of microschools are fueled by publicly funded scholarship programs, they’re also growing in states that don’t fund scholarships.
Missed opportunities
To many people working in the current education system, policies that allow parents to direct public education funding look like a threat. As a result, they miss opportunities.
Just hours after the U.S. House passed a budget bill setting aside $5 billion for the nation’s first-ever 50-state school choice scholarship program, the national superintendents’ association hosted a webinar decrying it.
Denise Forte of the Education Trust called the Educational Choice for Children Act a “direct attack” on public schools, and “nothing short of theft” of precious funding at a time when schools needed to be “doubling down” on support for students.
Similarly, Maria Clark, a Kentucky parent involved with her local public school foundation, warned of the “domino effect” of woes that would betide public schools if the measure became law.
Yes, the rhetoric was overheated. But it also blew right past a crucial detail: Every penny of the $5 billion could be used to help public school students.
ECCA would offer tax credits for donations to nonprofit scholarship funds. Scholarships could pay for tuition, tutoring, curriculum, special education therapies, or other expenses “in connection with enrollment or attendance at, or for students enrolled at or attending, an elementary or secondary public, private, or religious school.”
An enterprising public school foundation like Clark’s could raise money to fund local tutoring scholarships and provide special education services to public school students across Kentucky. They’d have to convince donors it was a good idea, and set up a mechanism for parents to choose the tutors and service providers who met their child’s needs.
ECCA, in other words, could unlock funding for the very “doubling down” Forte and other advocates are calling for.
In Brief
No religious charter schools, for now, as a much-discussed Supreme Court case ends with a 4-4 deadlock.
In yet another failed bid to deliver education justice through the courts, a federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit going after the creators of curricula that defied the science of reading.
Four-day school weeks are popular with school system leaders but harmful to student learning. Some parents are pushing back.
Embedding mental health support in school classrooms tends to backfire.
There are two types of education consultants: Those driving change, and those creating short-lived change-y vibes.
Parent Corner
A harrowing look at the foster care system — and the shocking number of children for whom it serves as a pipeline to prison — throws a spotlight on the love and stability that families provide, and that all children need to flourish.
Money quote: “This is not how human brains work, and this is not how human attachment works, and it is really key to why foster care has such poor outcomes — because it severs attachment.”
