When Science Class Is in a Former Macy’s
Charter schools are popping up in struggling malls as landlords look for alternative tenants and communities seek to increase educational opportunities.
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Parents
Unfulfilled Promise The Forty-Year Shift from Print to Digital and Why It Failed to Transform Learning
The shift from print to digital is the most significant change in how human beings learn since the printing press. It marked a shift from information scarcity to abundance, a shift from searching to sorting. It changed what, how, and where people learn, and not always for the better. Social media feeds displaced newspapers, YouTube
Why Doesn’t Every Office Building Have A Microschool?
More businesspeople… as well as employers, are recognizing the value of small, personalized schools and similar learning spaces and are exploring ways to bring microschools into their office buildings.
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America’s education system is failing–but a growing school choice movement believes it has the solution
American students are in trouble. About a third of students in the youngest grades are behind on reading. Only 36% of fourth graders are proficient at grade-level math. The newest National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP)–the nation’s report card–shows eighth-graders’ history scores are the lowest on record since the assessment began in 1994. And what’s
Education Entrepreneurship Is Flourishing Across The U.S.
A former New York City public school teacher launched a microschool in Brooklyn. A retired U.S. Marine Corps officer created one in Richmond, Virginia. A mother in Detroit, Michigan began supporting a handful of homeschooling families in 2020 and now runs a thriving homeschool resource center serving more than 200 Detroit homeschooled children. A former
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Teachers Want to Innovate. Schools that Don’t Let Them Are Losing Out
At the end of April, I attended a conference in Atlanta featuring a small but heterogenous group of self-described education entrepreneurs. It was the second year of the National Hybrid Schools Conference, which launched in 2022 to connect people involved in less conventional styles of schooling that have exploded in interest since the pandemic. I
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Could microschools fix academic outcomes in Indianapolis for Black students?
I am sick and tired of playing defense regarding our children. I want to be on offense. It is time to be aggressive. As I think about when we were aggressive when educating our children, I think back to the pandemic. The one thing I can take from the pandemic is that it allowed us
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Tiny schools, big money: Microschools are increasingly popular among some families of children with disabilities
After Keelan McCormick was suspended five times from kindergarten in one month, his mother decided she had enough. Keelan was reading graphic novels at age 4 and had an analytical mind gravitating toward STEM. He liked coding on the Mac set up in his bedroom. But in his New Hampshire public school kindergarten classroom, students
60 Years of Research on Small Schools
Smaller learning communities offer greater benefits in every key area of national concern as well as of concern to every parent and school leader: safety, teaching conditions, academic performance, culture of equal opportunity on campus, learning choices and curriculum, and costs of schooling.
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Black Mothers and Microschools
Microschools have been around for many years, but many more people enrolled in them during the pandemic. In this conversation, I chatted with Tiffany Dudley, an educator who helped cofound a microschool to help her son during the pandemic. She’s also the co-leader of the Black Mothers Forum’s Economic Development Team. The Black Mothers Forum
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National Microschooling Center founders illustrate how microschools are changing K-12 education
Many families reconsidered their relationships with K-12 education amid the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, microschools came to the fore. Instead of building large schools accommodating hundreds or thousands of students, microschool leaders plant schools in storefronts, libraries, and empty dance studios. These small schools can range in size, serving anywhere from 5 to 100
Is 2023 the year of the microschool?
With all the surprises sprung on the world over the last few years, it can be both exciting and frightening to imagine what 2023 might hold. Will this be a year defined by amazing breakthroughs for humanity—like cracking the formula for nuclear fusion and clearing a path to abundant clean energy? Or will it be
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