By Kerry McDonald “We are breaking down walls between communities and classrooms,” said Revolution School founder, Gina Moore. In 1967, the Philadelphia Public Schools launched the Parkway Program, widely known as the “school without walls,” that enabled young people to have greater freedom and flexibility over what and where they learned. Various community partnerships … [Read more...] about Why Doesn’t Every Office Building Have A Microschool?
Microschool
10 Education Entrepreneurs Offer Advice To New Founders in 2024
By Kerry McDonald Conversations with leaders of an array of educational models yields some inspiring advice for emerging entrepreneurs eyeing launches in the new year. With parents continuing to seek more personalized education options for their children, and education choice policies expanding in many states to enable funding to follow students, 2024 could be an ideal … [Read more...] about 10 Education Entrepreneurs Offer Advice To New Founders in 2024
If Your Kids Aren’t Happy at School, Find Them Another One
By Kerry McDonald “I hated going to school when I was a kid,” said Elon Musk in a 2015 interview. “It was torture.” When deciding how his own children would be educated, Musk rejected traditional schooling and created his own project-based microschool, Ad Astra, in 2014, on his SpaceX campus. “The kids really love going to school,” said Musk about Ad Astra in that same … [Read more...] about If Your Kids Aren’t Happy at School, Find Them Another One
Former Public School Teachers Find Happiness In Entrepreneurship
By Kerry McDonald I spent much of last week in the greater Kansas City area visiting microschools and learning pods, and talking to founders, ahead of the Heartland Hybrid & Microschools Summit, hosted by Kansas Policy Institute. All of the seven learning environments I visited in Kansas and Missouri were founded within the past three years and all of the founders are … [Read more...] about Former Public School Teachers Find Happiness In Entrepreneurship
A Rural, Waldorf Microschool Gets Shut Down By State Regulators
By Kerry McDonald Ariel Maguire gathered together with other moms in her rural area of the Big Island of Hawaii to create a child-centered educational solution for local families. It was late 2021 and the parents realized that nearly two years of pandemic policies had left their kids behind both academically and socially. There weren’t a lot of child care or … [Read more...] about A Rural, Waldorf Microschool Gets Shut Down By State Regulators
Education Entrepreneurship and Innovation Across the US: A Case Study
By Kerry McDonald The rise of bottom-up education models Across the US, everyday education entrepreneurs are reimagining K-12 education in simple but profound ways. Some of these entrepreneurs are parents trying to solve an educational problem for their own families who decide to bring others along with them. Others are teachers who became fed up with one-size-fits-all … [Read more...] about Education Entrepreneurship and Innovation Across the US: A Case Study
New Research Reveals The Breadth And Impact Of The Microschooling Movement
By Kerry McDonald Nestled at the end of a residential cul-de-sac in Hopewell, Virginia is Dream Tech Academy, a microschool founded by former public school teacher, Danette Buckley. Originally from Jamaica, Buckley moved to the U.S. as an adolescent and gravitated toward a career in education, with a passion for entrepreneurship. “This has been a dream for so long,” … [Read more...] about New Research Reveals The Breadth And Impact Of The Microschooling Movement
Two “Mompreneurs” Created a Forest School That Reaches Thousands
By Kerry McDonald It was a cool, muddy morning in March when I pulled into the empty parking lot of a sprawling forest and nature preserve about 40 miles outside of Fort Worth, Texas. Soon, cars began arriving, filled with exuberant children of all ages, and their parents, who were ready to spend a few hours together in the woods. Donned in rain boots and parkas, these … [Read more...] about Two “Mompreneurs” Created a Forest School That Reaches Thousands
Microschools Are Proving to Be a Winning Option in Las Vegas
By Kerry McDonald Tears filled Maria Castaneda’s eyes as she recalled moving her son from a Las Vegas charter school to a microschool in 2020. She explained that in the charter school, her 7th grader was excelling academically but was growing increasingly withdrawn and angry. “I pulled him out because in that situation it brought out the worst of him, not the best of him,” … [Read more...] about Microschools Are Proving to Be a Winning Option in Las Vegas
The (Further) Case for the Free Market in Education
By Kerry McDonald In 1964, Leonard Read wrote a powerful essay celebrating the free market in education. Read, who founded FEE nearly two decades prior to promote individual and economic freedom, recognized the ways in which government control of the K-12 education sector constrained choice and prevented diversity and abundance of learning options. In “The Case for the … [Read more...] about The (Further) Case for the Free Market in Education
5 Surprising Facts About Microschooling
By Kerry McDonald One of the most popular and fastest-growing educational trends today is microschooling. Microschools are intentionally small, mixed-age, K-12 learning communities with personalized curriculum approaches that are sprouting rapidly across the U.S. They harken back to the one-room schoolhouses of yesteryear and were gaining traction even before the education … [Read more...] about 5 Surprising Facts About Microschooling
How Microschool Networks Are Activating Education Entrepreneurs
By Kerry McDonald When Katelyn Shore opened the first Wildflower Montessori microschool in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2014, she hoped it would be the start of something big. The vision, introduced by Sep Kamvar at the MIT Media Lab, was to create an open-source network of intentionally small, storefront, neighborhood Montessori microschools that would offer the tools and … [Read more...] about How Microschool Networks Are Activating Education Entrepreneurs