“It took the joy out of teaching and learning.”

McClymont became a stay-at-home mom and planned to homeschool her daughter, but she missed the classroom. In the fall of 2023, she began leading a learning pod with three children in her neighborhood. That was when she heard about microschools, or the intentionally small, low cost, often mixed-age learning communities that have gained widespread popularity in recent years. She was immediately attracted to microschooling’s focus on flexibility and personalized learning, and knew for certain that she wanted to launch her own microschool. But where should she begin? 

Most microschool founders are teachers like McClymont who previously worked in conventional schools. According to a by the National Microschooling Center, more than 70 percent of today’s microschool operators are current or former licensed educators. These founders have deep knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy and a passion for teaching and learning, but most of them have never run a small business. 

They are looking for ways to bridge the gap between being an educator and an entrepreneur, and new microschool accelerator programs are helping them to do just that.

“Put me in a classroom anywhere and I can teach all day. I got that. I was looking for all those business tips and tricks,” said Tonya Kipe, founder of in Polk City, Florida. A public elementary school teacher for more than a decade, Kipe grew her microschool from one student in January 2024 to 26 students today, including those with special learning needs. Participating in , a Florida-based nonprofit microschool accelerator, was a key part of Kipe Academy’s growth. 

Created by former public school teacher Iman Alleyne in 2022, Launch Your Kind supports the development of new microschools — especially those that celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and joyful learning. 

After launching her own microschool, , in 2016, Alleyne wished she had an affordable, model-agnostic school accelerator program available to her to provide the business skills, entrepreneurial insights, and community support that she lacked. She wanted to streamline the startup process for new founders, enabling them to avoid common pitfalls and build sustainable small businesses. “I teach them to take care of their teacher hat, but their business owner hat needs to come on too,” she said. 

The 10-week program provides online, cohort-style coaching for about a dozen new or aspiring microschool founders, and continued support thereafter. Through weekly check-ins and expert presentations, they learn the business of running a school, ranging from establishing policies and procedures and finding a suitable school location to setting tuition prices, exploring various revenue streams, and being fiscally responsible. Alleyne’s goal is to help microschools flourish and grow, and she helps founders to merge their love of teaching with a keen sense of what it takes to run a successful enterprise. Most Launch Your Kind founders launch or expand their microschools within six months of participating in the program, with each cohort community remaining in close contact long after the program ends — including through an annual in-person retreat. Launch Your Kind’s winter cohort begins later this month.

For Kipe, participating in Launch Your Kind helped her to see that entrepreneurship can be a win-win for herself and the students she serves. “We want to serve the community, but we’re also a business,” Kipe realized. 

Like most of the Florida microschools that have participated in Launch Your Kind, Kipe Academy’s students attend at reduced tuition rates thanks to the state’s robust school choice programs that enable education dollars to follow students to their desired learning setting — including microschools and homeschooling centers. Family financial accessibility is an important priority for the microschool founders with whom Alleyne works. It’s also Alleyne’s priority with Launch Your Kind. “I really wanted to put together an accelerator that would be at a price point that people could afford,” said Alleyne, who has received philanthropic support from organizations such as Stand Together Trust, Getting Smart, VELA, and the Yass Prize, which has helped to defray participant costs. 

After discovering microschooling in 2023 while running her learning pod, McClymont saw a post on social media by Kipe mentioning Launch Your Kind. She connected with Alleyne and joined the next accelerator cohort in 2024, growing her program, , from three students to 13. She serves both neurodiverse and neurotypical students in her current microschool location in West Sunrise, Florida, and is in the process of opening a second location in Coral Springs. She credits the accelerator program as a primary reason for her early success and continued growth. “To be a teacher is one thing; to be an entrepreneur and run a successful microschool is another. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know, like certain legalities, marketing, and just the logistics of how to run the company,” said McClymont, adding that the connection to a small community of founders within the Launch Your Kind cohort was also invaluable. 

One piece of entrepreneurial input was particularly helpful. “I was grossly undercharging myself and Iman had to have a conversation with me,” recalled McClymont. “She told me, ‘you are undercharging for what you have to offer and you need to raise your prices. Yes, you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart but you’re running a business now.’” For McClymont, that type of candid feedback was exactly what she needed to take her business to the next level to serve even more students throughout South Florida. Adopting a solid business mindset was how McClymont would be able to do the most good for the most students. “I think that’s something that a lot of educators probably struggle with,” she added.

McClymont has observed significant academic and social-emotional gains in her students, and plans to continue to open new microschools as parent demand grows. She is also considering the possibility of creating a franchise model to help other educators launch their own Tree Stars Learning locations without having to start from scratch. 

She said she thinks the microschooling movement is just beginning: “I feel like we are the Uber of taxis: I believe that microschools are going to take over. Especially in South Florida, parents are looking for other options because they see how the public school is not serving their child. It’s getting to a point where they have to close down some public schools here. Parents are seeking other options, and I just want to be a positive light.”

“I felt there had to be something different,” said the school’s founder, Candice Hilton, who quit her job as a public school teacher last December after seven years in the system. Her daughter had just started kindergarten that fall and it provided a new lens through which Hilton could view today’s schooling. “Her teacher was amazing,” said Hilton, “but she told me how bored she was doing worksheets.” 

At the same time, Hilton was reflecting on all of the required standardized testing in today’s schools and the pressures it was creating for students and teachers alike. “We tested the kids so many days straight. It was just a sad space to be in for our education system,” recalled Hilton.

After leaving the public school system, Hilton began researching what it would take to homeschool her daughter. It was through that research that she decided to become a microschool founder. She opened Hilton Horizons Academy in a cheerful rented space inside a culinary school with a dozen K-8 students. A hybrid microschool, Hilton’s students attend the mixed-age program two or three days a week for individualized academics and enrichment. Tuition for the three-day program is $4,900 a year. All of Hilton’s students are legally homeschooled, with the vast majority of them new to homeschooling this academic year. “Most of my students are coming from public school. Most of them are first-time homeschoolers,” said Hilton, adding that only two of her current students were previously homeschooled.

At , which opened in Goodyear, Arizona one week after Hilton Horizons Academy, founder Elisa Hernandez’s 14 microschool students are a mix of homeschoolers and those coming from traditional public or private schools. A high school English teacher who taught in the public school system for 10 years, Hernandez quit for reasons similar to Hilton. Post-Covid, she noticed that schools became even more focused on standardized testing, perhaps as a result of more attention being paid to alleged learning loss during pandemic school closures. “There was a shift where we were told to teach to that standardized test. Your worth as a teacher was now tied to that score, or your students’ scores. That was a big shift for me,” recalled Hernandez. 

Last year, she began a small tutoring business on the side while still teaching full-time in the public schools. She enjoyed it so much that she decided to turn the tutoring business into a dedicated microschool, leaving her teaching job at the end of the school year in May. Hernandez wanted to create the type of school in which she knew children would thrive. “I think that learning should be fun and learning should be personalized. If those two things are happening, that can be groundbreaking and world-changing,” she said.

Students attend Hernandez’s home-based program for sixth to twelfth graders up to four days a week at an annual cost of $5,600. She intentionally set her tuition below the approximately $7,000 that all Arizona K-12 students are now eligible to receive under the state’s universal education savings account (ESA) program. “I wanted to make sure that they had enough money left over to do sports, clubs, whatever it is that they want to do,” said Hernandez.

Microschools and similarly creative schooling options gained increased popularity in the wake of the pandemic, and they continue to gain momentum. Not only are new schools and spaces opening across the U.S. but existing ones are expanding. 

New from VELA, a philanthropic nonprofit organization and entrepreneur community, reveals that over 90 percent of the unconventional learning environments it surveyed had more learners last fall than they did at their launch date, and the median compound rate of growth for these programs was 25 percent a year. 

As parent demand for more individualized, innovative education options grows, more everyday entrepreneurs are stepping up to meet that demand, while finding greater personal and professional satisfaction as school founders. Many of them are former public school teachers like Hilton and Hernandez who grew tired of one-size-fits-all standardized schooling and wanted to create an alternative. According to its 2024 sector , the National Microschooling Centers estimates that over 70 percent of today’s microschool founders are current or former licensed educators.

“I’m not a business person. I’m an English teacher,” Hernandez says, acknowledging that she initially felt intimidated by the idea of starting a school. She, like Hilton, decided to join the program earlier this year to gain support and mentorship before, during, and after launch. Started by Amar Kumar, founder of the national microschool network, KaiPod Learning, the Catalyst program provides business startup support and ongoing operational assistance to school founders. The cohort-style program is free to participants, with a small revenue-sharing agreement if they decide to launch a school following the program.

“We started KaiPod Catalyst because we saw tens of thousands of educators looking for alternative career paths in many of the same communities where families were looking for alternative education options,” Kumar told me, adding that applications for the fall cohort are now open.

The new school founders I spoke with say the support from KaiPod Catalyst has been invaluable as they move from their role as teachers to teacher-entrepreneurs. “I think that something that stopped me from starting a microschool earlier was the lack of mentorship,” said Amanda Lucas, who taught in private and charter schools throughout New York City for about a decade. She also participated in a KaiPod Catalyst cohort earlier this year. “I didn’t have any mentors, and I didn’t have anyone to go to and to help me get through the tough times and answer questions,” added Lucas. 

Her microschool, , launches on September 4th in a leased, home-like space in Old Bridge, New Jersey. She currently has 10 enrolled students, ages 6 to 13, with two additional teachers. Her full-time program costs $15,000 a year, with various part-time enrollment options. 

Lucas expects to expand in the coming months given the increased number of inquiries she has been receiving from interested families, but she plans to remain a microschool for homeschoolers, rather than become a recognized private school. “Private schools, like charter schools, don’t give you all of the freedom that a microschool does,” said Lucas. “I want full autonomy, and I want absolute freedom in education. I also really believe in homeschooling and if we have too many students, I won’t be able to tailor the education the way that I want to,” she said.

As the new school year begins, new schools are sprouting across the country, offering the personalization, freedom, and flexibility that enable both students and teachers to flourish.

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to Vela Education Fund and ����Ӱ��.

“I thought I would be out of my element,” Moore told me when I met him earlier this month at the school, where he has worked since last fall. “I quickly became a convert. This fits what kids need. Parents are making this choice to meet the needs of their kids because public schools can’t do it anymore. I’m absolutely sold on what happens here,” he added.

What happens is deep, joyful learning tied to student interests that blends academic and social-emotional skills in a relaxed, nature-based setting. 

Founded in 1970 by a group of parents looking for a more holistic educational approach for their children, School Around Us operated as a state-recognized K-8 private school until 2020 when the school leaders decided to shift away from a traditional schooling model to a learning community serving homeschoolers. 

It’s part of a growing trend, both in Maine and nationally, of new schools and spaces offering smaller, more individualized, more flexible learning options that parents and teachers desire. Many of these programs, including School Around Us, are part of the that supports alternative education environments across the U.S. with grants and entrepreneurial resources.

Converting to a homeschooling community has enabled School Around Us to serve the rapidly growing population of homeschoolers in their area. According to the new Johns Hopkins University , homeschooling numbers now hover around six percent of the total K-12 school-age population, a dramatic increase from pre-pandemic estimates. Maine has seen its homeschooling numbers high since 2020. 

“We have doubled in size since before the pandemic and our numbers keep climbing,” said Amy Wentworth, a Maine certified teacher who attended School Around Us as a child and has taught there for over 20 years. School Around Us now serves 43 students with both full-time and part-time enrollment options. Wentworth says that since 2020, parents are looking to be more involved with their children’s education and appreciate more personalized learning options — especially immersive ones like School Around Us that embrace Maine’s natural beauty and abundant community resources. 

“It’s reinvigorated me in my teaching,” said Wentworth about her program’s shift from operating as a private school to a homeschooling co-learning community. “I feel rejuvenated with excitement and huge possibilities for the future.”

Ning Sawangjaeng feels similarly rejuvenated. A longtime teacher at an established Montessori school in Maine, Sawangjaeng was eager for a new opportunity. She joined the in Camden as its founding Lead Guide when the program launched in September 2023. “The core of Giving Tree is that kids can be happy and be themselves,” Sawangjaeng told me during my visit, adding that the hours the children spend each day outside and in the forest trails surrounding the center are crucial to their overall learning and growth.

Jessica Mazur, along with Isabella Wincklhofer, cofounded Giving Tree to meet the needs of their children and others in their community. 

A former operations leader at Apple who now runs her own small consulting business, Mazur explained how the pandemic shifted her views on education. Her oldest child had attended local public schools, but during school closures and the ongoing education disruption of 2020 and beyond, Mazur began to consider alternatives to conventional schooling. As schooling returned to normal, she and several other parents in her community were already hooked on a different vision for education. “Once we saw what education could be, we couldn’t unsee it,” said Mazur.

Like so many entrepreneurial parents, Mazur decided to build what she couldn’t find: a personalized, Montessori-inspired, nature-based learning space for a mixed-age group of homeschoolers ages five and up. Giving Tree now serves 20 learners ages five to 12 with most choosing to attend the center four days a week. Part-time enrollment options are also available, and interest in the program continues to spread through parent word of mouth.

That’s also how in Cape Elizabeth has grown from six kids in the fall of 2020 to 36 K-5 students for the upcoming school year. 

Like Mazur, Roots’s founder, Jaclyn Gallo, realized during the pandemic that she needed to take charge of her children’s education. She opened her state-recognized private school in a yoga studio during its first year, but demand kept growing for her personalized, place-based educational mode where all children are taught by certified teachers. Last fall, Gallo expanded to a new, large building with abundant outdoor space and wooded trails to accommodate continued growth. 

For all 12 of next year’s kindergarteners, Roots will be their first schooling experience. Unlike many of the students in the older grades — including Gallo’s daughter — who left a traditional public school for Roots, the parents of her kindergarteners knew early on that they wanted an alternative to conventional schooling for their children.

“There is a growing awareness by parents that, especially in the early grades, what is being asked of children is not developmentally appropriate,” said Gallo, explaining that the rigidity and standardization of traditional schooling prevents a more individualized, play-filled, organic approach to learning and child development. “It’s the system not the kids,” said Gallo, adding that many parents — including her and her husband — moved to this town specifically for the 

public schools. “Many of us want to believe in the public schools ideologically, but it’s just not working for some kids.” Still, Gallo is committed to forging relationships with the local public elementary school and finding ways to collaborate.

Gallo expects to grow her school to a maximum of about 60 or 70 kids over the coming years, retaining the microschool model that she thinks is so crucial to learning. She hopes to help other entrepreneurial parents and teachers open microschools similar to Roots in their own neighborhoods. “Being super big defeats the purpose of what we’re doing. I like knowing each kid and their families. The family relationships are so important,” she said.

About 100 miles north, in rural Appleton, Adrienne Hofmann is also focused on creating an intentionally small, relationship-based, outdoor-focused learning community. 

A former public school teacher in Texas who is also a certified teacher in the state of Maine, Hofmann became more familiar with homeschooling and alternative education during the pandemic. She began formulating her vision for , a newly-licensed, forest-filled early childhood program. “Before this venture, nearly every program I worked for didn’t feel quite right, leaving me yearning for something more fulfilling,” Hofmann told me when I visited her program’s lovely yurt site. “This journey inspired me to create a supportive and nurturing environment initially designed for homeschooling families and now geared toward those seeking a nature and play-based experience, reminiscent of our own childhoods.” 

Located on an off-the-grid, 18-acre parcel, Nature Play All Day will open this fall, enabling children from ages two to six to spend all day outside, playing freely, with no top-down impositions on their learning. Access is crucial for Hofmann, and Maine’s child care subsidies will enable more families to choose her program.

Like all of the founders and educators I met during my Maine visit, Hofmann believes that we are only at the beginning of a growing movement toward smaller, simpler, more holistic educational models. Prompted by the pandemic, more parents and teachers are now seeking and building homespun alternatives to conventional schooling. 

“I like to think that one of the best things to come out of COVID is just how simple things can be,” said Hofmann. 

Small is scalable.

In addition to their small size, microschools are also usually low-cost, highly personalized learning programs, often with a creative curriculum and supple scheduling. They were gaining momentum pre-pandemic and took off following COVID school closures and prolonged remote learning. As someone who has been following alternative education trends for years, I suspected microschooling — and its cousin, homeschooling — would remain above pre-pandemic levels even after schools returned to normal. But I have been pleasantly surprised to see a continued acceleration of these programs in many areas of the country.

Tennessee is a case in point. I recently visited five microschools and related learning models around Nashville and Chattanooga. All of them have launched in the past four years and most opened within the past two years. Their enrollment is quickly rising, and some have already hit capacity with long waitlists. Demand for these start-up schools shows no signs of slowing.

The oldest of the programs I visited opened in August 2020. Located on an organic farm in Smyrna, Tennessee, about 20 miles outside of Nashville, began with one teacher and five homeschooled children, including farmer Lauren Palmer’s own five-year-old. By January 2021, the program had 30 children and two teachers. Today, it is a Reggio Emilia-inspired K-5 farm school, with additional parent-child programming for littler ones, that serves 86 children. 

Blending core academics and interest-driven learning, along with abundant outside time and opportunities to help with farm duties, the farm school is currently at maximum enrollment, with dozens of children on a waitlist. All of the children are recognized homeschoolers, with most attending two to three days a week. The full-time, five-day option costs $900/month. “For the majority of our families, COVID was the catalyst to them beginning their homeschooling journey,” said Kaiti Dewhirst, Bloomsbury Farm’s Director of Education. She says now these families don’t want their children in a conventional classroom. “They see the farm school as an opportunity to preserve childhood wonder.” Dewhirst and her team are in the planning stages of determining how to extend their program to middle school and beyond, as well as serve more families on the waitlist.

In Franklin, another Nashville suburb, opened its doors as a recognized private school in fall 2021 with over 40 learners, including toddlers to fifth graders. Today, it has nearly 100 students and 16 staff members. Founders Greg and Jennifer Biorkman never expected to own a school. Both have backgrounds in business and sales and were working full-time jobs when COVID hit and disrupted the education of their two young boys. They decided to create their ideal learning environment with trained Montessori teachers and a focus on child-centered learning. 

“We truly could not find a school we wanted to send our children to,” said Jennifer. “It was simple supply and demand.” Last year, Greg left his corporate job to oversee Harpeth Montessori full time, and is planning to expand the program to middle schoolers in the fall while managing a growing waitlist. 

“This community is very open to alternatives to conventional education but there are not a lot of options,” he said, acknowledging that there is a lot of opportunity for other entrepreneurial parents and teachers to launch small schools.

Further south, the Chattanooga area has some of the newest microschools and related learning models in the state. In fall 2022, Rebecca Ellis opened in Chattanooga with 32 K-6 students. A Charlotte Mason-inspired hybrid homeschool program, Canyon Creek learners attend full-time classes three days a week focused on core academics and deep nature study, while working through curriculum at home on the remaining two days. Today, Canyon Creek Christian Academy has more than 50 learners with five full-time teachers and additional part-time instructors. 

The Academy recently leased additional church space next door to continue to accommodate its growing enrollment. “We are getting more kids trying to pull out of the public school system,” said Ellis, who says her program’s low-stress, child-focused environment is appealing to parents — especially those whose children are growing anxious in test-heavy conventional schools. Canyon Creek’s low annual tuition, currently set at $3,750, is also attractive, costing significantly less than other local private schools.

Just a few miles down the road in Chattanooga, also opened in fall 2022. Founded by Rachel Good, who worked as a public school teacher in Washington and Tennessee for over eight years, Discovery Learners’ Academy, is a state-recognized private school with a personalized educational approach that opened with 21 learners and today has 50 — about 15 of whom attend part-time as homeschoolers. Half of all the school’s students are neurodiverse, a population that Good caters to as a former special education teacher. Indeed, her inability to fully serve special needs students in the conventional school system was one of the reasons she left the public schools. “I was always trying to advocate for these kids and was always hitting a brick wall,” said Good.

At $7,000 a year, Discovery Learners’ Academy is about half the cost of most traditional private schools in the area, and less than the $10,850 a year that the local Hamilton County public schools per student. Even so, tuition is still financially out-of-reach for many families, and the school currently doesn’t qualify for the state’s small education choice program. “It’s so heartbreaking when a parent asks if they can use their voucher here and I have to say no,” said Good, who is supportive of current efforts by Tennessee lawmakers to expand school choice policies.

The newest microschool I visited in the Volunteer State opened in August in Cleveland, just outside of Chattanooga. is a home-based learning pod for homeschoolers that is part of the fast-growing Acton Academy network that includes more than 300 independently-operated, learner-driven microschools, serving thousands of students. 

In spring 2023, Alexis and JT Rubatsky listened to a podcast with Acton Academy co-founder, Jeff Sandefer, explaining the philosophy of learner-driven education where young people are empowered to pursue their passions while mastering core curriculum content. They were hooked, and knew immediately that it was the type of education they wanted for their two boys, ages six and 11. “Our kids weren’t thriving in school, and as a teacher, I saw that there was so much focus on the tests, on shoving information down their throats,” said Alexis, who quit her job teaching high school biology in the local public schools to open Triumph. The year started with five learners, including the Rubatskys’ two boys. Half-way through their first year, enrollment has more than doubled to 11 learners and the founders know it won’t be long before they outgrow their home-based classroom for a larger space.

“I would love for there to be lots of options,” said Alexis, who is encouraged by the growth of microschools and related models in Tennessee and across the U.S. She is already connecting with local founders like Rachel Good, who is working to build community among the entrepreneurial parents and teachers who are creating these new options. Working collaboratively, these small schools can have an even greater impact.

“I want to support these innovative educators,” said Good. “We need to have that variety of options.”

One of the first self-directed learning centers for homeschoolers, or what today we might call a microschool, opened just outside of Philadelphia in 1978. has grown and flourished over the past four decades and inspired the creation in 2016 of , a microschool in the Germantown section of Philadelphia that embraces non-coercive, self-directed education for homeschoolers of all ages who attend the center several days a week. 

When I visited Natural Creativity in the winter of 2018, it had about 20 learners in a bright but cramped section of a local church. Now, Natural Creativity has 50 learners ages 4 to 18 in a large, loft-style building a few blocks away from its previous location. Krystal Dillard joined Natural Creativity as co-director in 2020 after seeing a about the center and its embrace of unschooling and self-directed education principles. “I have a Master’s degree in education and never heard about this idea,” said Dillard, who taught in public schools in Fairfax County, Virginia and in an inner-city charter school in Los Angeles before moving to Philadelphia and working as a literacy coach in the Philadelphia Public Schools. “There was so much violence and trauma in the schools here,” said Dillard, who began to feel that education could and should look different. When she discovered Natural Creativity, it showed her what was possible. 

The story was similar for David O’Connor. He was teaching theater courses at the University of Pennsylvania when he and a group of parents learned about (ALCs), a global network of microschools and self-directed learning communities. The parents had been inspired by the educational philosophy of the , a Sudbury-model school that opened in 2011, but they gravitated to the tools and practices of the ALC approach. The group launched in 2018 with 20 learners in a church basement. 

Today, 50 learners of all ages learn together in a spacious building in Philadelphia’s Bella Vista neighborhood, with a second location at the Awbury Arboretum. 

“What shocked me the most at the university level was how much my students had to unlearn in order to have the curiosity again to learn new things,” said Philly ALC staff member, Jessie Dern-Sisco, who taught college students at Villanova University for several years during and after receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy there. “Here, we don’t have that problem.”

“A lot more families are looking for something like this,” added O’Connor, who explained that about 16 of the current learners attend Philly ALC as full-time recognized private school students, while the rest attend part-time as homeschoolers several days a week. Tuition is pay-what-you-can and accessibility is a key priority. O’Connor said the average family is paying about $7,000 per learner, with the maximum annual tuition at $11,000. Fundraising and philanthropy, such as the microgrant Philly ALC and other local microschools received from the , help to make these programs even more affordable to more families—especially in a state like Pennsylvania that has minimal education choice policies. 
It was a VELA grant that helped Lauren Umlauf and Hannah Mackay to grow their program, build community, and begin to find ways to help other prospective founders launch similar spaces in their own neighborhoods. Previously part of the Philly ALC community, Mackay and Umlauf spun-off their self-directed learning center, , in a separate neighborhood where they now serve 18 learners ages 5 to 12, with plans to create a teen program. Both former public school teachers, Mackay and Umlauf wanted a radically different approach to teaching and learning for their own children and others in their community. They piloted their program outside in a public park in 2021 and opened the doors to their dedicated space in a bright and colorful building in South Philly in fall 2023. In addition to The Dandelion Project’s three-day program for homeschoolers, it also offers afterschool programming and vacation and summer camps for local youth.

Beyond Self-Directed Education

While the City of Brotherly Love has seen escalating interest in low-cost, self-directed learning models like those described above, I was particularly pleased to see the growth of other alternative education models that embrace different learning philosophies while placing children first. A diverse, dynamic ecosystem of decentralized education options enables families to find the learning environment that best meets their distinct needs and preferences.

Some of that growth has occurred as a result of the pandemic response and prolonged remote schooling that led parents to consider — or create — new educational options. That was how came to be. A local mother of four children began offering a space in her home for local families who removed their children from school in 2020. That evolved into an established non-profit learning cooperative that centers the experience of Black and Brown homeschooling families. Since fall 2023, learners meet up to four days a week in a warm, welcoming storefront location, tucked along a quiet, brick street in Germantown. 

“The model of traditional schooling doesn’t fit with kids’ desire to move and have a voice in their day and in their learning,” said Jasmine Miller, a mother of three who helps to lead Koku-Roko. Miller was drawn to homeschooling but wanted something more collaborative. As a learning center for homeschoolers with hired educators, Koku-Roko enables Miller and the other founding parents to continue to work as full-time professionals, while taking turns being on-site to help steward their center, which emphasizes family-focused, child-led, project-based learning.

Miller explained that Koku-Roko’s founding parents actively sought a location for their co-op in the largely African American Germantown neighborhood in order to be closest to the families they serve. That was the same catalyst for Imani Jackson and Kareem Rogers, two educators currently working in a traditional private school in Philadelphia who are opening Poinciana Montessori this fall in Germantown. Part of the fast-growing microschool network that emphasizes affordability, equity, and an inclusive, culturally-responsive learning environment, Poinciana will be the second Wildflower elementary microschool in the city, following in the footsteps of Hyacinth Montessori that launched in West Philadelphia in fall 2022.

Philadelphia resident Sunny Greenberg works for the Wildflower network helping to support new and prospective microschool founders. She sees rising interest in microschooling, both in her city and nationwide. “Microschools like Wildflower can meet children where they are more quickly and pivot when necessary,” she said. “Because of their size, it is easier to build community and the sense of belonging that can be missing in larger school settings.”

It’s breathtaking to witness the expansion of affordable, learner-centered education options in Philadelphia in just six years. Not only have the microschools I visited in 2018 grown in size and space, they have helped to lay a foundation for education innovation throughout the city. 

As Madeleine Nutting, co-founder of Hyacinth Montessori, told me: “The school I wanted to teach at didn’t exist.” Like so many other entrepreneurial parents and teachers in Philadelphia and beyond, she built what she couldn’t find.

ROWLETT — Sharby Hunt-Hart stacked a table at her local library with colored pencils, skin-tone crayons and picture books with Black girl protagonists. Four girls, ready to start their school day, looked up at her.

“I want our big girls to think about the kind of person you want to be,” Hunt-Hart, an educator of 17 years and a mom, told the girls.

With a marker, Addi, 6, furrowed her brow and got to work. She drew a picture of herself with her hair short, like it was that day. She added blue scribbles for the sky and green scribbles for the grass. Her arm in the picture was extended, holding a flower: “I gave Mommy a flower.”

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“You want to be a giver,” Hunt-Hart said. “Thank you for sharing, Addi.”

Here in the eastern suburbs of Dallas, three mothers are home-schooling to reimagine education for their daughters. During school days, the girls get in about two hours of core instruction like reading and math, but they also draw, go on nature walks and build fairy villages with the rocks they find.

The mothers say their public schools were not equipped to create a learning space that’s wholly safe for Black kids or embraces their culture and identity. Together they create lesson plans to meet each girl’s learning needs and adapt their pace when a child is struggling.

The mothers want to expand their group and create a “microschool” that serves more Black boys and girls in the region, mirroring the in Arizona. Microschools refer to learning settings where class sizes are small, typically composed of fewer than 15 students, and the schedule and curricula are tailored to the needs of each student. It is seen as an arrangement between home-schooling and traditional schooling.

“What we’re doing with the microschools is decolonizing what we know of education,” Chantel Jones-Bigby, mom to Addi, said. “And we have so much less resources. We’re working with so much less, but yet, our children are doing academically, emotionally better.”

The mothers already have spoken with other parents ready to pull their kids out of private and public schools to participate in their collective. But to grow, they say they need the Legislature to create education savings accounts, a voucher-style program through which families could access state funds and pay for private school or alternative education settings.

At the state Capitol, legislators are at odds over whether to use taxpayer dollars for non-public education. Democrats and rural Republicans in the Texas House have long blocked voucher programs, saying any funds for education should go to public schools struggling financially after the pandemic and amid inflation. Supporters say education savings accounts give parents choices beyond public schools on how their children can learn.

Jones-Bigby said the public education system must face the reality that they often fail to serve Black kids well.

“I didn’t just remove my daughter from a building in a school. I removed her from the consciousness that was there that was creating the symptoms of what I was seeing with her in her learning,” she said. “Even if [schools] have more money, if you still have the same culture and consciousness, but new technology, what does that change?”

Year one in public school

Hunt-Hart’s daughter Lacey had a hard time in public school.

Meltdowns were commonplace after coming back from kindergarten, stretching out for over an hour when she got home. The exhaustion and overstimulation from the classroom often boiled over into tears.

Lacey, who prefers to cartwheel instead of walking and shouts when she sees a bird, stifled herself in kindergarten, Hunt-Hart said. Lacey learned her energy would not be celebrated. She watched other kids in her class be disciplined for their loudness. So she shifted her mannerisms, even earning a leadership award at the end of the year for being quiet and well-behaved.

“I don’t want my kid getting the leadership award at 5; I want her to work through her humanity,” said Hunt-Hart, who knows all too well that loudness in Black girls is often seen as a threat. “Schools teach kids to color inside the lines, to walk down the hall with your hands behind your back, to not to feel the pattern on the wall. They teach you not to talk and to not let your voice be loud.”

Lacey also struggled in a classroom where she was the only Black student — a worry that she shared with her kindergarten teacher after class. Just 15% of students were Black at her public elementary school, Hunt-Hart said.

One school day in February, Lacey got pulled out of class for not keeping up with the school’s dress code. She had dressed herself for the first time that morning, carefully picking out navy blue leggings with unicorns on them. The school’s uniform only permits students to wear khaki or navy blue pants.

Within 10 minutes of school starting, the principal had pulled her out of class and instructed her to wear another student’s khaki pants, a few sizes too big.

“Is uniform what’s really important? Or is it that she’s here, that she’s present and ready to learn?” Hunt-Hart said. “The rules [in public schools] are so much more important than their humanity, making them comply to what’s easiest for adults instead of what’s best for kids.”

Four generations in public schools

Generations of Hunt-Hart’s family have struggled as Black children in Texas public schools. Lacey’s grandmother was one of the last graduating classes at Dunbar High School in Lufkin before desegregation. Lacey’s great-grandmother started school but had to drop out to clean homes for work.

When Hunt-Hart entered the Lufkin public school district, she quickly learned that some remnants of segregation had never truly been scrubbed away — much like the “Blacks only” and “whites only” signs over the water fountains in town that were still up, just painted over.

Her principal, a pillar of the Black community, would greet her and other students at the front every morning in a suit. He was an anchor for Hunt-Hart and made her feel protected. But one year, his office was set on fire.

When Hunt-Hart got to fourth grade, her teacher seemed to stare at her and the Black kids with a misplaced anger. For the first time, Hunt-Hart got Cs on her report card.

“She hated the Black kids. … It didn’t matter how much we smiled or tried to dazzle with good handwriting or completing our work early or being as quiet as a mouse,” Hunt-Hart said. “I just remember knowing I don’t know how to be smart anymore as a 9-year-old.”

Up through high school, Hunt-Hart mastered the tap dance of people pleasing. Now she was watching her daughter learn the same dance. She had to try a different way.

“You find that they’re pieces of you that have been eaten away because of the assimilation,” she said.

Public school is ‘our bread and butter’

The home-schooling mothers have invested decades in public education. Their husbands are athletic coaches and high school teachers.

“We believe in the public school system,” Hunt-Hart said. “It’s our bread and butter.”

They also know its shortcomings, she said.

Anna Sneed, a mom in the home-schooling trio, spent 14 years as a high school teacher before she became an assistant principal. Her classes were “heavy on the love, light on the social studies,” Sneed likes to say.

Her students knew what they were going to get in her classroom. She was going to be tough on them but she would respect them and make them feel seen and heard.

But Sneed didn’t have the space as a teacher to tailor her instruction to every students’ needs.

“I see them for 90 minutes at a time,” she said. “I can’t teach you about the fall of the Roman Empire 34 different ways in 90 minutes.”

When her daughter turned school age, Sneed looked into the neighborhood school her family was zoned for. It had received a C in the Texas Education Agency’s accountability rating system. And students of color were performing far worse than their white peers. Sneed knew there were good teachers in public schools, but she still couldn’t send her daughter to a system she saw as broken beyond repair.

“Becoming a mom took the rose-colored glasses off of my career as a teacher,” Sneed said.

Arizona, education savings accounts and microschools

Black students tend to experience harsher discipline than white students in public school, even when it comes to minor infractions like dress code violations. That has damaging effects on their sense of belonging at school and their academic performance years later, according to research from the .

In the 2018-19 school year, were Black, though they made up just 13% of public school enrollment. A Black teen at Barbers Hill High School in Chambers County was this year for his hairstyle, testing a new law that bars discrimination of hair styles based on race.

If schools don’t rethink how they discipline and treat Black kids, Jones-Bigby worries it can put them on the wrong track.

“Most of the day, they spend it in an environment where they are devalued. They are lost. They are waiting for direction,” Jones-Bigby said. “Someone has a plan for my child when they are lost. It involves an orange suit and a 4-by-4 box.”

In Arizona, 40 Black moms gathered in 2016 with the same worries for their children, ready to dismantle what they call the school-to-prison pipeline. Their kids were bullied in school and did not feel supported by the teachers. The moms started by pushing school districts to form a re-entry-after-suspension plan and find alternatives to suspension as a disciplinary measure.

By 2021, they had opened their own microschool, also known as outsourced home schooling. The Arizona microschools depend on the state’s education savings account program for sustainability.

“The public school system that was in place was not doing what it was supposed to do. Our children were not reaping the benefits,” said Janelle Wood, the founder of Black Mothers Forum in Arizona. “And so we needed a tool to help us fuel our vehicle of the microschool in order for us to grow.”

Arizona is widely seen as ground zero for school vouchers. The state has one of the largest education savings account programs in the country, where almost any child is eligible. The state began with a limited version of the program in 2011 that only served students with disabilities. In 12 years, enrollment in the program has grown from about 150 students to over 60,000.

A stalemate at the Texas Legislature

Like in Arizona, the mothers in the Dallas suburbs want to grow their small teaching collective with the help of an education saving accounts program in Texas.

Education savings accounts would allow families to exit the public education system and use taxpayer dollars to pay for alternative learning settings like a microschool. The three mothers would welcome those funds to scale up and pay for instructional materials and a dedicated learning space.

The fate of school vouchers and the mothers’ plans hang in balance while the state Legislature and Gov. wrestle over creating this type of program.

The governor — a staunch supporter of education savings accounts — called a special legislative session last month asking lawmakers to pass a voucher program after similar legislation failed during the regular session. With less than a week to go before the end of the special session, it remains to be seen if lawmakers can reach a consensus. Abbott has threatened to call another special session if lawmakers don’t act on vouchers and promised political repercussions during next year’s elections for those who get in the way.

While voucher bills have routinely passed in the Senate, they have not gotten a floor vote in the House in recent years. Rural Republicans have often banded with Democrats to shut down vouchers.

Opponents say vouchers mean less money for public schools, which already do not get enough funding to raise teacher salaries and meet their other needs. When students leave public schools for alternative education settings, schools get less funds because state funding is tied to student attendance.

Supporters like Jones-Bigby hope student departures will push public schools to innovate. She said families need more school options to ensure their kids can get what they need.

“As much as I would love the public school system to work for my child, it doesn’t,” Jones-Bigby said. “Am I responsible to the system or am I responsible to my child?”

She doesn’t have to think twice — she picks her daughters every time.

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

“COVID put things under a microscope,” said Amber Okolo-Ebube, a Texas homeschooling mother. “Parents saw how far behind their children actually were and said I can do this better.” Okolo-Ebube has been homeschooling her children since 2011, but she has seen the local homeschooling population swell over the past three years, especially among families of color.

Okolo-Ebube is one of the hundreds of entrepreneurial parents and teachers I have interviewed over the past three years who are creating low-cost alternatives to conventional schooling. In 2022, she founded Leading Little Arrows, a weekly homeschool co-op that grew so quickly she decided to lease a building near the University of Texas at Arlington to accommodate weekly tutorials with hired educators and a part-time, drop-off microschool for homeschoolers. 

With nearly 40 learners, three-quarters of whom are neurodiverse, Okolo-Ebube’s programs are already at capacity. She plans to open two additional microschool locations later this fall.

“The homeschooling movement is accelerating here, particularly among BIPOC families,” said Okolo-Ebube, referring to Black, Indigenous, and other students of color. “You see someone like you doing it and it becomes less scary.” 

Angela Watson, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, theorizes that these network effects are contributing to the growth in homeschooling among families of color. “Minority families have begun to network as homeschoolers, something that white homeschoolers have done for decades. We think these grassroots support systems serve to expand homeschool participation in these populations,” she said, explaining that more research is needed. 

Homeschooling in 2020, with Black homeschooling numbers rising five-fold that year, according to the US Census Bureau. Their May 2023 Household Pulse Survey showed that the homeschooling rate dipped from its pandemic peak but remains elevated at over 5% of the U.S. school-age population, or more than 3.5 million students. 

Watson is part of a team at Johns Hopkins that is creating a free hub for research and data on homeschooling. She sees many reasons for homeschooling’s continued popularity, including a greater openness among today’s younger parents to nontraditional learning options. “This generation of parents is more willing to try something new,” said Watson. “They grew up when homeschooling was more mainstream and is less stigmatized in their view than it may be to older parents. It could also be that younger parents are more tech-savvy and adept at online learning.”

Other reasons that families may choose homeschooling are disappointment with the academic or social environment in local public schools and a lack of accessible private school options, as well as concern over curriculum, including what content is or is not covered. Some parents say they are simply disillusioned with standardized, one-size-fits-all schooling and want an alternative.

“I think more parents are realizing that compelling their kids to sit still, memorize facts, and take tests is not the surest path to success for their children,” said Jenny Markus, a homeschooling mother of a four-year-old daughter in Brooklyn who is seeing more homeschoolers in New York City. “Modern challenges call for creative minds and resilient spirits, which conventional schools do not consistently foster.” Markus just launched a self-directed learning center for homeschoolers this fall. 

New reveals that New York’s homeschooling enrollment increased 65 percent during the first two academic years of the pandemic, while in Florida, homeschooling enrollment increased by 43 percent. Florida’s homeschooling population continued to climb last year as well, according to state .

“This movement is just beginning,” said Okolo-Ebube, who believes that more families will flock to homeschooling and schooling alternatives, such as microschooling, over the coming years. With the national expansion of school choice policies that enable families to use education funds toward an assortment of approved expenses, including homeschooling program fees and microschool tuition in some states, access to these out-of-system models will become even greater.

Parents increasingly want a wider variety of education options from which to choose, including unconventional ones that are more tailored to their children’s specific needs and interests. More everyday entrepreneurs like Okolo-Ebube and Markus are responding to this parent demand by building innovative and affordable schooling alternatives that families want.

“Having gone through the New York City public school system myself, I never felt like I truly had enough time and space to pursue my curiosity and passions at my own pace,” said Markus. “For my own child, I knew I wanted something that provided more freedom and flexibility, and I am as excited as ever to continue on this path with other families who value the same kinds of experiences for their children.”

In 2009, the mother of five in Manassas, Virginia, began assembling a homeschool curriculum eventually named . Thirteen years later, the program now serves about 160 area students in grades K-12, who show up in uniform to a local center one day a week. 

Students partake in a variety of classes, as well as P.E., lunch, and the like. But the other four days of the week they learn at home. 

Reilly said Aquinas exploded amid COVID, after “everybody saw what we saw back in the early 2000s.” 

Since the start of the pandemic, public school enrollment has crashed — between fall 2019 and 2020, it dropped by 1.4 million students, or 3 percent, the largest single-year decline since World War II, according to released last spring. While educators are trying to figure out how to bring these families back, researchers are starting to find them persisting in unusual spaces. Many are relying on a type of homeschooling made popular when school closures became widespread in 2020.

But as Reilly’s success suggests, hybrid homeschooling has been around for decades. Now the sector even has its own , based at Kennesaw State University, northwest of Atlanta.

Eric Wearne, who founded it, began studying what he calls “hybrid” schools about seven years ago — he defines hybrids differently than most observers, not as a mix of online and live instruction, but as programs that meet in-person for fewer than five full days per week, with students typically home-schooled the rest of the week.

The schools also decide upon most or all of the curriculum, though varying levels of instruction and grading may be done by parents. And they’re more formal than learning pods or microschools. About 60 percent to 70 percent are private, according to Wearne.

He says schools like Reilly’s in Virginia are now engaging middle-class families in a different kind of school choice that’s more flexible, informal and — at $4,158 for average tuition, according to Wearne — more affordable than the typical private school.

The biggest challenge, however, may be figuring out a way to make it work more broadly for families who got with the kind of remote schooling that emerged during the pandemic — and to persuade public school advocates that it’s not eroding support or trust in traditional schooling.

A longtime school choice scholar, Wearne began getting curious about hybrid schools after he and his wife sent the oldest of their seven children to a small Catholic program. 

It served K-8 students, and when parents there began looking into starting a high school, Wearne and his wife, both high school teachers in a previous life, decided to help out. 

That was in 2012, and soon Wearne began writing about hybrid schools “just because I thought it was kind of a niche or boutique kind of answer to school choice.”” 

He found that most hybrids were private and church-based, though a few charter and district schools were experimenting with the model. The earliest hybrid schools coincided roughly with the rise of charter laws in the early 1990s.

By 2020, he’d learned enough to compile his research into a , which he handed to his publisher that March.

Also in March 2020: The pandemic closed virtually every school in America. Over the course of just a few days, Wearne said, “People sort of got very interested in different models of schooling.”

‘Non-classroom-based’ schools

Among those Wearne has worked with is Jennifer Cauzza, a lifelong California educator who began dabbling in hybrid schooling as far back as the 1990s, nearly as soon as legislators there passed the state’s first charter school law.

She remembers teaching in a rural high school that had a partnership with — one of its professors remotely taught a study skills class four days a week using what must have seemed a high-tech solution at the time: VCR tapes.

Students would watch lessons all week, and on Fridays he’d link up with the class via a videochat service called .

Her original hybrid school met in a barn northeast of San Diego, with 400 students, most of them homeschoolers. They soon began leasing their own space, and her school has since expanded into a network of . 

For Cauzza’s families, March 2020 felt like business as usual. 

“We were able, during the pandemic, to spin on a dime. We were able to transition to online opportunities overnight.”

As of this fall, a little over half of their students are traditional homeschoolers, and all of them hew to what Cauzza calls a “collegiate format,” expecting students to take a large portion of responsibility for their learning and be “independent, self-directed” learners. 

“Our goal is not to serve everybody,” Cauzza said bluntly. “Our goal is to find the students that learn best in this manner and to be able to serve them well.”

Wendy Schroeter and her husband sent both of their children to one of Cauzza’s schools. “They specifically work with them to make them self-directed learners,” she said. Students “become very self-reliant and able to not rely on mom, dad, or the teacher to nag them, because they just want to get it done.” 

At home amid economists

Wearne came to Kennesaw in 2020 to study the emerging landscape, and the now lives within the business school’s . Its scholars also study, more broadly, school choice, educational savings accounts, and parent engagement, among other topics.

His found that the growth of hybrid programs seems concentrated in suburbs. He found that among those who responded to the survey, the typical hybrid school enrolls about 227 students, mostly focused on K-5 instruction. And the vast majority — 83 percent — say they’re “religiously affiliated.”

Most rely heavily on part-time staff, with half employing 19 or fewer teachers. Nearly eight in 10 employed no full-time teachers at all.

While he’s just over two years into his tenure at Kennesaw, Wearne has already found that many hybrid schools fulfill the original aspirations of early charter schools, before they became, in his words, “extraordinarily regulated.”

And compared to existing private schools, he said, hybrids “don’t have to go through as much of a fundraising lift” to get up and running. 

Low tuition costs attract more middle-class families, he said. “They’re not populated with one-percenters. They’re populated with large families or with people who are more middle-class than the normal private-school clientele,”, he said. Many of these families chose hybrid schools in part because they simply can’t afford a local five-day-per-week private school.

They’re also beginning to build track records. “People are seeing their neighbors’ children are turning out O.K. when they leave the hybrids,” he said. “And so they’re willing to kind of give them a shot.”

But like most things in education, the center’s connections could limit its reach among public school advocates who might otherwise support hybrid schooling. Kennesaw State’s  is closely aligned with the school choice movement, and the Education Economics Center’s research findings often appear on the right-leaning website. 

Over the past few years Wearne has often found a home for in several conservative outlets such as .

More to the point, public school advocates are wary of programs that could direct more taxpayer funding to private schools.

“Instead of boosting private schools with zero accountability for their learning outcomes,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, “we should direct all of our energy towards meeting children’s needs, dealing with teacher shortages and fulfilling the purpose, promise and potential of public education.”

‘I’m still focused on my kids’

Many of the programs would say they’re doing just that: Wearne’s center has already identified a preponderance of STEM and outdoor-education schools, as well as programs focused on traditional classical education, such as Reilly’s Aquinas Learning in Virginia.

Thirteen years after she founded it, Reilly’s oldest child is now 22 and a graduate student in architecture at Notre Dame. Her others, all homeschooled, are either in college or making their way through high school.

Meanwhile, she’s busy selling her own self-published version of the curriculum — it doesn’t make her much money, she confided, but that was never the point. 

“My goal is that once they graduate, I can focus more on the business side of things and perhaps make it a nonprofit,” she said. That could attract philanthropic donors to help spread it more widely to more families, even outside the U.S. 

Once her youngest, a high school sophomore, has graduated, perhaps she’ll begin enjoying a bit of Aquinas-related travel.

But for now, she said, “I’m still focused on my kids.”

Some teachers have stepped away from the profession entirely but many others have instead moved to alternative education models, embracing the role of innovators in this time of crisis. 

A recent report from ����Ӱ��’s Linda Jacobson introduced us to a few such trailblazers, including Heather Long, a former counselor at a New Hampshire school district. “I started to watch as more and more restrictions were being placed on kids,” she said in an interview. “I felt like I couldn’t reach the needs.”

That feeling of helplessness is one reason Long left her job in December and began running a microschool out of her home as part of Prenda, a network of tuition-free, small-group programs in six states. 

Both Long and Jacobson recently appeared in an online panel discussion about educators who have embraced new career paths during COVID, organized last week by both ����Ӱ�� and VELA Education Fund. of “Into the Unknown: Why Teachers Leave the Classroom to Launch Nontraditional Education Programs.”