Story at a glance
- There has been a surge in new microschools in the U.S. since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The National Microschooling Network estimates there are about 95,000 microschools in the country. The median microschool serves 16 students.
- There is no regulatory body solely responsible for tracking microschools, so it is difficult to determine just how much their popularity has grown.
Microschools have experienced a boom in popularity since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tiny schools, which have a median student body size of 16, have been described as a modern reinvention of the one-room school house, where children of varying ages receive personalized instruction from a teacher in the same room.
Supporters view them as liberating. Skeptics, however, worry over their educational quality.
It’s unclear how many microschools existed in the United States before 2020 or just how many more opened during the early days of the pandemic, given that most took the form of informal learning pods, according to National Microschooling Center CEO Dan Soifer.
But the number “definitely jumped” during the 2020-21 academic year, Soifer told The Hill.
Now, about 1.5 million children attend one of the country’s roughly 95,000 microschools, according to Soifer, roughly the same number that study at Catholic schools.
Advocates for microschools say they offer some students — especially those who are gifted or have learning disabilities — a greater chance to thrive academically and socially than traditional schools do.
At Sphinx Academy, a micro-school based in Lexington, Ky., almost all 24 students are “twice exceptional,” meaning they are gifted in one academic area but have one or more learning disabilities like ADHD or dyslexia, according to the school’s director Jennifer Lincoln.
“There’s gifted education and there’s special education, but there are not a lot of resources for students with an overlap in those two,” said Lincoln.
The tiny classroom size and personal instruction at Sphinx allows students with different levels of mastery in different subjects to receive the attention they need, she said.
Microschools can offer some kids dealing with physical or mental health issues an easier way to study than traditional schools.
Sixteen-year-old Layla Robertson, for instance, was homeschooled during grade school and later on during the pandemic because of a health condition before entering Sphinx.
“I got to the point where I wanted to go back to school but I thought big schools would overwhelm me,” Robertson told The Hill. “It wasn’t an environment that I felt like I could be calm and get my work done in.”
Robertson eventually decided to attend Sphinx because of its small size.
Microschools can also appeal to kids who feel like they just don’t fit in at other schools.
This was the case for 15-year-old Madeliene Mischen, who struggled to fit in at her private, religious school in Lexington during the pandemic.
She quickly realized that Sphinx Academy was a place she wanted to attend after shadowing a student for a day.
“I’m queer and I saw a lot of other queer students and I thought ‘oh wow, they’re open and accepting here,’” Mischen said.
Sphinx Academy is a nationally accredited and Kentucky-certified school. But in this regard, it is an exception in the microschooling world.
There is no single regulatory body monitoring microschools, which experts fear means there are no quality backstops to ensure kids are receiving an adequate education.
Most microschools are also not accredited. In a survey of 400 microschools across the country shared with The Hill from the National Microschooling Center, only 16 percent said they were accredited in their state.
This is because many microschools operate as learning centers for homeschooled students and therefore do not need any accreditation.
Others function as private schools, which do not need to be accredited nor have certified teachers in most states.
The world of accreditation among private K-12 schools in the United States is notoriously murky. There is no federal accreditation requirement for K-12 schools “where schools must meet standards for performance,” according to reporting from Education Next.
At the state level, laws accrediting private schools vary. And accreditation is almost never legally required for private schools and is only required for public schools in about 20 states, according to the outlet.
Florida, for example, a current hotbed for microschools, does not require K-12 schools to be accredited, nor is accreditation or the lack thereof reported to the public.
Nevada, another state with a growing microschool population, also does not require it. And both states, like most others, do not require private school teachers to have a teaching certificate.
This lack of oversight and clarity in what coursework is offered at microschools in part echoes the concerns which drove the U.S. to eventually do away with from the one-room schoolhouse and adopt more organized and unified school systems, according to Jen Jennings, director of Princeton University’s Education Research Section.
As a result of that shift, states promised kids a certain level of education quality, Jennings added.
“So, the concern with microschools … and any form of state-funded education where there is no quality backstop is that we simply just don’t know what kids are getting,” Jennings said.
Concerns over microschools’ lack of accreditation most often come up in states with Education Savings Accounts or voucher programs, according to Soifer.
Under those programs, the state sets aside funds for students who opt out of the public school system in favor of a private or charter school.
Last year saw a surge in states adopting or expanding school voucher programs, including Florida, Iowa, Utah and Oklahoma.
“The worry with a setup like that is that folks are doing right by the students that they are taking money on behalf of,” said Jennings.
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