Microschools

podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews Central Florida Urban League leader Glen Gilzean

redefinED staff March 24, 2021

redefinED staff

On this episode, Tuthill speaks with president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League about the work the organization is doing to empower the Black community through what Gilzean refers to as the three E’s – education, employment and entrepreneurship.

Gilzean, a former Pinellas County School Board member, has witnessed the devastating impacts of generational poverty. Both he and Tuthill believe giving parents flexibility and control over their education funding is critical to breaking that cycle.

The two discuss the Urban League’s plan to facilitate small learning pods known as micro-schools for the families it serves in the central Florida community and the potential for Senate Bill 48 to expand small learning environments to more families who presently can’t afford to leverage them, as well as the bill’s potential to drive creative, economic and entrepreneurial opportunity in the Black community.

“The bill does a lot of great things, but specifically for low-income Black folks, I think it will improve educational outcomes, the opportunity to employ individuals, and get people in the mindset of ‘I can do this, too; let me create a pod,’ so they can generate their own resources for the community.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

· Gilzean’s background as a school board member and advocacy coordinator for Step Up For Students

· How the Urban League collaborated with Orange County Schools to facilitate the Reading Scholarship, an education savings account for public school students struggling with reading

· The Urban League’s plan to create micro-schools and school models to better serve students in juvenile detention

· How micro-schools can drive community development and be an economic engine to counteract generational poverty

LINKS MENTIONED

Micro-schools could be answer for low-income Black students

March 24, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Savings Accounts Featured Microschools Parental Choice Podcast School Choice

podcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews entrepreneur Joe Connor

redefinED staff March 17, 2021

redefinED staff

On this episode, Tuthill speaks with the co-owner of SchoolHouse, an organization serving several hundred students in eight states by creating flexible learning communities known as micro-pods for four to eight students.

Tuthill and Connor discuss how SchoolHouse connects members of the community with a shared interest in a smaller learning environment to each other, allowing families to customize their learning pod from the ground up. The two also discuss how micro–schools empower teachers as well as students, and how education savings accounts of the type proposed in Florida’s Senate Bill 48 could help more families access smaller, more customized educational options.

“What excites me about ESAs is that it’s really what parents already do, and the government is responding to that. I don’t know a single parent … who doesn’t pick from different vendors for different things … (parents) have choice in their lives, and it’s giving them the money to really fund that, which is exciting.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

· Connor’s background as an educator and education law attorney

· The creation of SchoolHouse, how it works, and how the pandemic accelerated the micro-school learning trend

· Opportunities for teachers to thrive in the customized learning environment of micro-schools

· Creating greater equity for serving families without financial means through ESAs

March 17, 2021 0 comment

Advocate Voices Commentary and Opinion Community Leaders Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Microschools Parent Empowerment Parent Voices School Choice Voices for Education Choice

Micro-schools could be answer for low-income Black students

Special to redefinED February 27, 2021

Special to redefinED

Glenton Gilzean speaking in September on a podcast about his early entrepreneurial experiences. Listen to the full interview at https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3417597471621950.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Glenton Gilzean Jr., president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League and former Pinellas County School Board member and Florida A&M trustee, appeared earlier today in the Orlando Sentinel.

When I became president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, it was clear that our community faced some incredible challenges. Yet, I always believed that the path forward began with education.

Generational poverty stems from a vicious cycle that we’re all too familiar with. While our organization has helped upskill thousands to compete for high-paying, high-skilled jobs, this is a Band-Aid solution. If our goal is to end this cycle, our fight must begin with children.

For generations, children in low-income Black communities have endured a sub-par education model and these underperforming schools not only hurt our children, but our entire community.

According to the Orlando Economic Partnership, the average net worth for Black adults in Central Florida is less than $18,000 annually, compared to more than $215,000 for white adults. This overt discrepancy is a direct result of a failing education system. Without innovation, these failures will continue to compound as parents are forced to choose between feeding their families and supplementing their children’s education.

With a lack of support both at home and in school, the interest of our children to engage in their learning wanes. While I believe that every child is born with a thirst for knowledge, those in our community are born into a drought with no end in sight.

We can change this. Imagine a school with only a handful of students, learning in a safe and welcoming environment. With such small numbers, their teacher can work with each student, developing and following a personalized learning plan.

Aptly called micro-schools, this is the reality for those with means. But if the state passes a new education choice bill, this can become a reality for those in underserved communities too. Simply put: the low-income Black children who need them the most.

Senate Bill 48, sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr. (R-Hialeah Gardens), combines five education scholarship programs into two. The bill also extends the use of education savings accounts (ESAs), currently only available to the Gardiner Scholarship for special-needs students and the Reading Scholarship, to the newly merged income-based scholarships.

These accounts could be used to cover private-school tuition, technology, tutoring, curriculum and other approved items. Families would have the flexibility to spend their education dollars, providing them access to the learning environment that best fits their children’s needs.

This bill puts us on the cusp of providing these youth with a high-quality learning environment that will begin to close both the historical achievement gap, the school-to-prison pipeline, and the growing COVID-19 learning gap.

The past year has demonstrated that, now more than ever, families require educational options. Most children have regressed, struggling to maintain even the most basic curriculum. Throwing these students back into an unsuccessful system will further exacerbate their situation.

While the benefits for our youth are clear, micro-schools also provide economic opportunities. If parents have the freedom to spend their children’s education dollars through ESAs, they will demand providers that meet their needs. Entrepreneurs will invest in our communities and this cannot be understated.

As a result of the pandemic, over 40% of Black-owned businesses have closed, while the Black unemployment rate is hovering around 10%, four points higher than the state average. Networks of micro-schools would not only our lift up our children, but their families too.

My organization knows first-hand the success of ESAs. The Urban League partnered with several Orange County Public Schools to register more than 700 students to receive supplemental tutoring funded by the Florida Reading Scholarship. This was a blessing for parents who were unable to afford tutoring for their children.

We now have the opportunity to take ESAs to the next level and positively impact not hundreds, but thousands of children. I pray that our elected representatives listen to their constituents. Please fund students over systems, put money in the hands of parents who know what’s best for their children, and bring micro-schools to communities that desperately need them.

February 27, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Customization Education Choice Featured Microschools Parental Choice School Choice

Innovative teacher recaptures spirit of the ‘little red schoolhouse’

Matthew Ladner February 26, 2021

Matthew Ladner

Dynamic Micro-school aims to provide a powerful, student-centered learning environment focused in the unique interests, abilities and learning styles of each child.

MESA, Arizona – “Miss Laura! A chick! There’s a chick in the shed!”

The excited cry set students at the Dynamic Micro-school scurrying. My height advantage allowed me to see over the students’ heads to spy a noticeably protective mother hen. Moments later, I caught a glimpse of the long-awaited hatchling.

As the students broke out in a cacophony of celebratory conversation, I wondered to myself: What percentage of America’s youth attending school on Zoom or some other virtual platform are having this much fun? I’d put the over/under at 1% — but give me the under.

My next thought was: If this farm/animal rescue shelter/school is a glimpse into what’s possible for education, the future looks … well, fun!

Laura DeRoule, a 15-year veteran of Mesa public school classrooms, had, until recently, left the profession entirely. Endless test prep and teaching from a script left her burned out and unfulfilled.

“It just was a bunch of testing at that time where I felt like we weren’t really using what we found out,” DeRoule told her local newspaper in January.

The chance to run her own school got her back in the education game.

The Dynamic Micro-school meets at Superstition Farm in East Mesa. It never serves than a dozen students at one time, but that’s in part because families have the flexibility to choose their schedules. Some kids come daily, but others only occasionally. One student I met when I visited earlier this week was enrolled in a district distance learning program. Others were homeschoolers.

Among them were students who participate in Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program.

Delightfully, the once hard-and-fast distinctions that define “education” are beginning to blend, and the Dynamic Micro-school is a great example. Distance learning, homeschool and private choice program students are all, well, students. In a multi-age environment where everyone alternates between group efforts and doing their own thing, there’s little to distinguish one educational flavor from another.

These particular students were busy feeding ducks, chickens, goats, pigs and tortoises when I arrived. Oh, and donkeys. (My personal favorite of all the animals was a donkey named Migs. Migs was very friendly but voiced his opinion loudly and clearly to show he was hungry.)

There are any number of policy implications to this happy farm school – and more than a hint of the multi-educator world foreseen by Jack Coons and Stephen Sugarman.

Most Baby Boomers who went into teaching after college reached retirement eligibility long ago, and enrollment in colleges of education nationwide began to see sagging enrollment years ago. The need for teachers like Lara DeRoule to return to education will become increasingly acute year by year.

Put her and other innovative teachers like her in charge, or it’s game over, man.

February 26, 2021 0 comment

Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education Choice Education Equity Featured Microschools News Parent Empowerment Parental Choice School Choice

Despite challenges, COVID has allowed families to explore new frontiers

Lisa Buie January 26, 2021

Lisa Buie

Lian Chikako Chang, right, of South Florida, pictured with her husband, Drew Harry, and their son, Jay, created a pandemic pods Facebook page at the start of the shutdown to connect families looking for education options.

Moviegoers learned in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” that Capt. James T. Kirk was the only cadet in Starfleet history to beat the training exercise Kobayashi Maru, created as a no-win scenario to test leadership and decision-making.

Born with a rebellious streak that gained him the reputation as Starfleet’s resident troublemaker, Kirk reprogrammed the simulation so he could win. In effect, he changed the rules.

That sounds a lot like what some parents did last summer when the coronavirus pandemic handed them what seemed like a no-win scenario: Keep their kids online and risk having them fall behind academically or send them to brick-and-mortar campuses struggling to meet federal safety guidelines, putting them at risk for contracting a potentially deadly virus. In some parts of the country, campuses remained shuttered, leaving even fewer choices.

Instead, those parents changed the rules. Social media groups sprang up to support pandemic pods, a form of homeschooling in which small groups of students meet together under adult supervision to learn, explore and socialize.

Many families began rotating pod duty or paying teachers to provide in-person instruction in homes or in rented spaces. That led to criticism that the pods, also referred to as co-ops or micro-schools, with critics charging that pods favored families of privilege and shut out those without the means to engage.

One veteran principal of a Northern Virginia elementary school called the sudden push for pod learning “shocking” and likened it to the development of charter schools, only at a faster pace. Some bureaucrats attempted to shut things down by trying to regulate the pods, while some school districts barred their teachers from participating even though those teachers were participating on their own time.

But some cities, like Orlando, responded by setting up their own pod arrangements at community centers for lower-income students to access their district’s online classes and while receiving in-person support from adult staff and volunteers. Also on the plus side: teachers, some of whom were frustrated with traditional learning models or wanted the chance to be more creative in their instructional delivery, saw opportunities.

Some educators even saw a chance to earn more than they were earning in traditional schools in the process.

Despite the challenges, pods and other innovative learning arrangements have thrived as the pandemic drags on. The question is, are they the final frontier? Many experts predict innovation will continue into the future as more families come to expect choice.

In at least one state, legislators are responding to the demand for flexibility and innovation. Florida lawmakers during this year’s legislative session will consider a bill that would give parents greater control by expanding educational savings accounts.

If the bill passes, Florida parents will have the opportunity to boldly go where no one has gone before.

January 26, 2021 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Featured Jonathan Butcher Lindsey Burke Microschools Parental Choice School Choice

Education in a time of pandemic: Not making the grade

Special to redefinED January 5, 2021

Special to redefinED

This commentary from redefinED guest blogger Jonathan Butcher, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, and center director Lindsey Burke, first appeared on Tribune News Service.

When it comes to her daughter Emerson’s education, Sarrin Warfield says, she’s “in it to win it.”

When Emerson’s assigned school in South Carolina announced plans for virtual learning this fall, Sarrin says she asked herself, “What if we just made this in my backyard and made a school?” After talking with friends who have children the same age as Emerson, Sarrin said, “Let’s do it. Instead of it being a crazy idea, let’s own this process and be really intentional about doing this and make it happen.”

Sarrin is one of the thousands of parents around the country who formed learning pods when assigned schools closed. By meeting in small groups with friends’ and neighbors’ children, these pod families could try to keep at least one of part of their child’s life from being upended because of COVID-19.

The time-honored practice of school assignment did little to help the Warfields — or thousands of other students around the U.S. during the COVID spring … and then COVID summer and fall. In the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, officials in some of the largest districts in the country reported significant enrollment changes from the previous school year, especially among younger students.

Officials in Mesa, Arizona, reported a 17% decrease in kindergarten enrollment after the first two weeks. In Los Angeles, Superintendent Austin Beutner reported a 3.4% decrease in enrollment, but said another 4% of students couldn’t be found, making the change closer to 7%. Figures are similar in Broward County, Florida, and Houston. In large school districts, these percentages amount to over 10,000 children per district.

Some of these changes can be attributed to learning pods. But officials in large cities and even those representing entire states simply reported having no contact with many students.

Under normal circumstances, if thousands of children who were once in school suddenly were nowhere to be found, this would be an issue of national concern. Hearings would be held, and officials would demand to know what is happening with schools around the country. Loud calls for change would be heard.

But life during the pandemic is anything but normal.

Likewise, if more students around the country were failing — say, twice the figure from last year — this would also be worrisome, right? From Los Angeles to Houston to Chicago to Fairfax, Virginia, school officials and researchers are now reporting that the proportion of students earning D’s and F’s in the first semester has increased, doubling in some cases, in comparison to the last school year.

Yet across the U.S., many school districts, especially those in large metro areas, remain closed to in-person learning for some if not all grades and may not reopen at the start of 2021.

According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of parents in lower-income brackets report being “very” or “somewhat” concerned this fall that their children are “falling behind in school as a result of the disruptions caused by the pandemic.” With thousands of students not in class, even virtually, and falling grades among those who are attending, who can blame them?

For taxpayers and policymakers looking for lessons in the pandemic, the utter failure of school assignment systems to provide quality-learning options to all students, especially the most vulnerable, is clear.

The quality and consistency of the education a child received during the pandemic has been dependent on the attendance boundary in which that child’s family lives. At the same time, so many of the issues plaguing education during the pandemic — and for that matter, the entire century leading up to the pandemic — are rooted in policies that fund school systems, rather than individual students.

Allowing dollars to follow children directly to any public or private school of choice is a critical emergency policy reform that states should pursue. Such a policy change is overdue.

Since it’s anyone’s guess how soon life will get back to normal, we can’t wait any longer for the system to fix itself.

January 5, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education Choice Featured Microschools Podcast School Choice

revisitED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill follows up with Prenda CEO Kelly Smith

redefinED staff December 30, 2020

redefinED staff

On this episode, Tuthill catches up with the founder and CEO of Arizona-based Prenda, an organization on the front lines of the micro-school tsunami that has soared during the global pandemic.

Smith describes how these home-learning environments, catering to fewer than a dozen similarly aged students, are gaining traction among families looking for creative education options. Amidst rampant uncertainty and accelerated changes to public education, micro-schools and other smaller “pod” education formations are sweeping the country – and blending mastery-based education with peer collaboration.

Smith discusses Prenda’s expansion into Colorado and his team’s experiences in working with partners to bring micro-schools to as many communities as possible, noting he’s inspired by those in district schools who see the importance of adding micro-schools to their portfolio of options. He believes there are passionate visionaries and leaders working inside traditional systems, stepping up and taking risks against the wishes of institutional pushback.

“The genie is out of the bottle (on micro-schools) … Families are reporting their child is engaged, and the format really works … A safe comfortable environment right in the neighborhood can be empowering and kids can come out of their shell.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

· Prenda’s most recent year and lessons learned during the pandemic

· Assuaging parents’ fears about shifting from factory-model education and toward intrinsic, organic learning

· The regulatory environment in particular states and Prenda’s plan for expansion

· How school districts have stepped up to encourage micro-schools

· The challenges that lie ahead

To listen to Tuthill’s earlier podcast with Smith, click HERE.

December 30, 2020 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Course Choice Customization Education Choice Education Equity Featured Homeschooling Microschools Parental Choice School Choice

redefinED’s best of 2020: You better start swimmin’ for the times they are a-changin’

Matthew Ladner December 24, 2020

Matthew Ladner

Editor’s note: During the holiday season, redefinED is reprising the “best of the best” from our 2020 archives. This post originally published July 20.

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’

— Bob Dylan

We at redefinED and others have been writing for years about the rise of the micro-school movement. Five years ago, an article in Wired magazine, titled The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids, discussed the rise of homeschooling in Silicon Valley, quoting Jens Peter de Pedro, an app designer from Brooklyn:

“There is a way of thinking within the tech and startup community where you look at the world and go, ‘Is the way we do things now really the best way to do it?’ If you look at schools with this mentality, really the only possible conclusion is ‘Heck, I could do this better myself out of my garage!’”

Matt Kramer, CEO of the Wildflower Foundation, which supports a network of micro-schools, told Education Next in 2017:

“We’ve seen a 30-year decline in teacher satisfaction to an epically low level. Micro-schools offer a creative new way of thinking about teachers acting like social entrepreneurs.”

You didn’t need to be a soothsayer to see this was going to get much bigger.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if, 5 to 10 years from now, everyone looks at this and thinks, ‘That grew a whole lot faster than I thought it could,’” observed Andy Calkins, deputy director of the Next Generation Learning Challenges, in the same article. “There is a slice of the market that is not being served by public education. They’re saying, ‘The public schools don’t work, [and] I can’t get into the charter schools.’”

Simply visiting a few of these schools is enough to convince you that they would grow. They’re fun, but their approach to the education equity issue is just as obvious.

Step Up For Students’ director for policy and public affairs Ron Matus gave us multiple examples of how Florida micro-schools are leveraging scholarship programs to allow disadvantaged students to access teacher-led micro-schools (see here and here). These education innovators have created a path for the micro-school movement to proceed in an inclusive and diverse fashion.

And then the pandemic struck, slamming the pedal to the metal.

The Washington Post reported last week in an article titled, For parents who can afford it, a solution for fall: Bring the teachers to them:

Fed up with remote education, parents who can pay have a new plan for fall: import teachers to their homes. This goes beyond tutoring. In some cases, families are teaming up to form “pandemic pods,” where clusters of students receive professional instruction for several hours each day. It’s a 2020 version of the one-room schoolhouse, privately funded. Weeks before the new school year will start, the trend is a stark sign of how the pandemic will continue to drive inequity in the nation’s education system. But the parents planning or considering this say it’s an extreme answer to an extreme situation.

And this weekend, education writer JoAnne Jacobs shared a post from a Berkeley, California, mom that read in part:

If you are not a parent/in a mom’s group, you may not be aware that a kind of historic thing is going on right now. This week, there has been a tipping point in Bay Area families looking to form homeschooling pods. Or maybe ‘boiling point’ might be a better term.

Sound niche? It’s actually insanely involved and completely transformational on a lot of levels. Essentially, within the span of the last 48 hrs. or so, thousands of parents (far and away mostly moms because that’s how these things work) are scrambling through an absolute explosion of Facebook groups, matchups, spreadsheets, etc. to scramble to form homeschooling pods.

These are clusters of 3-6 families with similar aged (and sometimes same-school) children co-quarantined with each other, who hire one tutor for in-person support for their kids. Sometimes the tutor in question is full time and sometimes part time/outdoor classes, depending on the age of kids and individual circumstances … Suddenly teachers who are able to co-quarantine with a pod are in incredible demand.

This is maybe the fastest and most intense PURELY GRASSROOTS economic hard pivot I’ve seen, including the rise of the masking industry a few months ago. Startups have nothing compared to thousands of moms on Facebook trying to arrange for their kids’ education in a crisis with zero school district support.

I swear that in a decade they are going to study this because I have never seen an industry crop up and adapt so fast. Trends that would typically take months or years to form are developing on the literal scale of hours.

The writer goes on to acknowledge the equity elephant in the room: Only families with means are going to participate in this trend, absent programs to assist disadvantaged students:

The race and class considerations are COMPLETELY BONKERS. In fact, yesterday everything was about people organizing groups and finding matches; today the social justice discussion is already tearing these groups apart. For one thing, we’re looking at a breathtakingly fast acceleration toward a circumstance where educational access and stratification is many times more polarized even than it already is.

Distance learning is hell on all children. Suddenly high-income families are going to all supplement it with quarantine pods and private tutoring, and low-income families will be stuck with no assistance for 8 yos who are supposed to be on zoom for 5 hrs. a day. This is on top of already not having a way to work with children stuck at home, and being more exposed with “essential” jobs.

For another, the most obvious solution to this, i.e. individual family clusters scholarshipping disadvantaged kids into their pods, doesn’t even work at scale because there is a high correlation between kids who can’t afford tutors and kids in families where strict distancing rules just aren’t an option. None of us have any idea where this is going to go. All possible actual solutions require government-level intervention beyond what school districts can do, and that’s clearly not going to happen. I don’t even have a kid the right age, but I’m volunteering in some places around this and the situation is just … a really major story.

A major story indeed.

What can be done? Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt included scholarships in the use of federal emergency aid. More governors should follow suit. Moreover, states need to allow K-12 funding to follow children now more than ever.

In the meantime, you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. The age of K-12 self-reliance is here. Forced by harsh circumstances, it has arrived while our ability to include equity remains tragically limited.

December 24, 2020 0 comment