Dr. Natalie Summerville runs a microschool in Richmond, Virginia.
A former New York City public school teacher launched a microschool in Brooklyn. A retired U.S. Marine Corps officer created one in Richmond, Virginia. A mother in Detroit, Michigan began supporting a handful of homeschooling families in 2020 and now runs a thriving homeschool resource center serving more than 200 Detroit homeschooled children. A former public school teacher in Dallas, Texas, who created a “pandemic pod” in 2020 at the urging of some local parents, grew that into a STEM-focused microschool. A midwife in rural Oregon hired three teachers to run a microschool for local middle school and high school homeschoolers on her mountainside property.
These are just some of the inspiring founders featured in my just-released case study of education entrepreneurship in five cities across the U.S. From busy, urban neighborhoods, to peaceful, suburban enclaves, to picturesque, countryside villages, entrepreneurial parents and teachers everywhere are inventing low-cost, bottom-up education models that prioritize each individual learner. These everyday entrepreneurs were dissatisfied with the standard schooling status quo and decided to build alternatives.
I met the 35 education entrepreneurs spotlighted in the case study while traveling across the country over the past few months. I wanted to see who was building unconventional learning models, and why. I discovered that these education entrepreneurs, like all entrepreneurs, spotted a need that was not being met in their communities and endeavored to create a solution. They thought they could offer something better than one-size-fits-all schooling, and local families began flocking to their programs.
While these entrepreneurs are demographically, geographically and ideologically diverse, they share a common commitment to creating more personalized, accessible education options that enable each child to flourish.
“It is only beginning,” said Amber Okolo-Ebube regarding parent demand for unconventional, out-of-system learning models. A long time homeschooling mother in Fort Worth, Texas, Okolo-Ebube saw her once-a-week, informal, outdoor homeschool co-op grow in one year into a multicultural microschool with hired educators in a leased, standalone building. Her program, Leading Little Arrows, is already nearing capacity.
The same is true at Arrows Christian Academy, a hybrid homeschool program in southern Oregon, which has grown so rapidly that founder Becky Abrams just opened a second location. She started Arrows as a small homeschool co-op in 2015. Today, it’s a twice-weekly, drop-off program with 25 hired staff members serving nearly 200 learners.
These 35 entrepreneurs and the programs they have created in these five cities are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of these founders in big and small communities throughout the U.S. who are redefining K-12 education to be more decentralized, individualized, and responsive to the varied needs and preferences of learners and families.
Read the full case study here.
