There are 13,000 different school districts in this country and 13,000 different ways to try to tackle learning, especially during the pandemic. One approach that has taken off in the past two years is “microschooling.” America has a long history of small-school environments, such as one-room schoolhouses and homeschools. But the Covid pandemic kicked the search for new or revived models of school into high gear. All of which begs the question, is this back to the future approach better? Is it scalable? And who does it serve better than the current way we do school?
Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where his work focuses on education and civil society. He’s previously served as the chair of the Maryland Higher Education Commission and as president of the Maryland State Board of Education. He’s just released three case studies that describe how Idaho, New York, and Arizona have handled micro-schools, and he joins us to explain whether this really is the wave of the future.
