Community Crafted Schools

A Sector in Search of a Name

Crafting a Term

I have a piece in Education Next about something that I have been pondering for some time – what to call this movement of hybrid, micro, and related school models as a whole.  They have some real practical differences, but their inspirations and worldviews about personalizing education have real commonalities too.  Here is the opening in Ed Next:

What should we call the growing number of learning environments that lie between traditional homeschooling and conventional, five-days-a-week, brick-and-mortar public and private schooling?

So-called “microschools” and “hybrid schools” have gained enormous popularity in the past few years. The first Prenda microschool opened in Arizona in 2018, and Prenda has since served nearly 10,000 students. The King’s Academy, a hybrid school in Georgia, started with just over 100 students and currently serves more than 1,000.

Yet these increasingly common terms do not capture the breadth of this burgeoning K–12 movement. Teachers, families, communities, and education entrepreneurs are creating many variations on the micro and hybrid themes. And still more new arrangements have been made possible by a combination of homeschool laws, education savings account programs, and a general societal desire for more-bespoke education. Often these schools are given catchall descriptors such as “unconventional,” “nontraditional,” or “alternative.” Yet none of these terms fully describe the schools in this sector.

Go read the Education Next version first, then come bac and finish this one.  Here, I wanted to show some bits that did not make the final cut – first, some of the parameters I set for myself in trying to come up with a term, and second, some ideas for names that I considered but rejected, and my reasoning for each one.

B-Sides

First, what were my rules?

What exactly might we call this school sector that exists between homeschooling and conventional schooling?

Some additional lines are important for defining the universe of schools we are considering here.  I suggest three requirements for a new term:

• The term should define the sector of schools that diverges from the norm either in terms of time (hybrid schools) or size (microschools), or both.

• The term should not be just as easily applicable to conventional (five-day, brick-and-mortar) private or charter or magnet schools.

• The term should not have strong left- or right-leaning political connotations; it should be reasonably acceptable to schools no matter their political, religious, or curricular approaches. 

Second, what were some of the ideas I rejected in this process?

Potential Terms for this school sector we are seeking to name

Given these existing terms, origin stories, and definitional limits, the tech world, given its entrepreneurial history of creativity and expanding boundaries where many new companies began as “startups" by one or two people working in literal home garages, might be a place to look for names.  Many of these schools we are seeking to name are truly “startup” operations. But that word startup only applies for so long, and if the idea for at least some of these schools is to be lasting institutions, then the shelf life of the word “startup” is relevant for them for an even shorter amount of time.  Many (if not most) tech projects also have the explicit aim of eventually either selling out to a larger company or becoming as large as possible themselves.  These moves to sell-out or become as large as possible are quite literally the opposite purpose of most hybrid and microschools, who intend to either serve one very small community forever, or to branch out to others while keeping each location small and remaining faithful to their original mission. Colossal Academy in Ft. Lauderdale, for example, is a small project-based school that is helping others open similar campuses, while the original location stays small. Aquinas Learning Centers, a Catholic network founded in northern Virgina, does the same.

Local farmers’ markets might be another place to look for sector names.  These are community-based, physical places.  They’re not always open every day.  They have an interesting left-wing/right-wing vibe that is also very present across this school sector we are seeking to name.  “Market schools,” though does not sound quite right.  In some ears it will sound too much like “free market schools.” While this is probably actually a sound description, it will turn some people off.  And most people involved with these schools are not creating them to build large marketshares as education entrepreneurs (though they actually are entrepreneurs in some senses); they’re building these schools to support their own communities, however they define those.  

“Cottage schools” is a term that refers to some of these schools, and it could be a good choice.  But this term does not work as well for the whole sector in part because it already usually refers to more co-op like organizations, and in part because “cottage” implies a smallness of size that might not be relevant to a school of a few hundred students.

Some other possibilities: the term “flexischools” was used by Schafer & Khan in 2017, but this term mostly refers to schools offering mostly a la carte courses, rural schools, and schools for students with disabilities – all exceptional circumstances, and the term itself does not quite fit the purpose here.  Other terms that might be used – “network schools,” or “affinity schools,” to give two more possible examples, could also be applied to many private or charter schools, or else do not fit for other reasons (many hybrid and microschools are one-off entities, and not part of any network, for example). 

The term “craft schools” already exists and tends to refer to entities meant to teach particular arts and crafts – blacksmithing, woodworking, glass and metal work, etc. Microschools and hybrid schools are not necessarily schools where kids go to learn particular artisanal crafts.

After rejecting all of these, you’ll see in the Education Next piece that I also separately reject “community schools” and “craft schools” (although I liked that one a lot), and land on “community crafted schools”/ “community crafted education.”  Partly I am tired of typing “hybrid and microschools” and partly I think we will continue to see variations that don’t quite fit even either of those names, and so we should look for a term that fits new varieties too.  And I do think the terms “community crafted schools” or “community crafted education” both meet all of the three rules I set at the start. I am very curious to hear reactions!