I won’t bury the lede: Our newest report, the 2024 National Hybrid Schools Survey is out. This report is based on a survey we did of hybrid schools around the country last fall. It’s our third annual survey, so we are starting to see some trends, and we are able to say that we are getting stable results over time. Here are some of the high-level interesting findings:
The average hybrid school responding to this survey was founded in 2013, with a significant percentage founded in the last 3-5 years.
More hybrid school students than last year were considered to be “homeschoolers” than students enrolled in a school.
The average hybrid school’s tuition is below the average education savings account (ESA) value in states with current ESA programs.
That last bullet, especially, has some important real world applications. In addition to the descriptive information in this piece, we added a couple of experimental questions that will come out as academic papers later this year (we hope). One deals with the concept of how these schools self-define “success,” and we have a working paper version up with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. In that paper, we randomly assigned attributes to hypothetical programs and asked school leaders to identify which ones they considered the “most successful” programs. We find they care about things related to labor market outcomes (things like having a job, having a high-paying job, or being entrepreneurial), civic outcomes (things like voting or giving to charity), and family life (things like marriage and children). They cared most about religion (and this makes sense as most of the schools in our sample were religious), and seemed not to care much about things like college enrollment or test scores. There’s more in the paper; do read the whole thing here.
Do read the whole 2024 survey too. Our previous national surveys (and some other pieces, on teachers and facilities) are all available here.
But other groups are working on research projects too:
VELA just released its newest learner outcomes report. This report finds that responding Vela schools are, typically, even younger than many of the hybrids in our report, but that many of these schools also have some hybrid characteristics – many are both “hybrid” and “micro.” In terms of outcomes – the purpose of this report – the Vela school founders mostly do use some kind of formal assessments to track student progress, but they have a wider view of what student “success” looks like. They measure things like student self-regulation and motivation. So these schools often do use some common standardized test measures, but also though things like “public exhibitions, Socratic discussions, learner-driven contracts and town hall meetings, apprenticeships, and real-world projects and quests.”
The National Association for Public Charter Schools has a new report on charter hybrid schools and other “flexible” options. One of the first papers I did in this area looked at charter hybrid schools. I disagree a bit with some of the framing here – that these models are by their nature exceptions and that five 8+ hour days are best for most kids. That’s the current status quo, but if we started everything over I really doubt we would conceive of the idea of “schooling” that way.
That little bit of disagreement aside, this report does a service by giving something of an overview of charter hybrid schooling and I am glad NAPCS did it. And it prompts a simple but important question that I recently discussed with a school founder: Why don’t we have more of these? We could. If we want to increase access in this kind of model, we probably should have more charter versions. There are going to be local wrinkles (seat time requirements for example), but it seems like those could be worked out in various ways in more places than is happening now.
This report also reminds me that there are lots of echoes of early-mid 2000s charter school days in the community crafted schools sector. The race to pass new laws. The need for a growth in supply. Governance/management challenges, especially among the new crowd of founding groups who aren’t always experienced there. Discussions of accountability. Distrust among regulators (and often reformers) about odd-looking edge cases. One red flag to watch out for, that will signal that the sector has been captured by regulators/entrenched interests, is when regulators and philanthropy and reformers themselves start talking about the need to screen for “high quality” hybrid and microschools.
Last, the Journal of School Choice may just have a special issue on homeschooling, microschools, and hybrid schools later this year, organized by the Homeschool Hub at Johns Hopkins. And a new book from the Institute for Self-Directed Learning is coming out later this year as well.
If you are connected to a school: take our survey when we send it out this fall. Come to the International School Choice and Reform Conference in January (if you hurry, you may even be able to present a project there), and to the 2025 National Hybrid Schools Conference. If you are a researcher (or are someone who needs research done), get in touch!