“Permissionless Education: Learning from Each Other.”
ISCRC 2023
I just got back from the International School Choice and Reform Conference, one of my favorite events every year. I spoke in a few sessions about some of our published research projects, and also a couple of new ones we have in the works.
One session, though, consisted of a large panel of people, from CRPE, from NHERI, from HSDLA, from Yes. Every Kid., from ACSI, from Vela, from Bellwether, from the Reform Alliance, from EdChoice, and me, put together by a homeschool researcher from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. It was a *large* panel and so we did some semi-speed round answers to a few questions about newly-popular education models like hybrid schools. The session title was “Permissionless Education: Learning from Each Other.”
Below I’ll post the questions we discussed and versions of my own answers.
1. We need and strategies for increasing access and equity. Where is there a need for better access and more equitable access and what are some strategies for achieving?
This is a very common question regarding hybrid schools. People often say that hybrid schools are “the best of both worlds,” because families get to both do homeschooling on some days, and they also have school communities and the good things that come with that. However: Yes, the tuition is lower compared to other private schools, but families still need someone to be home at least part of the work week, and so they’re bearing that cost. I know of a few ways hybrid schools have tried to address access. There are some charter hybrids which have tried to solve this problem by still holding classes three days per week, but then also keeping their building open on the other days. On those days, some students stay home and do their work there, but they also have staff who help the kids who do physically come those days to get their home day work done, sort of like a large study hall. I also know of at least one private group that’s trying to start up a hybrid school in rural Virginia. Their idea is to have their formal class days two or three days at a home site (in this case it’s a church). Some of their students will similarly do their home days work at home. But for those who can’t do that, they’re working to partner with several other local churches to have people come to each of these various other churches on the home days and work with the kids who need it on those days.
2. The regulatory and funding landscape: Where is there regulatory overlap/meaningful distinction between sectors? What are the paths forward?
It’s still a lot of gray area. Lots – most – hybrid schools are built on the contours of their state homeschool laws. I am sure that some nonzero amount of the growth in homeschooling over the past few years is really capturing students who are enrolled in hybrid schools, not fulltime homeschoolers. This can be a good thing for pre-existing homeschoolers though! On any topic, growing your political constituency is a good thing! You have more people who care about your issue and your position is stronger. To the extent hybrids have brought in new families who now have a reason to care about their state homeschool laws, when they otherwise wouldn’t, that can be beneficial to all homeschoolers. But I can see a downside, in that these new families might possibly be willing to grant more concessions than, say HSLDA (which is none). I don’t have any hard examples of this, but I could see it happening. As state legislators are getting more interested in how to deal with hybrid and other microschools, they’re going to hear from a lot of people. Many of these legislators will be trying to help, but how to do that is a complicated question and one that doesn’t have straightforward answers. I think it is important to protect traditional homechoolers from being in the splatter zone of their legislators’ good intentions. Ultimately, I think that when trying to craft bills that affect these school models, it’s probably best to start from your state homeschool laws and work bottom-up from there, rather than conceiving of these new school models as interesting outgrowths of the existing public or even private school landscape.
3. How do we incorporate innovations from other sectors. Where can folks work across sectors? What have folks done in one sector that could be applied to other sectors?
If you were around, or can think back to 20 or more years ago, charter schools were still in the mom and pop phase, with a lot of creative energy. Hybrid schools are still in that phase, and I think maybe with even more of that energy. One of the tough things for people who don’t have a ton of experience in running a school faced 20 years ago as charter startups, though, was just getting up to speed on the basics of running a small nonprofit entity. Hybrid schools are facing that now too, with fewer people looking over their shoulders. That can be good, because it increases flexibility, and charters have become overregulated in my opinion – trying to open a charter school has become something like trying to open a nuclear power plant – but there is a great need for training to help people who want to start a hybrid school learn how to govern a nonprofit entity, how to maintain governance versus management lanes, how to fundraise appropriately, and all of those blocking and tackling sorts of skills. And there’s still a lot of founder’s disease, where the people who have a good idea for a school aren’t necessarily the best ones to run it long term. Conceiving of a great idea for a school, recruiting people to it, having charisma, etc., are vital but they are different skills from hiring, maintaining a building, etc. So a lot of those lessons that charter founders had to learn 20 years ago definitely have some relevance to hybrid schools now, and there is an unmet need for groups to step up and help with that. I know the Herzog Foundation does some great work on this training problem for Christian school startups, but there is room for more.
4. Over the next decade…Where are we headed?
[We actually didn’t get to this question, but here you go:] Hybrid schools aren’t going to eat up a third of the market, but they are going to continue to grow. People are more used to different-looking arrangements. There will be a lot of kids who went to these schools, and then they’ll have kids, and they won’t be able to conceive of sending their kids to five-day schools for 30+ hours per week. There may be some churn, but this model has been around for a while. It is not a response to COVID. The new popularity is a response to COVID, but I think the baseline for hybrid schools has permanently shifted higher.