Free Republic

Mary Payne always liked the idea of a one-room schoolhouse. She grew up reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series and appreciated the concept of various ages learning together and a more practical, hands-on approach to education. More so, she and her husband Michael weren’t thrilled with their experience with public schools back home in Illinois and had been looking for alternatives for their 5-year-old son after moving to Wyoming. When they heard about something called a microschool in Campbell County, Homestead Learning, they decided to check it out. The couple liked what they saw and decided...

On a spring night in 2022, Ross Hill was trying to get several of his children—he has eight—tucked into bed for the night. *** “They were in tears because they didn’t want to go to school the next day,” said Mr. Hill, a 38-year-old teacher from Florence, South Carolina (pop: 39,958). Whether he knew it at the time or not, Mr. Hill’s family was part of a trend in the United States. A surprising number of children are miserable at school, research shows, and it’s a trend that began before the pandemic. For example, a 2020 Yale study that surveyed...

Micro-schools could be answer for low-income Black students | Commentary https://t.co/yoY6r4qsKe— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) February 28, 2021

It’s nearing Christmas, and everyone knows the best gifts come in small packages. The same can be said of government and of schools, too. Micro-schools are an emerging trend of what Education Next defines as ““one-room schoolhouse meets blended learning and home schooling meets private schooling.”.” According to EdWeek, ““The definition of a micro school is still being hammered out,, but a consensus seems to be coalescing around a few core details: Schools have no more than 150 students in grades K-12; multiple ages learn together in a single classroom; teachers act more as guides than lecturers; there’s a heavy...