What distinguishes places like Fred Hutch is not just advanced science, but disciplined systems: shared clinical protocols, team-based decision-making and constant feedback between research and practice. These are the hallmarks of precision medicine, fueled by advanced diagnostics, data and generative artificial intelligence, and they are delivering transformative results in treating diabetes, heart disease and cancer. AI-assisted screenings are catching aggressive cancers earlier, as new models can analyze previously unexplained genetic mutations to forecast health risks.

Of course, education is not medicine. Learning is not governed by biology alone, student outcomes are harder to define and schools have nothing like the professional norms or accountability structures of clinical care. But that is the point: Precision medicine began with a refusal to accept broad variations in care when better evidence and tools were available.

AI is already in classrooms across the country, but mostly to help teachers save time or give extra support to children with disabilities or language barriers. What if all students could attend schools that said, “We treat learning like it’s your learning,” offering precision education: a supportive environment harnessing human expertise and technology to deliver truly customized solutions for every child?

That reality is closer than we think. AI gives educators the potential to understand, diagnose and respond to students’ learning needs with a specificity that was previously impractical at scale. It can rapidly surface a child’s learning gaps and strengths in math and recommend targeted interventions. But that information alone does little; AI’s power lies in being embedded in professional workflows, guiding adults toward specific, evidence-based actions and tracking whether those measures improve learning over time. To effect genuine change, AI must be accompanied by a reevaluation of the systems that contain it.

AI could improve instructional quality, for example, but only alongside a broader rethinking of the teacher’s role. Rather than incrementally improving one educator’s ability to reach every student, AI could serve a team of instructional professionals, each with specialized expertise. AI tutoring tools can help students fill learning gaps, but even the best have low persistence rates. Their effectiveness depends on student motivation or intensive adult oversight. Without structural change, AI risks exacerbating achievement gaps rather than closing them.

And perhaps most importantly: Far too many students simply don’t like school. They find it boring and irrelevant, struggle with mental health and lack strong adult mentors. Families, educators and policymakers are calling for something more joyful. All of this points to a fundamental design choice: whether AI will reinforce the existing classroom model or become the backbone of a genuinely different support system for young people.

Personalized learning was intended to accomplish this. But despite its popularity, it too often amounts to little more than self-paced software or playlists of digital content, mired in low expectations and disconnected from evidence-based teaching. CRPE’s of personalized learning schools show how easily these efforts become convoluted, mushy and unmoored from rigor. 

Precision learning is fundamentally different. It would enable educators to use technology, data and evidence to identify exactly where a student is struggling, which interventions are most likely to work and how to deliver them effectively and equitably. This is a commitment to evidence over intuition, to shared professional standards over individual preference, to accountability for results rather than good intentions. Personalization asks educators to adapt and give students more choices. Precision demands that state, district and school leaders change how decisions are made, implemented and evaluated. 

Rather than ed tech and personalized learning initiatives that fail because they aren’t grounded in evidence and continuous improvement, education needs an accountability infrastructure that looks more like medicine’s standard of care: a shared professional and ethical baseline for which treatments must be offered. In medicine, deviating from those standards can mean malpractice. Education has no comparable expectation, and introducing one would be uncomfortable. It would force hard conversations about professional autonomy, preparation and responsibility when students fail to learn. But avoiding those discussions carries costs: persistent inequity, uneven instructional quality and the normalization of low achievement.

The effort must start with defining what precision learning means and holding educators and developers accountable for its implementation. Ed tech developers should embed decades of learning science into their designs, just as medical software embeds clinical guidelines. Schools of education should lead the field in conducting and disseminating state-of-the-art research and training educators to use it, much as medical schools run clinical trials and keep practitioners current. And just as the federal government once seeded the Human Genome Project, a reimagined Institute for Education Sciences could lead a national effort to map the “learning genome” — a shared, continuously updated knowledge base of what works, for whom and under what conditions.

States have a unique role in creating the conditions for precision learning at scale. Specifically, they can:

Build precision learning consortia that bring together educators, researchers and ed tech companies to develop and test solutions and share results publicly, These consortia should make targeted investments in organizations with a proven track record of designing and implementing these approaches.

Align incentives and accountability systems so precision learning becomes a professional expectation, not an option. Just as medical boards define best practices for care, states could convene researchers, practitioners and technologists to establish precision learning protocols, perhaps starting with reading and math, where the evidence base is strongest.

Rethink the role of the teacher. In a precision learning model, “the teacher” would no longer be a single role expected to diagnose, design, deliver, remediate, counsel and motivate simultaneously. Schools would instead deploy differentiated teams, with some adults specializing in diagnostics and data interpretation and others in instruction, mentorship or intervention, all supported by AI systems that surface evidence and guide decisions. This is more a labor redesign than a technological shift, requiring that states fundamentally rethink the role of the teacher, including certification requirements and salary schedules. Precision learning would replace the one-teacher-does-it-all model with specialized teams, backed by AI that surfaces insights and supports better decisions. 

Ensure all schools have the resources, devices and staff training needed for participation in precision learning. The greatest risk of AI-driven precision learning is that it deepens divides if access is limited to affluent schools. In medicine, precision treatments began as elite offerings before standards and insurance systems made them broadly available. Education must skip that inequitable phase entirely.

If a patient were dying and a proven treatment existed, it would be unthinkable for a doctor to withhold it. Yet in classrooms, students fall further behind every day, even when research-based solutions exist to help them succeed.

In medicine, good intentions are not enough. They must be paired with evidence, standards and accountability. Education deserves the same seriousness, because the stakes are just as high. Precision learning is not about replacing teachers or chasing the next shiny technology. It is about building the professional, moral and structural capacity to deliver what we already know works for every student.

We have much of the science. We have the technology. What we need is the will, and the infrastructure, to bring them together.

AI can’t fix education on its own. But it can provide the precision educators have always needed and never had. If we get this right, we’ll look back on this era as the moment we began treating learning like what it truly is: a vital, individual and human process worthy of the same precision, urgency and care that doctors bring to saving lives.

All 50 states now have competency-based education policies, a striking contrast to just over a decade ago, when . This reflects a growing commitment to recognizing multiple pathways to success, such as industry credentials, dual enrollment and other accreditations beyond the traditional K-12 diploma. 

In an increasingly competitive and ever-changing global economy, the traditional approach is clearly insufficient for the challenges ahead. Competency-based education responds to this challenge by ensuring that students master essential skills and acquire knowledge, rather than just memorizing facts. It equips learners with the durable and transferable skills they will need to thrive in a rapidly changing world. What’s more, people across the country are demanding a shift in what learning looks like. found that 91% of students, educators and parents agreed that there was an opportunity post-pandemic to “reimagine public education to meet children’s academic, social and emotional needs and ensure that all children can thrive.” 

The momentum behind competency-based education reflects this broad desire to fundamentally shift school culture, structure and instruction. 

At Aurora and KnowledgeWorks, we have worked alongside state, district, school and classroom leaders who are dedicated to learner-centered education. To support this movement, our organizations have partnered to launch a new to showcase competency-based education in every state. The tool gives visitors a quick view of how each state approaches these policies and highlights deeper stories of innovation, including:

• Arkansas: Fifteen schools in seven school districts are implementing and focusing on plans that move students ahead when they’ve shown they understand the skill or concept instead of having everyone moving on at the same pace.
  
• Kentucky: Students set goals and make daily decisions about their learning, . Teachers act as coaches and help students develop skills for lifelong learning
  
• Nevada: Co-created framework in partnership with educators, students, community members and policymakers. The portrait reflects a shared vision for future-ready graduates and outlines the skills, knowledge and mindsets they will need by the time they graduate to succeed in college, career and life.
  
• Utah: Principals and educators worked together to that could be used to measure progress toward the 13 characteristics outlined in the Portrait of a Graduate framework. This helped both students and teachers, spanning preschool to postsecondary, understand the ultimate learning goals, track growth over time and identify what would be needed to reach the desired outcomes.
  
• Wisconsin: Schools like the High School of Health Sciences in Kettle Moraine are providing and leveraging community partnerships with hospitals, veterinary clinics, fire stations and more to give students real-world experiences.

• Wyoming: A statewide develop and implement instructional practices and assessments that are more responsive to students and aligned with the Profile of a Graduate framework.

For states that don’t have such programs, there’s no need to try implementing them alone. KnowledgeWorks, for example, offers a that state leaders can follow to effectively advance competency-based policies, including those that are captured in the new map. Its suggestions include: 

• Establish a clear and shared purpose, starting with a statewide Portrait of a Learner or Graduate framework, to define the essential skills students will need for future success
  
• Develop policies that remove restrictive funding limits, rigid assessment requirements and credits awarded based on time spent in class that hinder local innovation
  
• Design assessment systems to track mastery and inform learning progression
  
• Identify indicators to measure impact, defining metrics that will be used to gauge success and drive continuous improvement
  
• Support educators and students by providing professional development, coaching and resources that will help teachers shift their practices to those that are more student-centered.

The education systems of the future will be characterized by student-centered learning that occurs both in school and in the community, guided by shared visions of what students should know and be able to do. The adoption of policies to support competency-based teaching and learning across all 50 states marks a significant shift in how education and success are viewed in this country. But long-term change will require ongoing collaboration among policymakers, educators and communities to develop the necessary infrastructure for this kind of transformation to take shape and sustain.  

An education system that truly prepares every student for success is possible, but only through collective effort and a shared commitment to innovation.

Armed with $190 billion in COVID-19 recovery funds from the federal government, nearly every state spent at least some of it on tutoring, with more than half adopting standards to ensure districts and schools used high-dosage, high-quality programs. During the 2022-23 school year alone, of federal pandemic aid on tutoring, on top of an estimated spent by districts on such efforts. 

Five years after the pandemic dramatically disrupted learning, with the federal aid now spent, America’s education system is still struggling to regain lost ground. The latest reveal persistent academic gaps, underscoring the urgent need for effective interventions.

Amid all the setbacks, tutoring has broken through as one of the few recovery strategies that states and districts are strategically embedding into their budgets—expanding, refining, and solidifying programs that, in some cases, have delivered significant gains in student achievement. 

Even in these politically divisive times, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Every student deserves the opportunity to build foundational skills in reading, writing, and math that will serve them through life. With nearly $1 trillion spent on education each year, we must ensure that investment translates into real educational opportunities that lead to good jobs and meaningful lives. 

High-dosage tutoring delivered during the school day from a consistent, well-trained tutor is the . In Rapid City, South Dakota, a group of retired teachers come to Title I schools each day to work as tutors, one-on-one with predominantly indigenous students. In Harrison, Colorado, paraprofessionals tutor students — and become so inspired by the academic success that they become full-time teachers themselves through innovative educator apprenticeship models. In Springfield, Ohio, aspiring teachers tutor local elementary school students building their skills while shoring up those of their students.

Over the past two decades, our organizations have dedicated significant resources to studying, supporting, and scaling this approach. Not only are we optimistic about what we are seeing, but we are firmly convinced that school systems, policymakers, and philanthropic leaders must double down on their commitment and investment to this transformative work.

This belief is driven by significant progress and success across several key areas: continued on tutoring outcomes; from parents and teachers and schools; viable paths to affordable delivery at scale; new models that solve of time, people, and money; better understanding of policies and data systems that improve tutoring delivery; and a with the potential for significant breakthroughs.  

High-dosage tutoring is uniquely effective in helping students learn, including when implemented at scale. A by University of Virginia researcher Beth Schueler, along with Brown University’s Matthew A. Kraft and Grace T. Falken, analyzed 282 randomized control trials and found that large-scale tutoring programs yield months of additional student learning per year, though effectiveness diminished as programs scale beyond 1,000 students. Yet even large-scale tutoring results were stronger than educational interventions like summer school, class size reduction, and extended school days. Additionally, of continue to find , even in challenging learning conditions. 

Importantly, schools and parents want more tutoring in their schools. The most of school leaders found that high-dosage tutoring implementation increased again last year, growing from 39% of schools in 2022-23 to 46% of schools in 2023-24. This is not just a fleeting post-pandemic trend — schools are investing in tutoring even as federal relief funding winds down, because tutoring is wildly popular with parents. In Louisiana, high-dosage tutoring outperformed every other education policy polled, with an astonishing 90% approval. 

Despite our prevailing partisan politics, the push for more tutoring comes from red and blue states, from city systems and rural counties – with whether tutoring is the next big bipartisan school reform. 

Arkansas passed regulations outlining the characteristics of quality tutoring and requiring student-level reporting of delivery so that the state can manage implementation, elevate best practices, and support struggling schools. Baltimore City Public Schools is currently tutoring over 10,000 students through partnerships with external tutoring providers and a district-run program using paraprofessionals. 

Pitt County, North Carolina partnered with to provide critical tutors to multilingual learners, using technology to deliver services in students’ native languages, including even American Sign Language, in rural schools. And New Mexico is expanding virtual middle school math tutoring statewide, breaking down barriers to access for students in rural areas. 

Federal pandemic aid may be gone, but state appropriators are putting money where they’re seeing progress: Virginia added for academic recovery, with on high-dosage tutoring for its students who are furthest behind academically. Maryland stood up a $28 million middle school math tutoring program for underserved students. And in state funds last year for intensive tutoring.

Finally, we are at the very beginning of a wave of innovation fueled by emerging technologies like AI. Innovation through has helped of tutoring as well as . The months of learning from past studies will soon come from without losing the ability to personalize tutoring sessions, support tutoring quality, and maintain program effectiveness in student learning. 

Collectively, our organizations, and other like-minded organizations such as the National Student Support Accelerator and Saga Education, have supported tutoring delivery to hundreds of thousands of students, have launched and published dozens of studies on tutoring, and have infused tens of millions of dollars into the space to spur innovation and capture learning. But we still have more work to do. 

Five years after the pandemic began, students remain behind where they should be, and the gaps between Black and Latino students and their peers are . Federal relief funding that allowed districts to try new things has run out. And yet the evidence has never been clearer: High-dosage tutoring works and can help millions of students. But without action, this critical intervention risks being lost to politics, budget cuts and inertia. There is with continued investment in high-dosage tutoring. 

We must double down on evidence-based strategies, reject fatalism, and embrace the urgency of this moment. The latest NAEP scores confirm what’s at stake. States, districts, and funders must step up to ensure that every student who needs tutoring gets it. This isn’t just an investment in students – it’s an investment in our country’s future.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provide financial support to Accelerate and The 74.

Nearly 15% of school-age children in the Meade School District — 504 students — are enrolled in alternative instruction instead of attending a state-accredited private or public school.

Because state funding is partially based on enrollment, those children would bring roughly $3.5 million in funding to the district if they attended a public school.

That’s money that could cover staff salaries and resources, maintenance and repair of school buildings or extracurriculars, said Heath Larson, executive director of Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

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The bowls of Caesar salad, spaghetti and chicken piccata are all made with fresh ingredients. And each bowl has tongs for the half dozen students and a teacher at each table to serve themselves as they rotate the wheel. 

Two students at the Ohio school step to the front of the cafeteria to present what the school’s founding principal A.J. Stich calls the school’s “grace” — its goals for each student when they become adults.

One of the two students reads each line aloud, then pauses for the 102 kindergarten through fourth grade students in the cafeteria to repeat it: 

Each day, I will work to achieve our Age 27 goals:

Being physically and mentally healthy,

Demonstrating character and integrity,

Preparing for a career and for financial independence,

And living my own definition of success.

May this food help our bodies;

We are thankful for the hands that made it and for the friends we share it with.

Family-style meals and the daily repetition of goals for their adult lives are one of several ways the Greater Dayton School sets itself apart from a typical school. 

A private school that only accepts low income students, Greater Dayton is designed to help them with more than academics. Its goal is to let students set their own course in life and be financially independent and healthy as adults, not just graduate from high school or go to college. 

Launched in the fall of 2022, the Greater Dayton School has income limits for all students, other than children of staff who may also attend. The school has a health clinic for students, extended school days until 5 p.m, two teachers in every classroom, individualized learning plans, and even schoolwide toothbrushing times.

Initially housed in a former Salvation Army administration building, the school hopes to grow to about 400 students from preschool to eighth grade. It’s still an experiment that’s too young to show a track record of success, but it already has a buzz around the city and drew Ohio’s Lt. governor to the grand opening of its new, much larger $50 million building this spring

“It’s really about the whole child, not just about academics,” said Larry Connor, a Dayton real estate developer whose and foundation is funding most of the school. “Make no mistake, academics is important. But their physical health and their mental health is integral in obtaining good academic outcomes.”

Though the school is partially funded by state tuition vouchers of $6,165 per student, Greater Dayton spends $30,000 a year or more per student, with Connor and his company’s foundation covering the gap.

“Our objective is to build a model that can be replicated in cities throughout the United States,” Connor said. “We’re trying to take a really long term view, because every community in America has this type of need.”

Stich and other school leaders consulted successful schools across the country such as Meeting Street Academy in Charleston, S.C., Christina Seix Academy in Trenton, N.J., and the Waterside School in Stamford, Conn. as they built their plan to offer all the supports research says low-income kids need.

The school creates personal education plans for each student and lets them set much of their plan for each day — what the school calls their playlist — to give them ownership of their learning. 

It limits classes to 20 students, then places two full-time teachers in each class. Students do much of their work online at their own pace, using programs from Zearn or Lexia while the teachers work with students individually or in small groups. 

Students are grouped with a few grades in each classroom to intentionally mix ages. Eventually, after it adds grades, the school will group students in classrooms of Prek, K-2, 3-5 and 6-8.

“From an academic standpoint, I think it’s wonderful,” said Brittany Wylie, who teaches grades 2-4 as the school grows. “And it’s effective. In years past, if I had a fifth grade classroom, the actual academic level of those students could range anywhere from kindergarten through sixth grade, but I was expected to teach them all just fifth grade curriculum, whether they actually grasp it or not. Here, I feel like I’m actually seeing students understand and digest and then be able to move on.”

Greater Dayton also supports students and families with after school activities until 5 p.m. The extra time solves child care needs of working parents, while also helping close the gap between what suburban and affluent students receive in enrichment activities and what lower income families can afford.

While some students build models of rockets or the Taj Mahal with Legos, others run a store where others buy items with “money” they earn by meeting school goals. Mark Kreider, the school’s financial literacy teacher, oversees the store after spending the day teaching even the youngest students the basics of business and savings.

“There’s no such thing as too early,” Kreider said. “I really think that this idea of building wealth, versus just surviving is such a critical concept for our kids,” said Kreider. “We talk about financial independence…because if you’re in this cycle of paycheck to paycheck, drowning in debt, your options are just incredibly narrow.”

“I don’t know what our kids are going to do when they get older,” he added. “But I just want them to have options. Will they all own a small business? Probably not. But they should at least know how and know how to think about it. It’s almost like a worldview, a perspective. Hey, that’s the dream.”

Students also earn freedom with good behavior, earning the right to work outside the classroom, often on the giant open staircase and terrace with couches that overlook the cafeteria.

Student health is a major part of the school’s mission. Students have more than an hour of physical education each day. Meals are at least 80 percent whole foods, with minimal processing or sugar, other than a dessert only on Fridays.

The school also has created a medical and dental office in the school, run by Dayton Children’s Hospital, so students can receive care as part of the school day, without parents having to take them out of school. Because Medicaid eligibility is a requirement for most students to enroll, the care is already covered.

“When it’s time for kids to go to the doctor, go to the dentist, they walk downstairs, and then they go back to class,” Stitch said.

The school even makes brushing teeth a daily habit by having all students head to the bathrooms at scheduled times to brush, as teachers watch to be sure they do it right.

Mental health is also a priority, particularly since students can come from families facing financial and other challenges. The school has a mental health counselor now for its 102 students and plans to add another as the school grows. 

How much impact the school is having is still unclear. Like other Ohio private schools, its students don’t take Ohio’s state tests. Using NWEA diagnostic test scores and NWEA’s own model for comparing scores to Ohio state tests, the school estimates that students are gaining academically faster than state averages and that 72 percent of its students score as proficient, compared to 45 percent of low-income students in Dayton’s county.

Wylie, who previously taught in the high-poverty Youngstown schools, said the school setting high standards and then rewarding students who meet them creates an atmosphere of accountability and trust that shows students how to thrive.

“We really believe that they can do anything they set their mind to, that they will be successful, and that they are valuable,” she said. “My personal belief is that students from any background, if they haven’t had an example modeled for them, they don’t know any better. They just need the opportunity to be shown.”

That’s because personalized, competency-based learning offers a promising alternative to traditional instruction and has been shown to help accelerate academic gains. Teachers can design personalized learning experiences that target instruction to address specific skills while ensuring that students meet the same academic standards and learning objectives that they would in a traditional classroom.

By better understanding each student’s level of understanding and need, educators can minimize the potential for compounding gaps in essential knowledge and skills. This is critically important, because if students haven’t firmly grasped foundational concepts from years before, their path to proficiency is obstructed, and they are bound to struggle.

In mathematics, for instance, students must first understand how to multiply decimals, which is taught in fifth grade, before they can confidently calculate percentages in seventh.

Miami-Dade Public Schools recognized this early in the COVID-19 pandemic and implemented a that utilized need-driven decision-making to ensure that resources reached individual students at the appropriate levels.

Rather than following rigid timelines and lesson plans, Miami-Dade dedicated extra time to foundational competence. The district developed and implemented strategies to evaluate students based on their level of academic achievement in meeting essential standards in both their current and previous grades.

As a result, while other school districts have struggled to recover from pandemic-related learning loss, has returned to pre-pandemic proficiency with minimal disruption. On the 2023 statewide accountability assessments, which are designed to measure progress toward critical learning benchmarks, Miami-Dade surpassed the state in the proportion of students scoring at grade level or higher in both English and math.

This highlights the importance of utilizing innovative educational strategies to meet students where they are. When young people succeed in school, they become more motivated to explore new topics — and that’s important. A new report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed over 1,000 students, ages 12 to 18, and found that less than half felt motivated to attend school.

Too often, traditional education falls short in helping students see relevance to their everyday lives. Project-based learning is an example of a competency-based learning experience that integrates knowledge with practical applications. This strategy cultivates critical thinking skills that are essential for success beyond the classroom, while helping students deepen their understanding of core concepts by using what they know to solve real-world problems.

For example, a study of a middle school project-based showed, on average, that students performed higher than a matched comparison group on state English Language Arts assessments by 8 percentage points in year two and 10 percentage points in year three. By aligning competencies with academic standards, educators can ensure that students receive a rigorous education that prepares them for academic achievement.

The effectiveness of competency-based methods is evident in performance-based schools like the . Lindsey Unified ranked No. 1 in English Language Arts growth on the 2019 Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium achievement test when compared with 63 similar districts, rising from the 33rd to the 87th percentile. By coupling core content with skills like communication, teamwork and adaptability, Lindsey Unified equips its students with both the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Lindsay Unified is not alone. A RAND study of that participated in a personalized learning intervention found that after two years, students who started in the bottom quartile demonstrated greater gains than peers with similar demographics, prior academic performance and socioeconomic status that were not part of the intervention groups. The 32 schools were located predominantly in urban areas and served large numbers of minority students from low-income families.

Personalized learning cannot improve student outcomes without a major shift in mindset and significant changes in teaching methods. There is no quick fix or simple solution. Education must be reimagined in a way that celebrates each student’s individuality and considers how factors outside of school influence what happens within them. By implementing systems that provide tailored, differentiated support, learning can be made relevant and engaging for students.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded the RAND study and provides financial support to The 74. Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

Those are among the top findings of across 34 states of 100 current microschools and 100 more that were largely aiming to open this school year.

“Microschools can be organized as learning centers supporting homeschoolers, private schools (accredited and unaccredited) and other ways,” the National Microschooling Center states in its report. “What many people feel offers microschooling its transformative potential is that these can be created around the needs of the particular learners they serve.”

Families’ ongoing, pandemic-driven movement away from district public schools has been well-documented and in 2022, the number of children attending a microschool full time was estimated between 1.1 and 2.2 million  

Here are six key findings from the Microschooling Center’s analysis of where the sector is now and where it’s headed:

1. Prospective microschool leaders are more racially diverse than current founders — and many are not teachers

Of the 100 current microschool leaders surveyed, 64% are white, 13% are Black and 5% are Latino/Hispanic. The group of prospective founders included were 55% white, 27% Black and 5% Latino/Hispanic. The remaining percentages of leaders surveyed didn’t disclose their ethnicity.

Don Soifer, chief executive officer of the National Microschooling Center, said it’s a positive shift for microschools to be led by more people of color who more accurately reflect student diversity. A from AASA, The School Superintendents Association, found that 89% of nearly 2,500 U.S. public school district chiefs surveyed identified as white while of U.S. students do.

Prospective leaders also have more varied professional backgrounds than current microschool leaders. About 70% of present founders are either current or former licensed educators while only 52% of prospective founders have a licensed education background. 

Soifer said many people who are launching microschools aren’t going to be the ones teaching children on a normal basis, so they don’t necessarily need a license in education. The increase of leaders with fewer education degrees also tracks with the trend of parents creating their own microschools following COVID-19.

“There was sort of an all-hands-on-deck mentality that came out of the pandemic. We don’t talk about the pandemic that much because I think we’ve moved past that, but it opened up a lot of people’s eyes to what was going on,” Soifer told The 74. “So the professional background of the non-educators that we see leading microschools really does vary, and it really does tend to be people with some sort of entrepreneurial streak in them, who aren’t afraid of taking on something new.”

2. Prospective microshool leaders are relying less on tuition and more on institutional sources and fundraising 

Charging tuition is still the main way microschools fund their operations, but those dollars are becoming less dominant. 

About 88% of the current founders surveyed said their schools were primarily tuition-based while only 62% of prospective schools said they will derive most of their revenue from tuition. Many microschools draw from multiple funding sources.

While state-funded school choice options have expanded in the last few years, the use of that funding source for microschools has increased only slightly — from 17.8% to 19.8% — between current and prospective leaders. 

Instead, nearly a quarter of prospective microschool leaders expect to access their funding from institutional sources, such as an employer or house of worship, or ongoing fundraising. That’s a steep hike from the 12% of microschools currently receiving money from that revenue stream. 

3. The biggest motivator for creating a microschool is to help increase success for underserved students

When asked why they want to create a microschool, 53% of prospective leaders said it’s to provide opportunities to marginalized students and communities. 

The second most common answer was to help struggling children thrive in a different learning environment. Microschools, which 15 students or fewer, offer a lot of flexibility for families because they can be housed anywhere while creating their own schedule and offering their own curriculum.

“We talk about them as entrepreneurs, and that’s fine, because in some ways they are entrepreneurs,” Soifer said. “But those motivations really tell a story about a sector that’s just not like any other sector that I know. We like to talk about them as entrepreneurs, but it’s really not a profit motive that drives them.”

4. Microschools use different learning styles than traditional public schools 

About half of current microschool leaders are using “specialized learning philosophies” as their curriculum framework. This means they use various teaching methods like , or child-centered learning.

Montessori learning is based on student-led and -paced work, while Waldorf learning is a holistic approach to education that focuses more on students’ intellectual and artistic skills.

Nearly 47% of current microschool leaders administer standardized norm-referenced assessments, which are tests that are used to compare students’ progress to other students in a predetermined peer group.

Soifer said some microschools, including the national franchise make these assessments optional.

“It’s interesting. I would say generally speaking, about half the families like it and use it as a metric for their own understanding and about half of them don’t,” Soifer said. “We have microschools that simply don’t believe in norm-referenced (assessments). We have others that simply reject state academic content standards and prefer things like social and emotional growth metrics or academic writing metrics.”

5. A common challenge for current and prospective microschool founders are state regulations

The regulation framework of the education system can get complicated. It’s something microschool leaders are having a hard time with, according to the survey.

About a third of current microschool leaders expressed that they still need help with understanding statutory and regulatory requirements. This is also a problem for 88% of the people were hoping to start their own microschool this school year.

Soifer, whose Las Vegas-based organization was started in 2022 to help microschool founders navigate these challenges, said guidelines can vary widely among states that support school choice and those that don’t. Each state has its own requirements for school regulation — a microschool might have to become licensed, which might require teachers to have a specific level of education in order to teach. Microschools in other states might be required to register as a child care facility, which comes with its own regulations.

“I think it’s going to be sort of an increasing priority for policy decision makers to understand microschooling, whether it be a home-based microschool or microschool that is located in a commercial space or in a space that’s not zoned for a school,” Soifer said. “This can be allowed without putting good pupils and people in harm’s way while they’re trying to serve needs that families want.”

6. The most important student outcomes for future leaders are academic growth, proficiency and happiness

More than two-thirds of prospective microschool owners said in the survey that the most important outcome for students is academic growth.

About 61% said they also consider academic proficiency as an essential outcome of a child attending a microschool. That a child is happy and thriving in a new microschool setting is crucial, nearly 48% said.

“(Microschooling) is becoming more normal and more accepted by mainstream families,” Soifer said. “Charter schools never really got to a point where they could truly be ‘outside of the box’ because they were always measured by the state test and only the state tests. So the ways that microschools are measuring their impact — in different ways that are relevant to their mission — is a fascinating trendline. And I think that is one that’s really starting to take off.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust and the Walton Family Foundation provide financial support to the National Microschooling Center and to The 74.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues its rapid growth throughout industries and culture, educators and leaders in AI gathered at the , part of the College of Education at North Carolina State University, on Nov. 15 for its AI in K-12 Convening to discuss the implementations and potentials of AI in classrooms.

“The things that we are able to do now because of AI is amazing,” said Amanda Moore, district innovation coach for . “And if we can help our students and our teachers envision the things that are possible and use those ideas in classrooms now, just imagine what our classrooms could look like.”

AI relates to technology that can learn and perform intelligent tasks such as data analysis, machine learning, problem solving, and more. Generative AI involves content creation such as language, graphics, or audio.

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AI adoption has grown quickly in schools and across various industries, especially since the launch of ChatGPT, a popular AI language chatbot, in late 2022. Schools have frequently grappled with finding the best course of action with AI, which presenters at the convening agreed is here to stay.

AI carries the potential of many benefits for educators, said Pati Ruiz, senior learning sciences and emerging technologies researcher at . AI can reduce educators’ workloads and cognitive effort, and it allows educators to create interactive and responsive learning material to meet individual students’ needs, she said.

Students may also see benefits, Ruiz said, with features like assisted learning frameworks and personalized learning, though she added it’s important for teachers to maintain control of the automation their students use, remembering they ultimately know what is best for their students.

“We should integrate AI and there are a lot of opportunities for us there, but again, it’s the educator’s professional judgment that needs to be centered and the student and family voices that also need to be considered when we’re making these decisions,” Ruiz said.

Ruiz said it can be helpful to envision AI like an electric bicycle — the human riding the bike maintains control, but they receive technical support from the machine to lessen the burden.

Educators, students, and their families can benefit from promotion of AI literacy, which will help users engage with AI in a productive and responsible manner, Ruiz said.

AI in action in the classroom

AI in the classroom goes so much further than ChatGPT, with many more possibilities for students to learn and grow and explore future career opportunities as well, Moore said.

Moore helped co-create , a game-based curriculum for upper elementary students featuring AI and robotics. The game centers around the task of solving problems related to a decreased population of a penguin species in New Zealand. Moore said using the game, students employ AI to collect and analyze data.

“In that unit, students are not only learning about science, but they’re also learning about how AI works and they’re also building AI models,” Moore said. “So I think what’s really powerful about that is that they’re not just using AI tools, they’re building that AI literacy.”

Moore said lots of advancements in AI are being made in various disciplines, such as utilizing the technology to identify cancer or to identify endangered species. Moore said these strides should excite teachers as they encourage students toward their futures.

“The potential to inspire our students for what they can do — every student should have the ability to imagine their potential and their place in the AI landscape,” Moore said. “They should have that opportunity. And it’s our responsibility to give them that opportunity.”

Ethics as a part of AI literacy

Ruiz discussed the importance of the human using AI maintaining control of what is produced through AI tools, keeping in mind that AI content is synthetic.

“We need to continue valuing the human aspect and the human input that go into the development of this content,” Ruiz said.

Valuing ethics and accessibility remain important parts of developing AI literacy, Ruiz said. Those without access to technology like AI may get left behind. It’s also essential to ensure AI can be accessible to students with disabilities, she said.

Considering biases is important when developing AI literacy for students and educators, as Ruiz said many may view machines as neutral, though the data machines have access to is man-made and may contain biases. It’s important to consider who the technology was made by and why, she said.

“There is bias in the data inherently, and we need to be aware of those biases,” Ruiz said.

Ethics and consideration of who is impacted by technology is also a big player in AI literacy, Ruiz said, as the technology can cause environmental effects from the energy required to run the systems. Human labor is also something for educators and students to consider when using AI as well, Ruiz said, such as those responsible for maintaining data sets.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A network of 20 Missouri school districts is asking the state to implement a more responsive assessment system in order to personalize student learning.

The state Board of Education is considering the districts’ proposal to change testing at its Aug. 15 meeting. If approved, it would be the inception of a shift in Missouri’s education system that will “resurrect student engagement,” district leaders say.

The group of schools, part of the , want to move away from the state’s annual standardized testing to assessments that would be administered multiple times a year. The coalition consists of public school districts and one St. Louis charter school, and includes a mix of rural and urban campuses with a wide range of student performance scores and poverty rates, according to state demographic and . 

During a June state board meeting, district leaders argued that doesn’t provide results in time to be effectively used in the classroom. 

The schools want to instead take advantage of a new pilot waiver program created last year that offers exemptions for districts to bypass specific education laws for up to three years. These “innovation waivers” are intended to boost student performance and benefit educators by giving schools the room to implement unique strategies, said Lisa Sireno, assistant commissioner with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

“The state legislature enacted a statute that allowed the school innovation waivers in 2022 and so we’ve been working on what that process might look like,” Sireno told The 74. “The group with our very first innovation waiver request — the Success-Ready Students Network — kind of grew out of a (state) work group that was looking at competency-based education.”

While 20 school districts in the Success-Ready Students Network have agreed to launch new assessments if approved, other schools will join in the future, said Mike Fulton, one of the network’s facilitators. The plan is for a new cohort of districts to use the innovation waivers each school year until the entire state is involved.

If approved, districts will be able to administer multiple interim tests, but will still have to give the normal annual standardized test until a federal waiver is approved to get rid of it. Fulton said the Success-Ready Students Network will be working on a federal waiver later this year.

Fulton said the state’s innovation waivers are key to, which allows students to move through education at their own pace as they demonstrate a full understanding of the material.

“The whole proposal is designed to support the participating districts in using personalized, competency-based approaches in their learning design,” Fulton told The 74. “The assessment system was designed to provide feedback to both students, teachers, parents and every stakeholder, on how individual students are progressing, how classrooms and schools are doing and how districts are doing as a whole.”

Jenny Ulrich, superintendent of the Lonedell School District, part of the Success-Ready Students Network, said her teachers are always asking for feedback on what they are doing in the classroom, but assessment results are returned too late to make an effective change for individual students.

“We are alone out there trying to figure out how we get real-world learning to our kids,” Ulrich told the state board in June. “This work supports educators. It gives them a platform, an opportunity and the data they need to make good instructional design and decisions for their kids.”

Besides lagging results, around the U.S. for sucking up too much time, being culturally biased and doing little to improve students’ academic outcomes.

Ulrich said instead of the one-time tests, schools will administer tests several times a year and keep results updated online on a district dashboard for teachers to use in real time. The dashboards, which will go live in November, will show a student’s progress in becoming “high school ready” or “college, career and workforce ready.”

“By the end of the 2025-26 school year, it is our aim — our lofty goal — that 100% of our graduates would have an individualized plan,” Ulrich said. “As we reach these goals, all students will be able to declare, ‘I am truly college, career and workplace ready.’”

Fulton said districts will be transitioning to competency-based learning even if the state innovation waivers aren’t approved. Students will progress on evidence of mastery of skills based on state standards, meaning they might move through the K-12 education system faster or slower than their peers.

“That scares people a bit and I understand that,” Fulton said. “That’s a big shift.”

Sireno, the assistant state education commissioner, said the desire to switch Missouri schools to competency-based learning emerged from the learning loss caused by the pandemic. Earlier this year, more than a 100 Missouri districts experienced a drop in their student assessment scores to levels that would typically threaten their state accreditation.

“This will allow students to move at the appropriate pace. So, if some students finish mastery of the content a little bit quicker, if some students take a little bit longer, that’s OK,” Sireno said. “It’s a heavy lift, but it’s important work, and (districts) realize that it can have a real positive impact on student learning.”

Other schools around the nation have been tackling competency-based education as a way to help students recover ground in learning. Idaho, South Carolina, Kansas and Utah are among those that have successfully created competency-based learning systems, according to a .

Some states haven’t done as well implementing competency-based education. In 2018, Maine’s Department of Education had to model several years after it went into effect. The system lacked specifics in things like proficiency and grading, which also sparked parent backlash.

This is a common failure in putting the approach into practice, according to the Missouri education department’s  

“Researchers attribute negative outcomes to schools that implemented (competency-based learning) without clear definitions and expectations, as well as uneven implementation,” the report says. 

When Missouri’s innovation waiver plan was unveiled in June, the entire State Board of Education voiced support for it.

“It is a gift to the students, the parents and families in Missouri, and I would say nationwide,” said Charles Shields, board president. “Others will learn from us nationwide.”

Vice President Carol Hallquist said she believed it will “change the face of education” in Missouri.

Fulton, of the Success-Ready Students Network, said he hasn’t heard from any stakeholders warning against the use of innovation waivers or the switch to competency-based learning, but there is some wariness from the state department about using a model that hasn’t been tested. 

“I think we’re all going at this cautiously. Research is going to sit at the core of this,” he said. “But you have to be willing to be entrepreneurial and innovative and that’s what I think these districts are being asked to do. We need more of that in public education.”

As a professor of early childhood, I have the impact of personalization on learning and social relationships. A personalized education can be beneficial: Educators who move away from rigid, standardized approaches support of every student. But it also has downsides, and AI can accelerate these. Attention must be paid to ensuring AI does not deepen existing biases or take away the possibility for students to make choices and decisions about what they learn.

There are three mistaken assumptions that must be avoided when using AI for learning.

First is the assumption that increasing personalization will always translate into improved learning. Yes, targeted feedback in the form of corrections and questions can support students’ progress from one level to the next, and personalized applications can target the difficulty of a task. In this way, personalization makes learning easier. The problem: People often learn best when faced with a difficult challenge. “No pain, no gain” is a real thing.

Babies by making discoveries, analyzing patterns and forming predictions. Like scientists, they learn most . Effective education is driven by surprise and challenges. 

Personalization can engage students in learning, but engagement alone is not enough. For , students need to be pushed to work harder and think deeper. Put simply, this means combining personalization with diversification. Good teachers focus on the student and the class simultaneously: Both the individual and the collective matter. In practice, this means some content is purposefully tailored to the child’s progress and some is not. In contrast, personalized AI tutors support only individual learning. Instead, they should apply personalized learning in small doses and in strategic moments, rather than use personalization as an .

The second assumption is that personalized education provides students with more choice than standardized approaches do. But people often forget that it matters who is doing the choosing. There is a difference between the learner making the choice and automatic personalization. Amazon’s personalized shopping recommendations are an example of automatic personalization, with minimal user agency. 

Agency may not matter for commercial goals, but it does for effective learning. Educational technologies should give students , though not all the time. Effective learning happens when there is a balance between allowing students to freely choose and automatically assigning optimal content to them.

AI applications also ; this is especially important when students’ agency is involved. For students to make appropriate choices for themselves and teachers to make proper choices for their students, they need to know how AI algorithms make decisions and which data they use. With access to the data the AI system has at its disposal and the data that they feed into the system, students and teachers can better decide whether to accept a personalized recommendation generated by AI. 

The third, somewhat paradoxical, assumption is that personalized AI education will solve educational inequity. Providing students with individualized feedback is certainly hard to achieve in large classes, and AI can help schools compensate for teacher shortages. However, personalized AI tutors are being introduced into an inherently unequal education system that often discriminates against certain ethnicities, genders and disabilities. Just as early applications of for disadvantaging underprivileged people and ethnic minorities, so does personalized education. 

The gap between white and minority students will not automatically narrow through use of personalized AI tutors. that guide teachers in monitoring student outcomes and prescribed, remain essential for high-needs students. Schools may want to jump on the AI bandwagon, but they need to be careful that technologies do not propagate the downsides of personalized education.

For more than three years now, SCVUSD has been working to shift the way it thinks about student achievement and grades as they work to integrate personalized, competency-based learning into district-wide strategies. This includes a move towards competency-based evaluation and standards-based grading. 

Students at Calabasas School, one of five SCVUSD schools, track their own growth in WIN notebooks – a physical binder for kindergarten through fourth graders and a digital document for fifth through eighth graders. WIN stands for “What I Need.” 

Learners set goals for their academic growth in partnership with their teachers — easily pointing to where they started with their reading and math fluency, and where they’re going. The focus isn’t on what they don’t know, but instead on what they don’t know yet. 

The goal is to work towards proficiency. Students progress between levels of understanding, not grades. Level one being the typical starting point for most learners, three being proficient and four indicating mastery. The expectation is that most learners will progress to a three or a four in each standard by year’s end. If not, they can try again until they demonstrate proficiency in that area. What students have learned and still need to learn is prioritized over a single grade at a single point in time.

In a traditional grading system, arbitrary measures such as extra credit, classroom behavior or classroom participation are used to calculate a percentage — an 80 percent in one subject might mean something completely different than it does in another and provides little evidence of what has been learned. By contrast, standards-based grading moves students through a learning continuum and only when the student has demonstrated mastery are they moved to a subsequent level. 

Through ongoing observational and formative assessment, teachers know where their students are and what they need. A teacher might create playlists or choice boards, for example, with five potential activities aligned to a standard. Students then choose three activities based on the options presented for the learners’ current level placement. Students cultivate agency by making meaningful choices about how they’ll practice and how they will demonstrate their learning. Individual activities are complemented with teacher-facilitated small group work. 

The big question on the mind of many educators when considering a move to a competency-based learning approach is often, “How will this actually look and work in my classroom?”

Opportunities to share lessons learned through “inquiry labs” have helped Arizona educators connect theory with practice by seeing it in action. As part of the state-led support system for personalized learning, through a partnership with the Center for the Future of Arizona and KnowledgeWorks, inquiry labs invite fellow educators for site visits where they can observe teaching and learning strategies, ask questions and leverage best practices and lessons learned. 

In addition, the provides pathways for individual educators, schools and districts to adopt, scale and spread personalized, competency-based learning with the goal of shifting systems. The network is a professional learning community made up of educators that are actively pursuing student-centered learning strategies in the classroom. KnowledgeWorks convenes these professional learning communities, offering teachers the support and professional development they need to try new things, prototype new strategies and shift their role in the classroom.

Martina Alvarez, a former math teacher at Rio Rico High School in SCVUSD, once skeptical of standards-based grading, is now its greatest advocate. After recognizing that in the traditional grading model assigning a failing grade had finality – the learning had ended, but the gaps in knowledge remained. By contrast, with standards-based grading, when a student earns a 1 or 2, they work with their teachers to create a learning plan to figure out what needs to be done to reach proficiency. Learning becomes cyclical, rather than a linear path students progress along whether they understand the content or not. Solving algebraic equations becomes a nearly impossible feat if you don’t first know how to multiply and divide fractions. 

For Yuki Carrillo, a third-grade teacher at Calabasas School, standards-based grading has also been well received by parents. While Carrillo is available to answer questions, student-led conferences allow students to explain their strengths, where they have gaps in learning, and most importantly, what comes next to advance along the continuum. It’s not a secret what they’ll be tested on, everyone has a shared understanding of what needs to be learned in order to advance to the next level. 

Schools that change the way they think about grading must also change how they acknowledge academic achievement. Instead of the typical honor roll ceremonies, Calabasas School invites families to recognize their child’s academic growth, proficiencies and MAP scores. 

In addition to a traditional certificate of achievement, elementary students embellish school ceiling tiles with painted handprints including their names and the year they will graduate. Middle grade students select a rock from the campus’ landscape and paint it before returning it to one of the campus’ many pathways. Their efforts feel tangible.

There’s a powerful feeling of hopefulness when you see children learning who they are and what they need to succeed. It makes you wonder why it can’t be like this in every school, for every student.

These realizations are reinforced by recent data from the 2021-22 Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment, California’s standardized test. Scores released from schools across the state late last year show that many students who were enrolled in classroom-based schools suffered profound learning loss when in-person learning paused in March 2020. It’s no surprise that many of these students floundered as traditional learning models were turned upside down and large school districts struggled to pivot overnight in finding new ways to help kids learn from home. 

But bucking this trend, state scores also revealed that many students at ‘Personalized Learning’ public charter schools did not experience learning loss during the pandemic school years — an accomplishment that points to these schools’ agility in rapidly adapting to school site closures and immediately offering rigorous education in alternative settings.

Specifically, the percentage of students enrolled in schools that are part of (APLUS+) network who met or exceeded the English Language Arts (ELA) standard increased from 47% in 2018-19 to 49% in  2021-22 and the percentage of students who met or exceeded the math standard increased from 29% to 31% . On the other hand, comparing those same time periods, the percentage of students at K-12 district schools who met or exceeded the ELA standard decreased from 51% to 47% and the percentage of students who met or exceeded the math standard dropped from 40% to 34%.

These numbers demonstrate that students at APLUS+ member schools thrived during the pandemic and made huge gains in meeting grade level proficiency. Their ability to learn outside a classroom remained integral to their success and their schools did not miss a beat when in-person learning shuttered in the spring of 2020. What’s more is that these ‘Personalized Learning’ public charter schools that focus on the whole child did not need to implement band-aids such as grade inflation during the pandemic. Instead, they were laser focused on maintaining student engagement by providing flexibility in how and what students learned. APLUS+ member schools have been – and continue to be – focused on student’s individual academic and social emotional needs. This involves incorporating students’ interests and passions into their learning while ensuring they meet state standards.

All public schools have student performance stats available, and any parent can request access to this data. This test information is critical because parents deserve to know how their children are progressing, both individually and compared to their peers. This data is also instrumental in helping parents make informed decisions about the type of school and education delivery method that is best suited for their child, and helping them hold their schools accountable. 

Beyond families, it is equally important for policymakers to have a good grasp of this data as it shows that not all students succeed in a rigid classroom-only setting. The pandemic taught us that flexibility in education delivery is essential for many students’ success, and I urge legislators across California to draw upon this lesson as they start crafting policies and funding decisions this year that will impact students’ education throughout the state. 

I also hope new legislators now seated in Sacramento and school board members across both the state and the country take time to understand both the demographics of students in their district and which schools are successfully closing existing achievement gaps. Both quantitative and qualitative data is critical for understanding the unique needs of students and this information is essential to ensuring that all public school students are treated — and funded — equally.

As California’s COVID state of emergency recedes into the past, I hope we are able to identify and embrace some of the key lessons learned during the pandemic: Not all students learn the same way — but all students deserve the opportunity to succeed.

“[My daughter] needs social interaction,” she said in an interview. “I know there’s other kids out there that need social interaction. I know there’s working parents out there that could use the support of somebody like me, and then it just snowballed from there.”

Running a learning pod turned out to be a transformative experience for Samantha. “This is probably the most professionally satisfied I’ve ever been in my entire career,” she said. And she felt there was no turning back: “[After] this experience, I’m not going back to formal K–12 education. I can’t. You can’t. I want to be able to replicate what I had here. You can’t do that in public school.” 

Samantha was not alone in her sentiment. This spring, when CRPE researchers surveyed and interviewed teachers who worked in learning pods, we were struck by how many preferred these learning environments over their prior schools.

The learning pods that proliferated during the 2020–21 school year were unplanned educational experiments that often looked far different than a standard school. They took place in living rooms, community centers, and even neighborhood parks. Many were started by parents who either hired professional educators or took on the role of teacher themselves, often as a complement to their regular school’s remote instruction. 

Learning pods were generally small, with most averaging about six students, though they could still be logistically complicated to run. Along with her daughter, Samantha hosted four other elementary schoolers ranging from first to fourth grade and juggled their remote schedules, which shifted throughout the year between synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid in-person varieties. “We’ve literally been on nine different schedules since we started,” she said during our interview last March.

Despite their complexity and untested nature, instructors found a lot to like about learning pods. According to a majority of the thirty-five pod instructors we interviewed, teaching in pods was emotionally fulfilling and intellectually satisfying. Like Samantha, many explicitly said that they were not interested in returning to a traditional school setting or—if they did not have previous teaching experience—pursuing a career in formal education. 

What made their experiences in learning pods so positive and their take on traditional education so pessimistic? The answers could point the way toward a more humane and sustainable teaching profession.

Teaching in pods — The joy of autonomy, creativity, and connection

The reasons educators we interviewed enjoyed their pod experience centered on two main factors: the development of close relationships and the professional autonomy to shape what, when, and how their students learned.

Pod instructors frequently cited their ability to get to know their students well. One pod instructor gushed about the experience: “Being able to closely watch them grow and give them so much feedback and all my attention and so much love and just be a close mentor for them. . . .  I don’t think I would have expected to feel as just completely fulfilled from this year as I have.” 

Many instructors also said that having control over their time, curriculum, and lesson design significantly contributed to their satisfaction with the work. One teacher put it succinctly, saying “the freedom to be creative in how I present the material, even what material to present, that’s been the most fun for me,” while another observed that “much like the kids I’m enjoying the freedom of taking things in different directions. It’s so nice as a teacher to . . . just have the gift of time.”

Interestingly, a few instructors made an explicit connection between this autonomy and the strong relationships they had built with the parents who hired them. “I wish this could be in my actual long-term job . . . I just have loved it,” one instructor said. “I’ve loved the families. I’ve loved getting to know the kids. I’ve loved the freedom and flexibility and the respect that the parents have for me.”

Underlying both the relationship development and instructional flexibility was one of the essential characteristics of all pods: their small size. Yet, size was only one factor which allowed for instructors to be more responsive to students’ needs. As Samantha put it: “I can tell you every single one of their strengths. I can tell you their weaknesses. I can tell you what’s going to set them off. I can tell you what’s going to make them happy. I’ve never been able to do that before in my life, except with my own child, and that’s super powerful.” 

Teaching in school — Constrained, overburdened, and underpaid

Whether pod instructors had firsthand experience as teachers or were outsiders to the profession, their sentiments about formal education were generally poor. In fact, much of their reflection on the positive aspects of learning pods were expressed in contrast to school. 

When parents praised Samantha—the pod instructor mentioned earlier—for giving daily feedback on each of their students, she thought it indicated a major inadequacy of the traditional school experience: “I don’t think that that’s the treatment that they are used to getting from an educator. These are highly invested parents . . . and they still don’t feel like they’re a part of their kids’ education.”

The impression these instructors had of teaching in schools was one focused on constraint, control, and monitoring—and specifically in ways that were not central to student learning. 

One pod instructor who planned to return to the classroom lamented that even elementary school teachers will have to forgo many of the creative, exploratory activities they were able to do in pods because of perceived accountability pressures, like the rush to make sure every student was meeting state standards: “You literally can be an effective teacher making a real positive difference in a child’s life but ultimately there are guidelines, there are certain expectations, there’s certain things each teacher has to meet and produce.” 

Along with several other pod instructors, she noted that returning to school would mean “going from making pretty good money in the pod to making terrible money.” That said, money was not always a driving factor. One instructor said, “I would much prefer to do this and work directly with the families and forge the relationships that I have with students now in the future as well, knowing that long-term I may not make as much money. This is the ideal job for me.”

Interestingly, one of the few instructors we interviewed who had a negative experience in a learning pod described it as similar to being a classroom teacher: “When I became the pod teacher, I basically became that system that has failed them. I became this . . . really unappreciated person working a thankless job with hours and hours of work being added on without even anyone batting an eyelid about it.” This comment underscores a particularly bleak view on the way public school teachers are viewed and treated. 

What could a better teaching profession look like? 

While we spoke to a less-than-representative sample of teachers, the combination of positive experiences and an almost uniform resignation that their pod was unlikely to continue beyond the pandemic raises an intriguing question: Why not? What would it look like to normalize learning environments like the pandemic learning communities we studied, provide them with public funding, and make them accessible to all families who wanted to participate—and not just the affluent families with household budgets lavish enough to accomodate teachers for hire?

States should explore policies that allow teachers to operate with a similar level of independence as they had in pods after the pandemic passes. could allow teachers to operate one-room schoolhouses or microschools. Education savings accounts could allow families of all incomes to pay for educational services a la carte, giving a top high school English teacher the option of operating in private practice in the same way a medical specialist could. 

But creating alternatives to the existing system won’t be enough. Policymakers and school system leaders should not accept the normalization of . 

Working in learning pods gave the teachers we interviewed a break from that norm. It showed them they could thrive professionally with greater autonomy. It showed them that they could work flexibly from living rooms or home offices, with more flexible hours—as professionals across the country, including the author of this blog post—discovered during the pandemic. 

It’s no surprise, then, that these teachers reported greater satisfaction. How much better could we do if we designed educational institutions to treat teachers with dignity, encourage their autonomy, honor their expertise, and reward their successes?

There are pockets in public education where this happens. In certain schools and classrooms, teachers build the lessons they’ve always wanted to build, form authentic relationships with students, and design learning experiences around their students’ needs. But tellingly, these pockets often form outside the “core” of the traditional system—in specific schools with peculiar missions, or , in electives or extracurriculars, where teachers enjoy more freedom and students often enjoy more authentic learning experiences. Policymakers and school system leaders should look for these pockets in the school systems they govern, and they should ask what it would take to make the whole system more like that.

Samantha, the pod instructor we interviewed, exhorted school decision-makers to take note of the positive experiences taking place in pods: “I truly hope it does change education, because this is what we need to get back to—not kids being treated like numbers and just pushed through the system.” 

The same can be said for teachers.

Note: We used pseudonyms to protect the identities of teachers we interviewed for this project.

Steven Weiner is a research analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This analysis . 

This summer, as COVID-19 vaccinations increased, it seemed like the major impetus for these efforts was fading from view. We turned to our of 372 school district- and community-driven learning pods to answer this question: How sustainable is the learning pod movement?

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That question has taken on greater urgency as new, more transmissible variants of the virus raise new safety fears — especially for children too young to be vaccinated — and school systems explore options for families who remain hesitant to return to normal classrooms.

Our analysis found clear evidence that a little over one-third of the learning environments we tracked operated through the end of the school year. But we also identified promising evolutions of the original concepts that will continue into next school year. While, in the short term, most students will likely return to some sort of “normal” school model, the lessons of these small learning communities have the potential to persist in new ways.

Public school learning models changed considerably between our and the end of the school year. Though there were school districts that remained fully remote through the school year, by the end of the year had added at least some in-person options which would, in theory, minimize the need for many of the learning pods in our database since many of them were designed to provide in-person support and internet connections to students who were learning remotely. If pods continued after school districts resumed in-person instruction, that offers some evidence families valued the alternatives to traditional classrooms that they provided.

We found that 37 percent of all learning pods identified in the database operated through the full 2020-21 school year (figure 1). Half of the pods were “unclear,” meaning there was no clear end date to the pod-like offerings, but also no clear indication they continued through the end of the year. Only 12 percent had definitively closed at some point before the end of the year. It’s possible that many of the “unclear” pods also ceased school-day support but never updated their websites or social media to make the announcement.

Many of the learning pods that existed before the pandemic as afterschool programs or summer camps switched back to their pre-pandemic programming. For example, as schools opened, some YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, and other afterschool enrichment clubs simply closed their school-day supervision.

But others continued on. Some, like the network, which supported culturally relevant community-based pods across the country for Black and brown students, finished out the school year even as districts in some locations opened for at least some of the year. Some virtual learning centers, such as the city-led options in or , likely continued based on ongoing need as schools reopened late in the school year and some families chose to stay remote.

Even as the school year came to a close, some organizations that emerged specifically to support remote learning are evolving to serve their communities in new formats. For example, , a learning pod that provided whole-student support to BIPOC youth through the full school year, runs a summer program and continues to provide mentorship opportunities for teens. And a program between a local nonprofit and the Jefferson County School District in Kentucky is leading summer learning hubs across the county with staffing support, including counselors and teachers from the school district, to re-engage students and prepare them for the upcoming school year.

These continuing programs provide glimpses of where the learning pod movement might go beyond the pandemic. Six school districts in the organized by CRPE and TNTP are developing plans for pod-like structures in the next school year, with goals like providing space for students to focus on their purpose and passion projects, or to create opportunity for mentorship and serve as a pipeline to develop a more representative teacher workforce. Programs like the new , or the virtual learning pod program launched by provide further examples of efforts to build intentional small learning communities into the future—and seed ideas for school districts that want to find new ways of supporting students who continue with virtual learning options.

In all of these examples, it’s clear some families and communities discovered something during the pandemic that they would like to preserve—different ways to organize school, new approaches to supporting students, stronger ties between school and community. And while many learning pods simply launched to meet a specific need in a crisis — providing in-person support to students learning virtually — that function, too, is likely to remain relevant as school systems across the country create or expand virtual learning options.

Sustaining these crisis responses through the next phase of the pandemic will likely require shifts in funding and staff, as well as changes in policies governing everything from teacher credentialing to the definition of school. CRPE will continue to share lessons we learned from studying small pandemic learning communities. We can’t afford to let the possibilities they uncovered simply vanish.

About this analysis: The CRPE database focuses on learning pods sponsored by school districts and community organizations — as opposed to the learning pods some parents and independent educators offered in their homes. We checked the original sources for each of the learning pods in the database to identify whether the learning pods were still operational as of the end of the 2020–21 school year. As in prior analyses, the data here should be considered an estimate and is not representative of all learning pods across the country. For many learning pods in the database, we could find no updates from the original source. In these cases, we marked that it was “unclear” whether or not the pod continued through the school year. We only coded “yes”—that the pod continued—if we could closely ascertain that the pod was offering services through the end of the year by advertising program end dates, session schedules, or other evidence such as an end-of-year report noting that school-day learning supports had continued.

Alice Opalka is a research analyst with the Center on Reinventing Public Education. This analysis .