The Roman philosopher Seneca is quoted as saying that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” When the coronavirus hit Arizona and parents were looking for options outside of their closed traditional public schools, they were lucky to find a proliferating network of microschools. But that lucky moment was years, if not decades, in the making.

In a new paper for the Manhattan Institute, I examine the phenomenon of microschooling in Arizona. After hearing from several parents who found microschools to be a godsend after they grew frustrated watching their school boards and administrators dither and prevaricate on COVID policies, I wanted to answer a basic question: Why here?

Executive Summary

Microschools, small schools that educate five to 15 students, have been among the most interesting recent developments in the K–12 reform world. Neither homeschooling nor traditional schooling, they exist in a hard-to-classify space between formal and informal learning environments. They rose in popularity during the pandemic as families sought alternative educational options that could meet social-distancing recommendations. But what they offer in terms of personalization, community building, schedules, calendars, and the delivery of instruction will have appeal long after Covid recedes.

One of the most prominent microschooling networks, Prenda, was founded in 2018 in Mesa, Arizona’s third largest city. It has experienced dramatic growth largely because of the way it attracts parents like those interviewed for this paper. It is no coincidence that Prenda’s emergence and expansion took place in Arizona, which has been a national leader in education innovation for a generation. Arizona’s cultural and policy environment foster and promote experimentation, diversification, and parental choice. The state’s thriving charter-school sector—no state has a higher percentage of students in charters—has developed an expansive, varied set of choice-based public schools. For decades, Arizona’s traditional public schools have been part of the state’s open-enrollment system, making more than a thousand district-run schools part of a choice system. And Arizona has been a national leader on private-school choice, passing the nation’s first “education savings account” program and today, via an array of state programs, enabling more than 100,000 students to access nonpublic schools.

This paper explores microschooling in the Grand Canyon State through parent interviews, a review of decades of public-policy reform and K–12 political battles, and an assessment of student performance data. A key lesson—one that reform-minded advocates in other states should consider— is that one cannot understand microschooling in Arizona without understanding Arizona.

Taking the Leap

Sophia Ortega is a mother in Buckeye, Arizona. In January 2020, her two children were enrolled in a high-performing, well-known charter school. But she was not happy with the school.

Her boys are, in her words, “energetic, rambunctious, and smart,” but too frequently, in their school, the first two characteristics were in tension with the third. A friend who had already pulled her children out of school had heard about Prenda, a small but growing network of microschools. Though Sophia was skeptical, PrendaCon, a gathering of Prenda educators and families, was taking place in two days, so she and her friend decided to check it out.

Prenda founder Kelly Smith’s opening presentation had Sophia hooked. The core values of Prenda aligned with her beliefs about parenting and education. The structure of the school day and the educational environment were what she wanted for her children. She was still hesitant— this would be a new approach to schooling—but the pandemic and the challenges that she faced as a single mother juggling full-time work and two children learning at home persuaded her to take the leap.

In September 2020, she started as a guide (Prenda’s term for a teacher) in a microschool hosted in her friend’s house. That school now enrolls seven students, six boys and one girl, ranging from kindergarten to sixth grade.

On a typical day, students arrive at 9 a.m. and play for about 15 minutes. At 9:15, Sophia starts the “Morning Standup,” where children gather in an “awareness circle” to do deep breathing and center themselves before talking about their goals for the day. Students also have an opportunity to share anything they would like with the group.

From 9:30 to 11:15, students work through “Conquer,” a personalized learning curriculum, on their Chromebooks. The microschool has a sectional sofa and blankets, and students are allowed to work wherever they find it most comfortable. Sometimes, students want some space; other times, they practically stack themselves on top of one another. When they need assistance, Sophia is available, though she is just as likely to see students asking one another for help. Conquer covers math, language arts, reading, and writing.

After a snack break at 11:15, the second part of the day begins: “Create,” in which students pursue individual art projects. Prenda offers students a bank of options, but as they age, they can develop their own projects. Students have to identify what the purpose of the project is and plan all the steps. They can present to their classmates if they wish.

The students break for lunch, 12:45–1:30, with a bit of playtime at the end, and then enter the third component of the Prenda instructional model: “Collaborate.” In this module, which runs from 1:30 to 2:20, students work on group projects, particularly in science and social studies. One example from Sophia’s microschool was a project by fourth- and fifth-graders that tracked a day in the life of a Bedouin, the Arabic-speaking nomadic peoples of the Middle Eastern deserts. As a guide, Sophia works to “get them engaged” and “get them excited about leading their own learning,” as she puts it.

When I asked why she got involved with Prenda, Sophia highlighted the key values that anchor Prenda’s work: “Start with heart,” “Figure it out,” “Dare greatly,” “Foundation of trust,” and “Learning > comfort.” “Start with heart” really spoke to her; it matched her parenting style, and she thought that it was missing from her kids’ previous schools. But she also thinks that “a lot of kids are afraid to dare greatly.” Encouraging students to take risks helps them to “stay at their learning frontier” and grow into happier, more confident young people.

Continue reading this article at Manhattan Institute.