Pillow started out as a reporter in Tallahassee and has since gone on to work at the Center on Reimagining Public Education (CRPE), Jeb Bush's ExcelinEd, and Step Up For Students, the company that does the go-between money-handling for voucher programs. He's their Director of Thought Leadership these days.
In his response, Pillow properly places the recent history of microschools in the context the pandemic, back when learning pods were a thing. CRPE was big on them at the time, and there were plenty of situations in which they were hugely helpful (there were also some bizarre outliers, like the literal country club pods). Pandemic pods were a pretty direct solution to an obvious problem--school buildings that were closed.
Pillow argues that in the pod process, families discovered other benefits. CRPE did its own survey and found that teachers had way more flexibility and supportive relationships with families, which we could chalk up to really small class composed of handpicked students. Pillow cites a "more humane environments in big and small ways (like getting a snack whenever you'd like).
Also, "adults from more diverse backgrounds, like parents or community volunteers who loved working with kids but lacked a teaching certificate, found new opportunities to share their passions." That strikes as a mixed bag, but mostly it reminds me that the microschool movement in many ways resembles the re-invention of the local school district.
After noting that many folks went back to the advantages of "conventional" schools, Pillow offers an answer to my question of "what problem does microschooling solve?"
But other families latched on to the growing array of microschools that, at least for the educators who created them or the families who used them, solve any number of the problems plaguing public education: youth mental health is in crisis, teacher morale is flagging, voluntary community associations are desiccated, students are often disengaged if they’re showing up at all, bonds of trust between schools and families are fraying.
I have some big questions. Nobody seems to know how many microschools are operating. In 2022, EdChoice cited the CRPE estimate that around 1 to 2 million students were in microschools, which strikes me as the kind of huge number I would expect from folks who want to push microschools as a policy solution.
But Pillow talks about teacher-created microschsools, and I'm super-curious about that concept, because my gut says that such microschools make up a tiny percentage of the total microschools out there. After all, from a teacher's point of view, microschools would present a challenge when it comes to salary and benefits. It's gig economy work, with all the drawbacks that come with it. The State Policy Network (that right wing network of right-tilted thinky tanks and advocacy groups) likes microschools, and they acknowledge three flavors--
Provider Network-- a chain operation like Prenda that will help local folks set up their own "franchise"
Partnership-- a host partner, like a employer, local government, non-profit or church, works with a technical partner that handles the actual providing of the school parts.
Independent-- basically a 21st century one room schoolhouse, "created by an individual, team, or a group of families"
Like the elusive teacher-run charter school, teacher-created microschools don't seem to make up much of the landscape. I'm genuinely curious about how many microschools there are and who started and runs them, but I doubt that anyone is likely to have that information any time soon.
But back to Pillow:
It takes a special kind of cynic to imagine the current blossoming of small learning environments where teachers are free to realize their peculiar vision for what learning could look like and partner with families to make it happen is the brainchild of a few voucher advocates.
There is a lot to unpack here. I may, in fact, be a special kind of cynic. But I'm not sure microschools are in fact environments in which teachers are free to realize their peculiar vision. As I said, I'm not sure there are that many teachers involved. If by "teachers," Pillow means "any person who has been put in charge of a bunch of students," then maybe he's right, but that also suggests a very broad range of peculiar visions. There is a whole oversight and accountability to taxpayers piece missing from microschools.
That said, I do not imagine that microschools are the brainchildren of a few voucher fans.I have no doubt that if I toured a bunch of them, I would find that some, as Pillow argues, full of plenty positive energy, because I strongly suspect that microschools are useful when they are a local solution to a local problem. But I remain convinced that the continued attempts to promote them as a policy solution, which just happen to come mostly from voucher fans, is an attempt to co-opt the idea as a way to plug a policy hole.
Vouchers overcome very few of the real obstacles to school choice (tuition costs, private school selectivity and discrimination, location), but microschools allow everyone from Betsy DeVos to the State Policy Network to wave these problems away by saying, "Well, everyone can set up a microschool!" When Croydon, NH, libertarians tried to defund an actual, functioning school voucher program, microschools were presented as the solution.
I am delighted that Pillow includes Gartner's Hype Cycle. His theory is that microschools are heading into the Trough of Disillusionment, and I think he has a reasonable assessment of some of the challenges they face, like financial stability, reporting student outcomes, special ed, and transportation, but when he adds "other essential infrastructure that ensures they’re accessible to all students" I have questions again, because microschools by their very nature are not about being accessible to all students, but setting up something local for a select group of local students.
If he means that we should find ways to make microschools available everywhere, I think he hits another problem. Microschools may work for very specific, very local situations, but that's what they're good for. They aren't scalable (it's right there in the name). This problem I'd argue, is at the heart of the end of "education reform" as a national movement--all education problems are local and specific and attempts to scale solutions on a national level are problematic.
I’m willing to bet that anyone who actually visited these learning environments, or spoke to the educators who worked there, would come away with their cynicism punctured and a belief that these bottom-up efforts are getting so much attention precisely because they’re positing novel solutions to countless different problems facing young people and the public education.
I bet I'd be impressed by some of the work that's going on in some microschools. My cynicism is reserved for folks who intent on co-opting the movement into a way to prop up their ongoing attempts to dismantle and privatize public education.
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