Executive Summary

When looking to gain insights to help understand today’s American microschooling movement, what are the defining characteristics, trends and factors which best illuminate what this growing movement is all about? This new, original analysis by the National Microschooling Center discusses prominent aspects about both currently-operating and prospective, pre-launch microshools, exploring traits, priorities and backgrounds relating to founders, families and microschool models themselves.

Among the findings:

• The median number of children served in microschools studies is 16.
• More than half, 55 percent, of microschools studies offer full-time weekly schedules, defined as at least four days per week and four hours per day, while 28 percent offer part-time/hybrid schedules, and 17 percent offer families to choose between these.
• The different ways current microschools indicate their impact represent founders’ commitments to the families, who are their major stakeholders, to demonstrate progress in customized ways which align to their mission and model. The most prevalent methods include different types of observation-based reporting, tracking mastery, growth toward nonacademic goals and their use of portfolio assessments.
• Founders identify more children attending microschools as being from households at the average income for their area (48 percent) or below the average income (40 percent), than above the average income for their area (12 percent).

Data collected for 400 microschools representing 41 states were utilized for this report.  Details follow.