Colleen Hroncich
When we first started homeschooling, I was fortunate to live in an area with plenty of opportunities for my kids—from traditional academic subjects to diverse enrichment classes. At the time, it never occurred to me that the parents who started these programs were entrepreneurs. But in retrospect, that’s exactly what they were. They saw a need in the homeschool community, and they stepped up to create something new to meet that need.
In recent years, education entrepreneurship has exploded, aided in large part by school choice policies. Education savings accounts, which can be used for a variety of education‐related purchases rather than only tuition, have been particularly helpful in this regard. Most weeks, the Friday Feature profiles one of these entrepreneurial endeavors—including microschools like Safari Small Schools, homeschool programs like Valley Troubadours, and full‐scale private schools like Deeper Root Academy.
Beyond school choice programs, there are other policies that make a state more or less friendly for potential providers who want to launch new education alternatives. State Policy Network (SPN) Education Policy Fellow Kerry McDonald, who is also a Cato Institute adjunct scholar, recently released a report delving into several policy proposals that states can use to encourage education entrepreneurship.
Kerry has spent years researching and writing about the growth and diversification of the homeschool population and the emerging microschool movement. In the wake of the education disruption of the pandemic, she saw more people stepping up to launch innovative K–12 learning models.
“Many of these entrepreneurs were parents and teachers who had never before considered running a microschool or similar program but spotted the opportunity to build new and better learning options for families,” Kerry notes. “As I talked with these entrepreneurs and wrote about their stories over the past couple of years, I began to see that many of them encountered the same regulatory barriers and startup challenges. I thought it would be valuable to conduct a more deliberate analysis to determine more clearly what regulatory barriers may prevent or limit the introduction and growth of emerging K–12 learning models and schooling alternatives.”
Earlier this year, Kerry conducted three focus groups with two dozen education entrepreneurs from across the U.S. The resulting Encouraging Education Entrepreneurship report outlines seven policy recommendations:
- Reduce early childhood care licensing requirements for emerging learning models.
- Expand exemptions to childcare licensing regulations.
- Create “innovation tracks” for alternative licensing.
- Ease zoning restrictions.
- Expand homeschooling freedoms.
- Make it easier to start a private school.
- Loosen compulsory school attendance laws.
Kerry is impressed with the enthusiasm and resilience of the education entrepreneurs she has met, who persevere in the face of regulatory barriers and other challenges. “I am inspired by their tenacity and commitment to inventing and spreading entirely new educational prototypes,” she says. “Loosening or eliminating regulatory hurdles will encourage more education entrepreneurs to build and scale new, diverse learning models that will provide more families with greater access to an assortment of education options.”
School choice policies—especially education savings accounts—are helping more families afford alternatives to their local district schools. But if there are too many roadblocks preventing new learning models from opening, those families won’t have sufficient options. This new SPN report helps policymakers identify these roadblocks and work to remove them.
