Microschools offer an alternative to traditional schools, but their impacts on student academic achievement are yet to be rigorously evaluated. The authors use a systematic literature review and surveys and interviews with microschool leaders to provide an overview of the microschooling landscape and articulate key considerations so that future studies can support valid and trustworthy inferences about microschool impacts.

Microschools as an Emerging Education Model

Implications for Research and Evaluation

Sarah Ohls, Lauren Covelli, Jonathan Schweig

ResearchPublished Mar 20, 2025

Microschools are an alternative to traditional schools for families who might be dissatisfied with local school options. Typically, microschools are defined as small, tuition-based schools (serving around 15 students) that are designed to offer a more personalized and flexible learning experience compared with traditional schools. Interest in microschools has grown steadily in recent years, but the impacts of microschools on student academic achievement are yet to be rigorously evaluated.

Using a combination of systematic literature review and surveys and interviews with microschool leaders, the authors provide an overview of the microschooling landscape and articulate key considerations so that future impact studies can be designed to support valid and trustworthy inferences about microschool impacts. The authors specifically address (1) common microschool models, (2) who microschools serve and why families choose microschools for their children, (3) how microschools track and monitor student progress toward goals, (4) evidence about microschools' impacts on students, and (5) key challenges regarding the short-term and long-term sustainability of individual microschools and the microschool sector overall.

Key Findings

  • Microschools typically are small, have multi-age classrooms, and focus on self-paced learning. But they vary tremendously in setting, size, and focus. The best currently available estimate is that between 1 million and 2 million students attend microschools full time, and many more attend part time.
  • Microschools seek to serve a wide range of students including those with learning differences and students whose social, emotional, or behavioral needs are not being met in traditional learning environments.
  • Free from the state and federal accountability requirements and reporting requirements faced by public schools, microschools often make decisions about how (and whether) to assess students' academic proficiency and growth on a student-by-student basis.
  • Increasing the efforts to regulate the sector has implications for the sustainability of individual microschools. Forced closures have occurred when microschool leaders struggle to navigate increasingly stringent regulatory environments.
  • Microschool leaders view securing stable sources of funding as a critical challenge to sustainability.
  • Data on microschool students' backgrounds, proficiency, and academic growth are often unavailable, inconsistent, or unrepresentative. This lack of data poses threats to both the internal and external validity of studies intending to evaluate the impact of the sector on student outcomes, particularly those leveraging existing administrative datasets.

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Citation

RAND Style Manual

Ohls, Sarah, Lauren Covelli, and Jonathan Schweig, Microschools as an Emerging Education Model: Implications for Research and Evaluation, RAND Corporation, RR-A3698-1, 2025. As of April 8, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3698-1.html

Chicago Manual of Style

Ohls, Sarah, Lauren Covelli, and Jonathan Schweig, Microschools as an Emerging Education Model: Implications for Research and Evaluation. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3698-1.html.
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