Recently, EducationWeek published an interview with Greg Philhower, the superintendent of the Eastern Hancock school district in Indiana. Philhower’s work to create a network of “microschools” is the main focus of the interview, and there is good cause for interest: Microschools offer another choice to parents who wish to tailor educational options to desired outcomes for their children.

As the name suggests, microschools are schools with comparatively low pupil numbers—usually under 100 students. Some microschools are newly created for the purpose, while others are former charter or private schools that have experienced declining enrollments. When a school district finds that one of its buildings has too few students to be viable, it could consider making the building a microschool instead of closing it. Districts might even innovate ways to host more than one microschool within the same building.

The headline for EducationWeek’s interview with Philhower (“To Compete with School Choice, This Superintendent Turned to Microschools”) suggests that his decision is a response to healthy competition for students. But Philhower does not see school choice as a threat; he sees it as an opportunity to innovate in a way that benefits the school district and students alike. For many parents in Philhower’s district, the public schools are perfectly adequate; but for others, charter schools offer learning environments that are more appropriate to the needs of their children. Indiana law, with school scholarship tax credits, choice scholarships, and education scholarship accounts, gives families more resources to choose what is best for their children. A school district that wishes to retain students in this environment could find that microschools are one way to succeed.

Microschools demonstrate that they operate in a competitive context by carefully considering their approach to learning. They can be themed to the shared needs of local parents in order to attract families to the school, as Philhower explains:

As we’re thinking about helping districts reattract kids, the options are endless. You could have a performing arts-related microschool. You could have a specific sports-related microschool. You could have a STEM microschool. You just literally name it, and we could create a school that is relevant to those kids that are interested in those things.

Establishing a microschool lets district leaders respond to parental needs, while giving educators with specialized expertise job opportunities that suit them. Philhower, instead of championing a one-size-fits-all approach to education, believes that “every kid should get to go to a school that they feel is designed just for them.” It is the job of educators, he said, “to figure out what that should look like.” Those convictions are clearly shared by local parents, whose names fill the waiting lists for Eastern Hancock microschools.

Parents and educators in Michigan are beginning to realize that this rethinking of education can be successful here if parents and districts work together. It is true that some small homeschool cooperatives already emulate the microschool approach, though without the funding and centralization of a charter school. Such parent-led groups require parents to be the educators, because hiring specialized teachers (and charging tuition to fund their pay) would require the group to incorporate as a nonpublic school. And if there are parents with the expertise needed to support a microschool-style cooperative, that approach will work well. But when a parent-led group needs an outside teacher, the charter approach is more appropriate.

Each Michigan student deserves the chance to encounter an education approach that considers the needs of students as individuals, not just as members of generic age-based grade groups. Microschools give educators a means of adapting to those needs, providing families with an educational model fit for the rapidly shifting educational challenges of the 21^st century.

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