Skip to content

Popular

Categories

No Results Found

  • Home
  • About
  • Activity
    • Summit
    • Parents Choice Award
  • Awardees
  • Media
Menu
  • Home
  • About
  • Activity
    • Summit
    • Parents Choice Award
  • Awardees
  • Media

Media

Media

Back to News & Media
Op-Eds
| Forbes

Educators Must Respond To Overwhelming Parent Demand For Personalized Options For Students

By Pat Brantley |
  • October 31, 2022

WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 20: Students gather inside the cafeter

Students during the first day back at school at Friendship Tech Prep Middle School, August 2018.
The Washington Post via Getty Images

Kids aren’t widgets. They aren’t cars. School isn’t—and shouldn’t be—an assembly line. Yet as we fight to return school to ‘normal’ for students, we’re focused on keeping the way we’ve always done things going rather than learning from the last two years.

Here’s the thing: Parents aren’t going to accept that. And, they shouldn’t.

Parent demand for homeschool and online school is growing at historic rates. Families are not just choosing these options because of COVID. Families want more control over their child’s education. At Friendship Public Charter School in D.C., we’ve piloted microschools, online learning, and other options that build more choices into the public school system. Microschools aren’t new. Neither is online learning. Ensuring access to small learning environments and robust online options to the students and families we partner with, 97% of whom are Black, is unique.

We’ve already seen success with this approach. Like all schools, we pivoted to online learning in early 2020. Being completely online didn’t work for all families. Some families needed a safe place for their child to learn because of work, family, or other life commitments. Some students needed in-person learning because of their unique learning styles. We were committed to doing what was best for each child and family. As soon as we could, we opened small learning pods. In all of the craziness that was happening in the world, there was peace and progress in these classrooms. When we look at the data, kids who were in those pods achieved larger academic gains than their peers who were not. Some even progressed faster than they did before the pandemic.

We asked ourselves: What is it that kids are getting from this and can we get that to scale?

In the long-term, we’re interested in how to create these opportunities so they work for all students. We want all students who would thrive in a smaller learning environment to have access to it. Figuring out how to do that requires us to learn about and pilot ideas focusing on people, place, and platform.

We need:

  • To ensure students are able to move from experience to experience based on competency rather than age, number of minutes in a classroom, or other rigid regulation not aligned with the time it takes for a student’s personal growth.
  • To think about where learning will happen best. Exploring flexible learning options may also mean that learning won’t happen in a traditional classroom setting. We need to be open to all possibilities, work to set up the approvals needed, and fund creating these safe, accessible learning spaces.
  • To invest in people. Educators need to be empowered to work with students and create experiences that meet their needs throughout the year. That takes time and support.
  • To ensure access to high-quality content that’s available to students learning in person and digitally. We need to empower our students and their families to take on this work when it makes sense to them, ensuring students can stay engaged even if they can’t be at a desk when the bell rings at 8:10 a.m.

Making opportunities like providing access to flexible microschools for all requires initial investments, startup money, before we figure out how to scale. We’ve started the work to learn. With over 100 pods in 2021 serving 6-10 students and nine citywide learning hubs open five days a week, we’ve learned more about how to do this well every day. The good news? This idea is possible—if we’re willing to make the investment and learn together. The question is: Will we invest in our students to create the right learning opportunities for all children? If you’re interested in making such an investment, give me a call.

Related News

Loading...
Media Coverage
  • November 20, 2023

Be More Colorful in the News

Media Coverage
  • November 16, 2023

Wildflower Montessori Featured in Rick Hess’s Straight Up

Media Coverage
  • November 16, 2023

Victory XR Covered in Forbes

The Yass Foundation advances the four core STOP principles: Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless education. Each year, the Foundation will reward dozens of organizations, building a growing network of innovative providers that
demonstrate these qualities in their commitment to new ideas, technologies, and approaches to learning that bring education into
the 21st century. The Foundation is powered by the Center for Education Reform (CER) in partnership with Forbes.

Everyone knows that without great education, our nation suffers.

Great education is a vital link for students to become successful citizens.

Janine Yass
Founder,
The Yass Prize

The Yass Prize has brought together such diverse leaders

from all different demographics, all different states, all different service provider types that you can learn from.

Taylor Shead
Founder and CEO,
STEMuli Studios

It might be the first time you’re speaking where everyone is actually listening and cares about what you’re doing.

I don’t think I’ve been in a room as supportive as the Yass Prize Semifinalist room in Miami.

Brian Curcio
Founder and CEO,
Rapunzl, 2022 Yass Prize Finalist

Education is one of the most fundamental pillars for democratizing opportunities for success that we have in our society.

It’s thanks to organizations like the Yass Prize that our children are going to have a better tomorrow.

Francis X. Suarez
Mayor,
City of Miami

There is absolutely zero downside to being a part of this network by submitting your application and what you will encounter is unlike any other grant.

It's actually mind blowing. I really see myself as an education entrepreneur, but this expanded me.

Diana Diaz-Harrison
Founder,
Arizona Autism Charter Schools

When we follow the money, it’s ludicrous how this country is getting away with funding education.

The funding is not following children. We're trying to make better options for kids, for poor kids, middle class kids. Wealthy people have this choice, they opt out of their systems easily, why shouldn't all children have that choice?

Janine Yass
Founder,
The Yass Prize

Believe in your mission… Ground yourself… Never give up…

Sal Khan
Founder,
Khan Academy

The Yass Award is about celebrating and rewarding those who make students the priority.”

Kevin Stitt
Governor,
Oklahoma

We used the Yass Prize to launch a program called Skypod catalyst, which is essentially an accelerator to help other people start microschools.

We believe very much that microschools should be bottoms up, they come from the community. They're founded by educators who know their community really well. And they want to design a learning environment for the kids in that community.

Amar Kumar
Founder and CEO,
KaiPod Learning, 2022 Yass Prize Seminfinalist

Because of the Yass Prize, we were able to add an additional pre-K classroom.

Portia Green
Principal,
Prichard Prep, 2022 Yass Prize Semifinalist

One of the missions of the Yass Prize and the Yass Prize movement is really surfacing best practices in innovation—

in innovators who are doing this type of transformational work, so that others can learn from it and replicate it, so that you can actually grow yourselves.

Jeff Imrich
Co-Founder,
Rock by Rock

The Yass Prize is centered around ensuring that this [program] provides you a stepping stone...

We don’t want you to rinse, wash, repeat. We want you to build and sustain.

Jeanne Allen
Founder & CEO, Center for Education Reform ,
Director, Yass Foundation for Education

The Yass Prize is truly changing the landscape of education options across the nation,

and I couldn't be more grateful for what it's done for us, and helping us serve more students and families.

Diana Diaz-Harrison
Founder,
Arizona Autism Charter Schools

If you're committed to wanting to be one of the change makers of the future in education, I believe that this is a place for you.

Not only because of the capital, but because of the knowledge that comes by communing with the diverse group of people as opposed to everybody that thinks the exact same way that you might think.

Taylor Shead
Founder and CEO,
STEMuli Studios

Our newest endeavor – that was part of our Yass Prize initiative – we're bringing career and technical education into the school

I'm in the process of going through the construction of a 20,000 square foot $11.5 million dollar building dedicated to career and technical education for the students in the Philadelphia region.

Brian Patrick King
President,
Father Judge High School, 2022 Yass Prize Semifinalist

I'm a Yass Prize finalist from last year.

And through that, we were able to open up our second campus in the city of Wichita.

Wade Moore
Founder & Dean,
Urban Preparatory Academy

Being a part of this experience has amplified the access we can give to our students in a way that nothing has, and the access is just critical.

The Yass Prize is almost like Burning Man for education reform.

Cris Gulacy-Worrel
Vice President,
Oakmont Education, 2022 Yass Prize Finalist

Being a part of the [Yass] family confirmed that what I'm doing is right,

going against the common core and focusing on what we know is important for kids really works, and having a network of people now that also agree was super huge.

Kenisha Skaggs
Founder,
SOAR Academy

The foundation of any society is a good education.

Jeff Yass
Founder,
The Yass Prize

Yass brought us together, creating opportunities to create an educational universe within which we can look at education differently…

we have to find academic experiences that represent neuro-divergent learners, kids who want to learn about gaming, who want to do stuff online, who dropped out of school.

Dr. Steve Perry
Head of Schools,
Capital Preparatory Schools

Connect with us

Stay informed about our latest news and sign up for our emails below! For questions or comments, use the Contact Us box. We’ll be in touch!
Contact Us
Stay Informed
  • Home
  • About
  • Activity
    • Summit
    • Parents Choice Award
  • Awardees
  • Media
  • Careers
  • Home
  • About
  • Activity
    • Summit
    • Parents Choice Award
  • Awardees
  • Media
  • Careers
Facebook Twitter Linkedin
© 2022, Yass Foundation for Education, all rights reserved.

Connect With Us

We would love to hear from you! Please fill out this form and we will get in touch with you shortly.

"*" indicates required fields

Name*

Questions?

Email us at [email protected] or call us at 202-750-0016.

Stay Informed

"*" indicates required fields

Name*