Change is Coming

Parents are looking for additional options when it comes to educating their young learners.

In an article published by The 74 last week,

“Nearly two-thirds of parents considered switching their children to a different school last year, but less than half of them actually followed through, a new national survey finds.”

“In January, the National School Choice Awareness Foundation published a survey asking 2,873 parents questions about changing their child’s school. About 60% of respondents said they considered a new school in 2024, but only 28% made a change.”

“Of those who did transfer their kids, 28% chose a traditional public school, 31% selected a public charter or magnet school, nearly 14% chose a private or religious school and 27% opted for online schooling, homeschooling or a microschool.”

“Interest in homeschooling, hybrid learning and microschools in particular skyrocketed among respondents this year, compared with answers to similar surveys given from 2022 to 2024. Nearly two-thirds of parents thought about homeschooling, up from 23%, while interest in microschools and hybrid learning jumped from 5% to 16%. The percentage of those thinking about private schools rose from 29% to 36%.”

“By contrast, parents were less likely to consider traditional public schools than they were in previous surveys: 35%, down from an average of 45%.”

“But when it comes to actually switching schools, the one-third of parents who followed through with the decision tended to choose public-sector schools, according to the survey. Nearly 60% of them selected a district, public charter or magnet school.”

“About 30% chose private schools, homeschooling, microschools or hybrid schools, while 10% selected a full-time online education.”

“’The percentage of parents who enrolled their children in private-sector schools…remains relatively low,’ Shelby Doyle, vice president of the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, said in a press release. ‘This may be due to the cost of attendance for families, even with the expansion of private school choice programs such as education savings accounts.’”

“Private school growth is still surging across the U.S., with GOP lawmakers in close to a dozen states having it as a top priority for 2025, according to EducationWeek’s private school choice tracker. Currently, 28 states and the District of Columbia supply public funds for parents to spend on educational options outside of public schools – and that number is likely to rise, according to the tracker.”

“The new survey shows that the percentage of parents searching for different schools declined this past year, down from 72% in the survey released in January 2024. But it still remains higher than the 50% among respondents to the 2022 and 2023 surveys.”

“Military families, younger parents and Black parents were among the most likely to consider new schools for their children last year. About 40% of parents surveyed said they were likely to continue their search for a new school in 2025, with Asian and Black parent indicating the most interest.”

Several years ago now, a partner based in Houston and I attempted to launch a start-up dedicated to helping parents and their children make their way out of our traditional public school system so that they could find a better option to make their kids smarter and stronger in their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills.

In the end, the start-up failed, not because there wasn’t interest by hundreds of families looking for an alternative option to the traditional school they sent their kid to every day.

The start-up failed because, in the eleventh hour, families chose to keep their kids in “sucky” public schools because switching was just to unknown and scary.

Based upon the National School Choice Awareness Foundation survey referenced above, more parents are not only interested in switching learning models today, compared to when our start-up was operating, those parents are interested in trying different models than our traditional public school system.

This is good news.

Now, we need to persuade decision-makers to include additional learning models beyond current private schools – models like homeschooling, hybrid schools, and microschools – into their education saving account plans as more and more states make money available to families interested in making a change.

Til tomorrow. SVB