Michael Horn's kids have good grades and friends at their traditional school, so they won't switch to microschools. The real barrier isn't academics but shared culture: sports teams, band, the ability to talk about the same school events. That social glue is what keeps families locked in.
I spend all my working time thinking about studying, learning about really innovative school models. And my own kids attend the traditional district schools that they are assigned to based on where we live. And I have advocated to my kids for finding better options or creating better options. But the real holdbacks for them are there's nothing that they're struggling with to the point where they feel like they need an escape valve, right? Like, they're getting good grades, their teachers like them, they have friends, they're not getting bullied. None of those issues have come up for them. And for them, they don't want to give up that common school experience. In other words, they want to be on sports teams with their friends. They want to be in the band that their friends are in. They. They want to just be able to speak the same language as their friends. So that when kids say, hey, did you, you know, did you see what happened at the football game last Friday night? Or did you, you know, what did you think of so and so's class that they can relate to, that they're not like, I don't know what you guys are talking about.
