LiberatED Podcast

Hannah Frankman is the founder of Rebel Educator, a resource hub for parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs who are seeking or building alternative education models that challenge traditional schooling.

Hannah grew up homeschooled and decided to skip college to pursue other goals, including becoming an entrepreneur. Follow Rebel Educator on Twitter @rebelEducator.

How do state-level education choice policies influence the amount and variety of education entrepreneurship? Kate Baker Demers and I dig into this question and more in today's lively episode.

Kate is the Executive Director of New Hampshire's Children's Scholarship Fund, a non-profit organization that helps to administer New Hampshire's nationally-recognized tax-credit scholarship program, as well as its newly implemented education savings account program.

Kate has been a longtime champion of education choice and opportunity, helping families find the best learning environments for their children and supporting entrepreneurial parents and educators who are looking to launch new schools, microschools, learning pods, homeschooling centers, and more.

There is some microschool magic happening in New Jersey these days. You'll remember that our very first podcast episode back in February was with Jill Perez, a long time teacher and student-teacher supervisor, whose pandemic pod turned into an established microschool in New Jersey with over 40 kids last year and several teachers whom she recruited from the New York City public schools.

Then, in May, we heard from Lorianne Bolotin who, like Jill, turned her pandemic pod into a full-fledged microschool in New Jersey last fall and continues to grow and expand her program this year.

Today, we get to hear from more New Jersey education entrepreneurs who launched a learner-driven colearning center named The Village Electric in Mountainside, NJ. It opened last fall with 45 kids in grades K-6.

Ben Ashfield and his wife Tammy Tiranasar couldn't find what they were looking for in terms of schooling options for their own children, so they decided to create it with The Village Electric. They join us today to talk about their vision and to tell us more about why it is that New Jersey is quickly becoming a hub of education entrepreneurship and innovation.

Everyone got a taste of virtual learning in 2020, in the wake of widespread school closures. But the district Zoom schooling that most families encountered was nothing like what real, high-quality, virtual learning platforms can offer. These platforms are designed for an online environment, with curriculum tailored to that medium and with teachers who enthusiastically seek out, and are well trained in, virtual instruction. One of these high-quality, well-established virtual platforms is Arizona State University Prep Digital, or ASU Prep Digital for short.

As someone both personally and professionally interested in ASU Prep Digital and similar high-quality online learning models, I invited ASU Prep Managing Director and Vice President of Educational Outreach, Julie Young, to join me on today's episode. Julie was the founding President and CEO of the Florida Virtual School, the world's first virtual statewide school district that began as a small IBM grant initiative in the 1990s and grew to become the largest public K-12 program in the U.S.

Lainie Liberti is an author, speaker, community leader, teen coach and alternative education advocate who helped to spearhead the thriving worldschooling movement. She is also a mentor and source of inspiration for those of us who embrace the philosophy of non-coercive, self-directed education, or "unschooling."

Lainie co-founded Project World School with her son Miro in 2012. They run teen retreats as month-long immersive learning communities to support self-directed teens from around the world.

In 2020, Lainie founded a new organization, Transformative Mentoring for Teens, that offers virtual, one-on-one coaching for teenagers as well as intensive, multi-week courses. Lainie is an adolescent behavioral specialist, certified life coach, and author of the new book, Seen, Heard & Understood: Parenting & Partnering with Teens for Greater Mental Health.

Disruptive innovations begin on the margins and don't penetrate the mainstream until their quality is proven to be as good, if not better, than more established models. Disruptive innovation is a term that was coined by Clayton Christensen and his colleagues back in the 1990s, and its effects have been seen in many sectors over the years, including education.

In today's episode of the LiberatED podcast, I talk with Michael B. Horn, chairman, co-founder, and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute in Massachusetts. He has written several books on disruptive innovation in education, and his latest book, From Reopen To Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child was just released this summer. Michael serves as an executive editor at Education Next and is a venture partner at NextGen Venture Partners.

Follow Michael on Twitter @michaelbhorn.

Hillsdale College in Michigan was founded in 1844 by abolitionists, and gained widespread notoriety when it refused to accept any federal or state education funds, including indirect funds such as student loans and grants, so that it could retain its full independence.

It also has a reputation for academic excellence and cultural impact. Despite being a small liberal arts college with about 1,500 students, it is a leader in higher education and, now, in K-12 education as well. Hillsdale is expanding its affiliated classical charter school network into several states, as well as providing curriculum support and resources for homeschooling families and classroom teachers.

Our guest today is Dr. Kathleen O'Toole, Assistant Provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, where she leads Hillsdale's work in K-12 Education. Prior to joining Hillsdale, she was the founding headmaster of Founders Classical Academy of Leander, TX, a classical charter school serving 700 students in grades K-12. Dr. O'Toole holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American Politics and Political Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University, and a B.A. in Politics from the University of Dallas.

Hillsdale K-12 Education Resources

"A College Fights 'Leftist Academics' by Expanding Into Charter Schools," The New York Times

West Virginia has experienced a dramatic expansion of educational freedom, from the state legislature passing a near-universal Education Savings Account Program, called the Hope Scholarship, to loosening state compulsory school attendance laws for participants of learning pods and microschools.

Microschools, learning pods, homeschooling collaboratives, and low-cost private schools are launching or growing to meet parent demand for more education possibilities. The education entrepreneurs who are creating these models are diverse in their educational philosophies, building a dynamic landscape of learning options from which families can choose.

Our guest today is one of these visionary West Virginia education entrepreneurs. Katie Switzer is a mom of four young children and founder of the Monongalia Family Forest School. A mechanical engineer who spent 10 years working at companies such as SpaceX, Katie launched her forest school program last fall and it quickly doubled in size. Her program also recently won a grant from the VELA Education Fund, a philanthropic non-profit whose goal is to provide startup and expansion support for non-traditional K-12 learning models.

Many parents today are understandably concerned about what their children may be learning, or not learning, in school. Curriculum battles have been waged in several states over what government-run schools should and shouldn't teach, and even some private schools have seen teachers and parents speak out against ideological bias in the classroom, which they say often occurs at the expense of academic rigor.

A champion of individual liberty, limited government, and free markets, Connor Boyack has been instrumental in supporting parents who want to expose their children to the principles of a free society—principles that are frequently ignored or undermined in schools. Connor is the creator of The Tuttle Twins children's book series, as well as many other books for children, teens, and adults. He is the president of Utah's Libertas Institute which he founded in 2011.

Connor joins us on this episode to talk about the current state of American education, what parents can do to help balance the perspectives their children are being taught, and his newly released 240-page Tuttle Twins book on American History.

CNN Slams Libertarian Children's Books--Causing Sales to Surge (FEE.org)

From Queens, New York to Charlotte, North Carolina, Tiffany Pierce has been building and expanding homeschooling co-ops and co-learning programs for several years now.

When the pandemic hit, her New York City co-op doubled in size, pivoting to a fully outside model with pop-up tents in local parks. Last year, she relocated to North Carolina and replicated her learning model there, bringing together a new and different group of families for co-learning and connection. Now, she hopes to scale her model with a mobile classroom, and help more communities build schooling alternatives.

LEAF Facebook group

Connect with Tiffany at tiffanyspierce {at} gmail