Op-ed: How one-room schoolhouses hold the keys to education reform and success

Do one-room schoolhouses hold the keys to solving the educational crisis in this country?

What if its values of local control, a strong sense of community and built-in accountability have the potential to transform our broken learning system?

As someone who taught in a private school for two years and now writes for the Herzog Foundation, which publishes The Lion, I’ve long been fascinated with how to improve education. My reporting has exposed me to microschools, a burgeoning movement of small learning collectives that are popping up across the nation. A recent study found 10% of U.S. school children are being educated in some sort of microschool environment. 

These schools come in various iterations, ranging from classical to outdoors-based to hybrid schools which meet in person less than five days per week. They are mostly small, sometimes meeting in a house or church, and often have one teacher. 

They are the rebirth of the one-room schoolhouse, an educational phenomenon that served our country well for 200 years. Although only a few hundred of the 200,000 still exist today as one-room schools, microschools are reviving concepts that, if widely implemented, could fix the state of education in this country. 

Full local control 

One-room schoolhouses (ORS) were the epitome of local control. The community contracted with a teacher to educate its children. The townspeople knew their needs and picked someone who was able to meet them. The salary and contract terms were appropriate for that community. 

Parents were involved in what was being taught, and any strange or “woke” agenda that tried to get in would have been quickly reported to parents, who could take action if a teacher was going against their wishes. 

Microschools offer similar empowerment: a community of parents choose a teacher or school that meets their needs. They invest, or they can withdraw their investment if the education offered no longer suits them. The schools charge an amount they believe parents can pay, balancing cost with demand. Foundation Christian Academy in Illinois, for instance, lowered its first-year tuition to open the school to more families. 

These small learning communities listen to parents, instead of arresting them for speaking up at school board meetings. They can accommodate requests to alter curriculum, wanting to keep their core constituents happy. There are no glaring state mandates requiring critical race theory, sex ed or “pronoun studies.” 

Strong sense of community 

One-room schoolhouses were the definition of community. You were there because you belonged to the community, and the school belonged to you. And since learning happened with all grades in the same room (a phenomenon in many microschools, homeschools and homeschool coops), you knew the community and the community knew you. Start getting out of line and everyone would see it. Not showing up to class? Word would get home quickly, and not by an automated call from the district. 

Classroom discipline was handled directly, too, since students were with the same teacher and peers throughout the whole day, not just for 40 minutes. As a former teacher, I would observe students acting out and then learn they were doing the same in other classes. Yet, they knew how to do just enough to avoid consequences in each class, despite cumulative behavior that would warrant discipline. Not so in the ORS! The same teacher knew the students day in and day out. If there was a disciplinary issue or personality conflict, they had to work it out and find a way forward. 

According to education historians, students behaved better because they had other ages around them. The older students had to help the younger ones academically and set good examples. This benefitted younger learners who received learning help and had good role models. This also assisted the teacher. In the ORS, students learned to function like a family, with everybody pitching in to do their part. This included cleaning the space, maintaining the fire (for heat or cooking lunch), and other related tasks. There was a high sense of ownership, community and belonging. 

Many of these features are present in today’s microschools. Students are involved, known and want to be there (since being in these schools is a privilege). More parents are starting schools, including with the help of SchoolBox, a program offered by Herzog. And thanks to expanded school choice programs in more states, families can find the educational environment right for their kids. With this high degree of buy-in, these schools are primed for success. 

Built-in accountability 

Speaking of success, the ORS would never have dreamed of graduating students that couldn’t read or do basic math. The schools were small enough, and the students known enough, that they didn’t slip through the cracks. Additionally, because of the lack of state mandates and overreaching government programs, teachers could focus on the essentials of “reading, writing and arithmetic,” not gender studies and serial oppression across American history. 

Many students actually learned better in the collective environment. Hearing the lesson taught again to younger students caused it to go deeper in the older students, who would also help the younger ones. This set the expectation that learning happens all the time, not simply during an assigned class period, and encouraged the teaching of others, which has proven one of the most effective ways to learn. 

The focus was on mastery, not moving kids along because they were at a certain grade level. There was less pressure to pass Johnny if he couldn’t read or do math well; it was understood that he needed to keep working at it, not continue like everything was fine. 

Microschools today feature instant accountability. Parents and teachers can tell if a student is not “getting it,” and very few slip through the cracks. A teacher not doing his or her job will lose students and won’t last in this smaller, more personal environment. 

The curriculum is decided on by the teacher and agreed upon by the parents. Any significant deviations from it would immediately stand out. Yet teachers have the flexibility to tailor learning to particular student and classroom needs and get as “outside of the box” as needed. 

Additionally, the educational identity of a student is related to the school as a whole instead of individual grade levels, as is common today (from my teaching days, we had phrases describing a particular class as “difficult” or “unruly”). In a mixed grade school, everyone feels and celebrates the success of individuals and the school as a whole. 

A better way forward 

The one-room schoolhouse got so many things right that baffle the minds of today’s PhDs. How did these schools prosper and thrive, despite the lack of “educational experts” and years of teacher prep? Could educating children be more simple than we’ve made it out to be? Do these dynamics of local control, a strong sense of community and built-in accountability naturally solve many of the issues of modern education?  

That’s what microschools are proving. 

For a fraction of the cost, and in a streamlined and simplified way, microschools direct attention where it is needed and work toward outcomes that serve students, parents and the community. Teachers like them too, as many founders are former public school teachers. 

They’re what community schools were designed to be but got out of hand as they morphed into the current cumbersome public school system. Today we have massive amounts of administration, government mandates and teachers’ unions all working against the principles outlined above. Education is no longer flexible, responsive and community-based, and students are worse-off for it. 

Microschools have surged, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 as the pandemic revealed the soft underbelly of the education beast. As more parents move toward creative learning environments, and states empower them through school choice measures, we see a hopeful tide emerging on the bleak educational landscape across our land. 

It won’t always look like the one-room schoolhouses of the past, which still dot the rural landscape of some American counties, but the principles will. 

Maybe smaller is better, simpler is easier and community holds the key. These values can right the wrongs and go a long way toward fixing education in America.