LiberatED Podcast

Chris Turner is a tech entrepreneur turned education entrepreneur who founded Moonrise.com as a colearning space for kids in Decatur, Georgia. I first featured Moonrise in my Forbes column last year and was inspired by Chris's vision to bring the Moonrise experience to more communities to help make childhood and parenting more joyful and rewarding. Chris is building an entirely new of category of education that doesn't fit neatly into existing definitional or regulatory boxes. Encouraging education entrepreneurs like Chris to start and scale their businesses by reducing or eliminating regulatory barriers can go a long way toward expanding access to more diverse, creative education options from which families can choose. Report: "Encouraging Education Entrepreneurship: State Policy Ideas for Supporting the Creation of Innovative K-12 Learning Models and Schooling Alternatives" (State Policy Network)

I have been really excited to see the bundling of education entrepreneurship and innovation in certain regions of the US. You'll recall that we recently talked about the education entrepreneurship that's sprouting in New Jersey. There is also a flurry of activity in New Hampshire. I will be spending more time in the coming weeks highlighting the stories of education entrepreneurs who are geographically concentrated, which can often lead to ongoing collaboration and network effects that help to sustain these new enterprises and begin to shift the culture toward a greater embrace of education innovation and schooling alternatives. Today, I am excited to focus again on Nevada and the burgeoning microschool movement there. You'll remember back in May we talked to Ashley and Don Soifer from MicroschoolingNV about the gains in Nevada, and especially in the Las Vegas area. And now I am thrilled to introduce you to Emily Grégoire, a Las Vegas homeschooling mother of 4 and education entrepreneur who founded the Rainbow Room as a part-time, full-day, drop-off program for local homeschoolers.

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

I love entrepreneurs. They take risks, seize opportunities, invent and innovate, and create abundance for all of us. But I am especially in awe of education entrepreneurs. They plunge into a highly-regulated sector with huge barriers to entry in an effort to challenge the schooling status quo and expand learning options for families. Manisha Snoyer is one such education entrepreneur. She was a teacher and tutor turned startup founder who has launched various programs and platforms designed to make it easier for parents to personalize their children's education. Her new startup, Modulo.app, prioritizes child-directed learning while enabling parents to discover resources and tools to help their children grow and flourish.

"I do not think governments should be dictating in any way, shape, or form the content of the minds of children, either in the United States or anywhere else in the world," says Clemson University Professor C. Bradley Thompson in this compelling episode. Thompson is a Political Science Professor at Clemson University and Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University and has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton, Harvard, and the University of London. His most recent book is America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration that Defined It, published in 2019. You can follow Thompson's writings on his Substack at https://cbradleythompson.substack.com, and visit his website, EdWatchDaily.com. Thompson's articles at The Objective Standard

In this episode, recorded live at the 19th annual Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest) in New Hampshire, Michelle McCartney joins the show to talk about how to be an education entrepreneur, including tips and challenges. Michelle is the owner of Granite Minds Homeschooling Center in Weare, New Hampshire, a mom of two, wife, small business owner, and liberty activist. Granite Minds on Facebook

This episode was recorded live today at the 19th annual Porcupine Freedom Festival (PorcFest) in Lancaster, New Hampshire! It features a conversation with three New Hampshire homeschooling parents about homeschooling and unschooling. We talk about homeschooling rewards and challenges, how the past two years of education distruption impacted the homeschooling community, and advice for new, current, and prospective homeschooling families! Latitude Learning Resources learning center, Derry, NH Moms for Liberty - Hillsborough, NH

David D. Friedman, a physicist, economist, and law professor who is the son of the famed Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, is a staunch supporter of unschooling, or the idea of self-directed, non-coercive learning that occurs either as an approach to homeschooling or in "unschooling schools," such as those schools modeled after the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. I wrote extensively about unschooling, Sudbury Valley, and other "unschooling schools" in my 2019 Unschooled book. I had been familiar with David Friedman's libertarian writings and focus on anarcho-capitalism, but I somehow missed his focus on unschooling until recently. The most recent edition of Friedman's well-known book, Machinery of Freedom: Guide to A Radical Capitalism, first published in 1973, includes a chapter on unschooling entitled, "Unschooling: A Libertarian Approach to Children," which also appears on his blog.

Despite today's dominant cultural messaging that insists that young people must go to college, there are in fact multiple pathways to adulthood and to a fulfilling, successful life. A longtime leader in building alternatives to college is Praxis, an apprenticeship boot camp program that helps young people to gain mastery of sought-after workplace skills while connecting these apprentices with eager employers. I am thrilled to be joined on this episode by Cameron Sorsby, CEO of Praxis. "College Enrollment Drops, Even as the Pandemic's Effects Ebb," New York Times The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan Skip College: Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree, edited by Connor Boyack

I came across the work of our guest today, Luma Mufleh, back in 2019. Even then, I was enchanted by the story of how she created Fugees Academy, a successful private school in Georgia for refugee children who are too often overlooked and underserved in traditional district schools. But I recently finished reading Luma's newly released book, Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children, which joins the story of Fugees Academy with her own powerful story as an immigrant, entrepreneur, soccer coach, school founder and change maker, and wife and mother. Truthfully, Learning America is one of the most extraordinary books I have read in awhile, and it should definitely be on the top of your list of books to read this summer. Fugees Family Luma Mufleh's 2017 TED Talk

Lorianne Bolotin, an immigrant physician and midwife who grew up in the Dominican Republic, and Jack Bolotin, a finance executive, never thought that they would be in the education business, until mandates and lockdowns of 2020 led them to find an alternative for their children's education. After months trying to balance career and homeschooling and connecting with like-minded families, Lorianne and Jack founded Metsada, a Private Membership Association (PMA) dedicated to protecting families' freedom of choice in health and education. As a project of Metsada, they created Independence Day Academy, a parent-organized discovery site (PODS) in New Jersey that enables families to have their kids learn in a homeschooling-style environment with high parental involvement, while allowing parents to stay in their jobs and fulfill other demands of daily life. Metsada is hoping to create a network of independently run learning centers, and shortly after the opening of Independence Day Academy, Lorianne and Jack welcomed Jenny Markus to the Metsada family. Jenny is a lifelong New Yorker, parent, and self-directed education advocate. She is the co-founder of Coney Island Clubhouse, a child-led learning center in Brooklyn, NY. In this episode, Lorianne and Jenny talk about their experiences and educational vision.

The past two years have seen a rise in education entrepreneurship, as parents have fled district schools for other options including homeschooling, virtual schools, pandemic pods, and microschools. Entrepreneurs like today's guest are building new learning models that recognize and respond to mounting parent demand for customized schooling alternatives. Amar Kumar is the founder of KaiPod Learning, a fast-growing, venture capital-backed network of learning spaces designed to blend a highly-personalized, online curriculum with a dynamic, social, in-person community. Empowerment, Exit and Entrepreneurship Will Continue to Transform Education (Forbes.com)

Advocates of school choice policies that enable education funding to follow students instead of going to school systems are typically motivated by stories like that of our guest today, Denisha Merriweather. The tax-credit scholarship program that her family stumbled upon when she was young allowed her to escape a public school system that was not serving her well. In my Forbes spotlight of Denisha earlier this year, she said that school choice changed her life, and she has spent most of her adulthood advocating for expanding school choice policies. Today, she works for the non-profit American Federation for Children promoting school choice through the Black Minds Matter initiative that she founded in 2020. One thing that the Black Minds Matter website does is capture the growing list of hundreds of black-owned schools across the country, helping to elevate their work, inform families of their options, and inspire greater education entrepreneurship.

Microschooling, and its various iterations including learning pods and hybrid homeschools, is swiftly and dramatically changing the face of education across the US. Microschools are modern twists on the quaint, one-room schoolhouse model, where small, typically multi-age groups of students learn together in more intimate educational settings, including private homes and small community spaces, with individualized curriculum and personalized attention from adult educators and mentors. The microschooling movement was gaining traction before 2020, but interest in this innovative education model has accelerated over the past two years, as Don Soifer and Ashley Campbell have witnessed first-hand. Don and Ashley lead MicroschoolingNV, a non-profit organization that developed a first-of-its-kind, public-private partnership microschool with the City of North Las Vegas. They have continued their work as leaders in the microschooling movement, helping individuals, businesses, and municipalities across the country to launch microschools. In 2021, MicroschoolingNV won the prestigious Ed-Prize award for their efforts. Further Reading: Got Teacher Burnout? Launch A Microschool

The push for federally-funded universal preschool and child care programs continues despite new data showing the harms of government preschool programs, as well as harms to small community preschool providers who get pushed out of business when a "free" universal preschool program emerges. To talk more about the educational and economic hazards of universal government preschool programs, I am joined in this episode by Colleen Hroncich who recently published a new policy analysis on this topic for the Cato Institute. Colleen is a policy analyst with Cato's Center for Educational Freedom. Further reading: Vanderbilt University Study Shows Why Biden's Universal Government Preschool Program Would Be a Disaster

The exodus of parents away from conventional schooling and into homeschooling has unleashed extraordinary levels of education entrepreneurship, as visionary parents, educators, and innovators launch new products and services for families choosing to learn outside of a standard classroom environment. One of those "edupreneurs" is this week's podcast guest, Ada Salie. Recognizing the mounting parent demand for new learning programs, last fall Ada launched Life Rediscovered, a learning center in Massachusetts, and she continues to adapt her programming to meet the needs and preferences of local families.

"School has become a toxic place for children and we refuse to say that publicly," asserts Peter Gray in this illuminating episode. Dr. Gray is a psychology professor at Boston College and the author of the book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. He speaks and writes frequently on the value of self-directed education, the problems with coercive schooling, and the importance of childhood play, including on his popular Freedom to Learn blog at Psychology Today. Learn more about Peter Gray's research here.

The past two years of education disruption have catalyzed support for school choice policies that enable education funding to follow students instead of going to bureaucratic school systems that are increasingly unresponsive to parent (and taxpayer) preferences. In today's episode, Corey DeAngelis, one of the country's leading school choice advocates, talks about why so many Americans now support school choice policies and how these policies expand K-12 learning options for families. Follow Corey on Twitter @DeAngelisCorey Link to Corey's articles School Choice Myths: Setting the Record Straight on Education Freedom, edited by Corey DeAngelis and Neal McCluskey Education Freedom Pledge

Michael Strong has been a longtime education entrepreneur and advocate of free markets and school choice. He has teamed up with Chris Engl to launch the Liberation of Education, helping parents recognize the many education options available to them. Their first major initiative is an online spring conference showcasing education entrepreneurship, innovative K-12 learning models, and education policy trends. Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems, by Michael Strong

Jack Lloyd worked as a lawyer and teacher, which helped shape his views on education early in his career and led him to become a proponent of self-directed learning and unschooling. Today, Jack is a producer for liberty, creating content for a variety of media sites, including The Honest Teacher, and The Pholosopher. In this episode, we talk about education, libertarianism, and Jack's new book, The Definitive Guide to Libertarian Voluntaryism.

Hybrid schools blur the lines between schooling and homeschooling, expand education choice access to the middle class, and offer personalized, family-centered, hyper-local learning solutions. Today's podcast guest is Eric Wearne, an Associate Professor in the Education Economics Center at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and Director of the National Hybrid Schools Project. He is also the author of the 2020 book, Defining Hybrid Homeschools in America: Little Platoons.

Tolerance of different viewpoints and values is a key principle of a free society, and yet in classrooms and on campuses across the country, young people increasingly self-censor and self-silence to avoid speaking out against the dominant cultural narrative. Some may not even realize that there are different viewpoints and values, conditioned as they are from their early days in a public school classroom to accept whatever their teachers say. And their teachers are being similarly conditioned, spending time in schools of education that tie grades to ideological activism and link achievement to allegiance with an approved interpretation of concepts like "social justice" and critical race theory. All of this can lead parents to wonder what they can do to help prevent their children from being indoctrinated into a belief system that may run counter to their own values or may not allow for viewpoint diversity. The answer, according to Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder, is to undoctrinate your kids. Bonnie is the director of high school outreach at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), and author of the new and important book, Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools—and What We Can Do About It.

New Hampshire takes the lead as the freest state in the country, according to a new Cato Institute analysis of personal and economic freedom. Not surprisingly, people seem to gravitate toward freedom. In fact, while states like California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts lost population between July 2020 and July 2021 according to the US Census Bureau, New Hampshire saw its population grow during that time. The state is also gaining a reputation for educational freedom, thanks in large part to the work of our guest in this episode, New Hampshire Commissioner of Education, Frank Edelblut. During Edelblut's term in the state education department, New Hampshire has expanded school choice policies and introduced an exciting program called "Learn Everywhere," that enables students to accrue high school graduation credits outside of their schools through their community activities and extracurriculars. Edelblut is also a homeschooling dad of seven, now-grown children who is supportive of homeschooling families throughout New Hampshire. "New Hampshire Is The Freest State in America: Here's Why," by David Brady (fee.org) "Want to 'Learn Everywhere' In NH?," by Kerry McDonald (The Union Leader)

The American Dream is alive and well, as David Morales illustrates in his powerful, new book, American Familia: A Memoir of Perseverance. David spent his childhood in Puerto Rico and moved to Massachusetts when he was 11, where he was surrounded by the love of his family but also widespread poverty and despair. Determined not to be a statistic and instead to seize the opportunity this country offers, David began embracing an attitude of self-reliance and self-improvement in his early teen years that would ultimately lead to his personal and professional success. His tenacity and grit enabled David to rise above his impoverished beginnings and achieve the American Dream.

Teachers and doctors are confronting similar challenges related to institutional bureaucracy and rising levels of professional burnout. Teachers, in particular, have been quitting at record rates over the past two years, leading to a nationwide teacher shortage. Some of these teachers are leaving the education sector entirely, but more of them are striking out on their own to create microschools, tutoring programs, and other educational services. Entrepreneurs like Josh and Kirk Umbehr are helping individuals to build these new models. The Kansas-based brothers are the cofounders of a.school, a learning management platform for teachers who are creating new educational programs. The pair launched a similar platform, Atlas.md, several years ago when Josh, a family physician, realized the growing demand for direct primary care practices. Today, doctors and teachers are exiting entrenched institutions and building exciting, new models that offer greater freedom and flexibility for all. More Patients Turning to 'Direct Primary Care' (WebMD article featuring Atlas.md) Got Teacher Burnout? Launch A Microschool (Forbes.com article)

It's been a tragic few days in Ottawa, Canada as the Canadian government used rare emergency powers to round up and arrest peaceful protesters and freeze their bank accounts. It's hard to believe this is happening in North America, and in peace-loving Canada no less. My guest today is Patti Tinholt, a Canadian mother of 5 children and a successful wellness entrepreneur who is deeply saddened by the recent events in her beloved country. She talks about what she has witnessed, what we should say to our children about this current moment, and what she thinks the future holds. Will freedom prevail over force? You won't want to miss my conversation with Patti of Joy, Health, Freedom.

According to new data released from the US Census Bureau on Dec 21st, California led the nation in the most population loss in 2021, after years of increase. The other top two states for population loss last year were Illinois and New York. In contrast, Florida and Texas topped the Census list of states with population gains between 2020 and 2021. States' varied responses to the coronavirus have likely influenced this population shift. People are moving from states like California, Illinois, and New York which had, and continue to have, some the most restrictive coronavirus policies, and are heading to freer and more open states. Bretigne Shaffer is one of the many people who has left California for more freedom and opportunity elsewhere. She talks about her family's decision, and what she thinks of her new home, in this episode. Follow Bretigne at Bretigne.com Learn more about the Freogan Fellowship at Freoganfellowship.org Listen to Bretigne's podcast, What Then Must We Do? Read the FEE article, "I Was Fired From My Teaching Job for Refusing to Get Vaccinated. Here's How I Prepared," by Joshua Mawhorter Read the FEE article, "New York, California, and Illinois Saw Historic Population Drops in 2021," by Peter Jacobsen.

The coronavirus response over the past two years has transformed education, putting parents back in the driver's seat and inspiring education entrepreneurs to create new K-12 learning models. Jill Perez is one of these educators. A longtime teacher and mom of 4, Jill is the founder of Tranquil Teachings Learning Center in Monmouth County, New Jersey that is meeting mounting parent demand for freer and more flexible education options. Join the discussion at the LiberatED Podcast Community Facebook group! Connect with Kerry at fee.org/kerry.