LiberatED Podcast

During my recent visit to the flourishing hub of microschools and education entrepreneurship in South Florida, my first stop was at  Compass Outreach and Education Center , a microschool run by our guest today, Laurel Suarez. Suarez was one of the first microschool/hybrid school founders in the greater Fort Lauderdale area, launching her microschool in 2019, and she has become a mentor and source...

Tucked inside her beautiful farmhouse on her sprawling farm property in Wichita, Kansas is Jessica Ramsay's cozy classroom where she offers one-on-one tutoring to local children. A longtime teacher in the public schools, Ramsay decided to resign from the district in 2021 to become an education entreprenuer. She opened Farmhouse Phonics , which is now so successful that she is actually earning more...

Today's podcast guests are Molly and Noah Stephenson. They have experienced the benefit of small-scale, personalized learning first-hand, initially as unschooling parents and now as founders of the Wildflower Community School , a microschool in Wichita, Kansas. Only about 4 out of their current 35 students would be considered neurotypical, with most of their students having specialized learning ne...

Joe Connor founded Odyssey to help connect families to the available education choice programs in their respective states, ensuring that all eligible families are able to access these choice programs. His work also helps to inspire and activate entrepreneurial parents and teachers who are looking to create new education solutions in their local communities. This week, Odyssey announced a $4.75 mil...

Our guest today created her thriving, award-winning microschool for her own son. He was the catalyst. Like any entrepreneur, especially a "parentpreneur," Iman Alleyne saw a gap and set out to fill it. She built the  Kind Academy  microschool located in Coral Springs, Florida, which has received philanthropic support from the VELA Education Fund and has recently been named a semi-finalist for the...

There is something extraordinarily special happening in South Florida these days. It has become a hub of education entrepreneurship and emerging K-12 learning models, creating increasingly more abundant and diverse education options for families.   I recently had the opportunity to spend several days in the Fort Lauderdale area gathering with these incredible microschool founders. Shiren Rattigan...

The Sudbury Valley School is legendary in alternative education and unschooling circles. Founded in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1968, Sudbury Valley has become a beacon for parents and educators interested in non-coercive, self-directed education, and has inspired the creation of dozens of Sudbury-style schools around the world.   Our guest today is Mimsy Sadofsky, one of the original founders of...

It's been a hope-filled week in West Virginia! Yesterday, the West Virginia Supreme Court overturned a lower court's ruling against the Hope Scholarship program and lifted the injunction on the scholarship to enable West Virginia families to immediately take advantage of this expansive education choice program—which is the second most comprehensive education savings account (ESA) program in the US...

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...

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 geographi...

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...

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 M...

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 traine...

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 retr...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 academi...

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 toget...

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 t...

"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...

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, curren...

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 ext...