Miami-Dade County Public Schools may be the third-largest school district in the U.S., but it’s still a small world.
I was reminded of this when I met Julieta Rakover—in just a few minutes, she and I deduced that I’d gone to high school with her brother and she’d gone to high school with mine. A lot has changed since her brother and I were in the National Honor Society together, but one thing that hasn’t is that Florida’s education landscape remains complex and uneven. And Rakover, who became a teacher in the system (M-DCPS as it’s often called) she and I came from, was deeply dissatisfied with what she was seeing.
"I was completely disillusioned by the public school system, and I just felt like the solution couldn't be there," she said, describing a system that was a micromanagement-oriented "numbers game" and where teachers are paid a pittance.
"I had this amazing coworker, who had dedicated 20 years to the school," said Rakover. "She had great scores, everyone admired her and parents loved her—and she was making only $1,000 more than me. It’s a system built to fail."
Rakover left and became a microschool founder and leader with Primer, a startup helping teachers establish their own microschools.
"I felt like Primer was committing to the two things that I think are the most necessary for change," said Rakover. "One was addressing students by having them be a part of their education journey, giving them choice and taking them seriously…They also committed to addressing teacher burnout, which is always going to hold us back if it’s not discussed."
Primer, founded in 2019, has to date raised more than $18 million in funding from big-name venture backers, including Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures. And Rakover’s story is particularly relevant to where the company is headed: Primer successfully partnered with the Florida House and Senate to pass HB1285, an amendment to the state's educational omnibus bill, expanding potential school sites to more than 50,000 locations. Think: Museums, churches, synagogues, and performing arts centers.
"The reason why I'm so excited about microschools is that you can do this asset-light real estate model, or use existing real estate because our technology, Primer OS, decreases the cost of operating a school, where you have to hire all these administrators," said Ryan Delk, Primer CEO and founder. "We can deliver education to a student—what I consider to be world-class education—at about 60% of the cost that the traditional school system can in Florida."
This kind of regulatory success is the crux of Primer's bull case, said Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens.
"Primer ends up being kind of a regulatory capture story," said Stephens. "How do you start small schools with entrepreneurial teachers that you want to get out from the massive overhead of administration, either public or private? It turns out that you have to figure out a way to get the state legislature to allow these things to happen on existing real estate."
What are microschools? They have a couple key characteristics—small class sizes (often well under 20), personalized curriculums, and mixed age groups. Microschools tend to charge tuition, though some have tuition-free options and partnerships.
Stephens said that Founders Fund has a "somewhat tortured relationship" with edtech, given firm cofounder Peter Thiel’s negative views on higher education. But Stephens is bullish on Primer’s ability to work within a system.
"Oftentimes, people go into these things thinking that they're going to be able to just build the product to be so good that the government just wilts and dies, kind of the way that it worked for Uber," said Stephens. "That's great, but most businesses don't have the same sort of network effect."
Florida was set to be the sort of place amenable to microschools and to the offerings of a company like Primer. The Sunshine State was originally very friendly to homeschoolers and charter schools in the 1990s, and a number of governors since have championed charter schools and homeschooling laws and regulations in Florida. Miami—where both Rakover and I are from—was one of the first markets that Primer launched in. However you feel about it, being a home (and laboratory) for alternative schooling is very Florida. It's perhaps even in the state's DNA, said Alex Rizo, Florida House of Representatives member and a Republican who worked with Primer on the legislation.
"We believe in Florida that it doesn't matter where you get educated," said Rizo. "You need to get an education. So, what we're doing is availing that education, that possibility, to parents in many different ways. We're just staying out of the way and saying: 'Hey, you know best where to put your child.'"
Microschools are controversial, as you might expect. Some, like Princeton University's Jen Jennings, have been troubled by (and spoken out against) the lack of oversight. On the flip side, proponents will say microschools provide opportunities for kids to thrive in environments that are less stringent and more personalized. I spoke to Tyler Thigpen, cofounder at the University of Pennsylvania's The Forest School and The Institute for Self-Directed Learning, who's an advocate of microschools. But I asked him to argue both sides. The case for:
"The way I've come to appreciate microschools is as a community of parents and caregivers who really align on the kinds of experiences they want their kids to have, and the kind of people that they want their kids to become," Thigpen said. "They come together to stand up a learning environment that honors that."
The core case against is rather simple, coming down to an essential question, as Thigpen puts it: "How do you make sure these schools have high standards?"
Primer’s answer on this point: The company says all its schools are licensed to operate as private schools in each of their state’s Departments of Education (meaning they have the permit to operate). Primer schools are usually accredited—verified to meet certain academic standards—one to two years after opening, the company says.
I haven’t the faintest idea about what the best way to educate kids is. I can only speak as a former public high school student and observer. But in thinking about Primer and my home state, I’m reminded of the life-changing teachers that I had—and how hard it was to feel like they were appropriately appreciated, compensated, and respected. It’s hard to think of a more resonant, significant profession that’s more readily ignored.
"I think teachers aren't respected as professionals right now," said Rakover. "What I found as a public school teacher is that we were kind of like robots. Your creativity wasn’t celebrated, and your ability to know your kids was ignored and pushed aside."
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
Twitter: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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