Kerry McDonald is, quite simply, a powerhouse in the world of school choice, alternative schooling, innovation and entrepreneurship in education – a voice that bemoans the outcomes of government compulsory schooling.  This may sound harsh, but it’s a reality.  And without alternatives, educators, parents, and learners have to look to starting, building, and accessing their own learning opportunities.  Her diligent pursuit of such stories has provided us with a wellspring of examples of how entrepreneurial educators can innovate outside of our public school ecosystem, with the most recent explosion of microschools across the country, partly fueled from the pandemic.  In this episode she shares a ton of what she has learned and eloquently gives language to the need for the growth of these alternatives and points us to the stories of how these alternatives can take root.  And, once again, her commentary speaks to the need for a revolution in our public school ecosystem.

Besides her numerous personal efforts to identify and showcase how new learning environments can take root and how entrepreneurs can start and scale their efforts, Kerry is also a Senior Education Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom, author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom, several case studies of entrepreneurship in education,  and writes across several well-known publications including Forbes, and actively contributes to X (formerly Twitter) where she shares her insights and work. Her podcast LiberatED is available on various platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube and can be found on her website, LiberatED.

A Revolution in Education

The Canopy Project, stewarded by Transcend Education and the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), is a collaborative effort to identify and share information about innovative schools and learning environments that put student-centered, equitable practices at the center of their efforts.  Educators and organizations from across the country with a focus on creating far more progressive and learner-centered school designs nominate schools from across the country for practices they consider are making a difference in the lives of youth.  The Canopy team then surveys leaders from these communities and captures the plethora of practices from across these communities and makes them available to everyone through a dynamic, web-based database where anyone can look for schools implementing specific practices, such as effective ELL practices, career-focused practices, and social-emotional learning practices.  Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education who initially started the project at the Clayton Christensen Institute and continues to direct the project at CRPE, along with Janette Avelar, a Research Fellow at CRPE for the Project, discuss the project, including its intent and their hope that it can assist others in identifying innovations that could prove of value to others with a focus on student-centered and equitable learning opportunities for all.

A Revolution in Education

Transcend Education was founded by Jeff Wetzler and Aylon Samouha in 2015 to support school communities in creating and spreading extraordinary, equitable learning environments. Now partnering with over 200 schools in 50+ districts, serving nearly 500,000 students in 30 states, they are partnering with educators across the country in their efforts to transform themselves.  They do this through their community-based design process, utilizing resources and providing models that help school communities “get from industrial era learning to extraordinary and equitable learning.”  Jenee Henry, the Chief Learning Officer at Transcend, and Saya Reed, a Fellow on the Products & Capacity Building team, share the goals and efforts of Transcend to support learning communities transform themselves through a community-centered redesign process while accessing and tapping from a plethora of learner-centered, equity-focused practices from schools across the country that they have curated on their Models Exchange website.  They are doing extraordinary work with their partner schools, and the Models Exchange site can provide inspiration as well as designs that can help educators pursue new models of education that far better serve youth beyond the industrial-model of education that is now outdated for what our youth want and communities need.  Hear what they are up to ... and why on this episode.

A Revolution in Education