Why are parents choosing microschools? Pt. 1.
“Jobs To Be Done” research on parents and school founders reveals motivations
Homeschooling is the fastest growing segment of American education. Growing alongside are a variety of homeschool-adjacent education offerings that look and feel quite different from conventional schools, like microschools and hybrid schools.[i]
While theories explaining their growth abound, there have been few rigorous efforts to describe why parents and educators are opting for these unconventional approaches. So last year, Stand Together Trust partnered with the Re-Wired Group, the Clayton Christensen Institute, and VELA to conduct first-of-its-kind “Jobs To Be Done” research to better understand parent and founder motivations.
Tom Arnett recently released an in depth Christensen Institute paper on the research, and it’s worth your time to dig in more. Through intensive interviews with parents who recently moved their children to microschools, the following three main Jobs To Be Done for parents were revealed:
When I disagree with decisions at my child’s school and I’m feeling unheard, help me find an alternative that will honor my perspective and values.
When my child is unhappy, unsafe, or struggling at school, help me find an environment where they can regain their love for learning.
When my child’s school is too focused on academic milestones and neglects other forms of learning, help me find a balanced educational experience for my child.
Separate research was done on the motivations of educators who recently launched a microschool, most of whom previously taught in traditional schools. This never-before-released research revealed four main Jobs To Be Done for founders:
When strong educational offerings are inaccessible to the populations I want to serve, help me reach students so they do not fall through the cracks.
When I know a better way to teach but the system prevents me from implementing it, help me execute my vision for a school free from the constraints of the system so I can positively impact more students.
When I’m frustrated that traditional schooling ignores developing the whole child, help me create an environment that supports their social and emotional growth so that my students are equipped to positively influence their communities.
When I see a type of education missing in the market, help me use my business acumen to address the void in the market.
This research is a lot to take in, so I’m going to spend two posts going over it. In this post, I’ll describe some of the benefits of the Jobs To Be Done approach and why it’s an important frame of thinking for education, particularly today. In my next post, I’ll dig into the findings from the parents’ Jobs To Be Done and also never-before-seen results on the Jobs To Be Done framework for educators who launched microschools.
Jobs To Be Done
The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework was co-created by Clayton Christensen, the late Harvard Business School professor, and Bob Moesta, co-founder of The Re-Wired Group. It’s an approach that focuses on identifying regular patterns of behavior, moments of struggle, and mindsets that individuals are in when they adopt a new product or service.
For our project, JTBD focuses on those who recently moved to a microschool – studying the internal dialogues of those who took action. The focus is not on building pages of data to identify a “quintessential customer,” nor on focus-grouping parents and teachers to ask them, hypothetically, about the features that would convert them to make a move. Asking potential adopters leading questions about what would make them adopt a new service is less helpful because, as Moesta says, “bitchin’ ain’t switchin.’”
In other words, if you’re trying to understand what might cause more teachers to jump into the world of microschooling, it’s probably better to have deep conversations with those who did it than to hide a microphone in a teachers lounge to hear what they’re complaining about.
The goal is to reveal the true needs and desires of the individuals who made a switch, which can be instrumental in areas like product design and marketing.
JTBD is a demand-side view of the world that focuses on what consumers are trying to accomplish when they move to a new learning environment, the context they’re in when they switch, and the pushes, pulls, anxieties and tradeoffs they encounter when choosing to switch to a new product or service.
The Segway vs. Bird Scooters
Greg Engle, Founding Partner at The Re-Wired Group, showcases the benefits of demand-side thinking by comparing the Segway to Bird scooters.
Two decades ago, the Segway was subject of enormous hype and speculation. Silicon Valley and Wall Street luminaries who had been granted sneak peeks of the invention hailed it as the most important tech development since the PC and predicted it would revolutionize transportation is ways not seen since Henry Ford. It did nothing of the sort. Despite its marvel of engineering, few Segways sold – particularly to the general public. A few years ago, production ended on the Segway altogether.
The lack of sales can be attributed, in part, to the $5,000 price tag required to support such an intricately engineered product. But that’s not the whole story.
“Segway was married to its solution and acted on an insight that did not tell the full picture of what people are trying to get done,” writes Engle. “What circumstances are people in when they don’t want to walk everywhere? Why choose a Segway in that struggling moment versus a bus, car, or bike?”
Compare Segway to the story of Bird scooters. They took the same insight that motivated Segway – that people don’t want to walk everywhere – but paired that with another question, “What are people trying to get done?”
As Engle notes:
[Bird] found that people in big cities were often running late for work, and the bus schedule didn’t line up. If they ran, they would arrive sweaty; if they rode their bike, they would have to lock it up and worry it would get stolen. In tourist towns, the company realized that people wanted a way to stay out of their cars and enjoy their location without walking ten miles a day.
While people didn’t want to spend $5,000 on an amazingly engineered solution that they were tethered to, they’d repeatedly spend $10-20 for an on-demand rental of a much simpler electric scooter that they could use to get from A to B and then abandon completely. Instead of focusing on engineering perfection, Bird focused on accomplishing the job that consumers wanted to get done by deploying fleets of simple scooters and an infrastructure to constantly collect, charge, and redeploy them in neighborhoods across the country.
These low-cost, rentable scooters are ubiquitous in cities across the country, imitators rushed to the market, and Bird became one of the fastest companies to reach a billion dollar valuation.
Why Does this matter for education?
We partnered with the Re-Wired Group to conduct this research primarily to inform the field of microschool leaders and supportive organizations, who can hopefully use the insights to better align their services to the needs of families. But there are important lessons for the broader education advocacy, philanthropy, and punditry.
The question is whether we will meet the growth of microschooling with a Segway approach or a Bird scooter approach.
Will we – the broader philanthropic and advocacy community – support the founders of these new education models by encouraging them to remain laser focused on identifying and meeting the needs of the families who seek them? Or will these founders be pushed to chase shiny objects, comply with technocratic dictates, and fall victim of an overengineering managerial class?
On the ground, we’re seeing a shift away from one-size-fits-all approaches within education. Educators are increasingly creating new offerings that are unique and responsive to the needs of children and families. If we want the sector to grow, we should be interested in understanding and supporting what educators and parents are trying to accomplish.
In my next post I’ll dig into the research and share what we found.
-AP
[i] I’ll assume the vast majority of people reading this Substack are familiar with these approaches, but mainstream media coverage of them can be found here, here, here, and here. Check out the National Microschooling Center, the VELA Fund, or Kerry McDonald’s writings if you want a deep dive.
Great read! Looking forward to more. The basic purpose of modern education (in light of a materialistic culture) is to teach children how to become healthier and healthier productive members of society.
Change is needed in schools for many reasons . Teachers and parents do not know the power of their voices and school systems hide under the myth that they are limited by of state and federal requirements. The reality is school systems have the authority and fiscal flexibility have to program differently, to collaborate across district lines and leverage community resources to meet the needs of students and lessen the demand on staff. Just takes one person to have the boldness to say it’s time to stop doing business as usual.