Today, doctors and teachers are exiting entrenched institutions and building exciting, new models that offer greater freedom and flexibility for all.
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 micro-schools, 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)
Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and host of the weekly LiberatED podcast. She is also the author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and a regular Forbes contributor.
Kerry’s research interests include homeschooling and schooling alternatives, self-directed learning, education entrepreneurship, parent empowerment, school choice, and family and child policy. Her articles have appeared at The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, NPR, Education Next, Reason Magazine, City Journal, and Entrepreneur, and the Journal of School Choice, among others. She has a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bowdoin College.
Kerry lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children.
You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.
