Many factors complicate efforts to collect evidence on microschool impacts on student outcomes, particularly when using conventional approaches. In this report, the authors use data from the NWEA MAP Growth Research Database to illustrate the various difficulties that evaluators are likely to encounter when using traditional research methods in microschool impact studies.

Is It Possible to Determine the Effects of the Microschool Sector on Students?

A Cautionary Tale About Evaluating Microschool Impacts on Student Outcomes

Lauren Covelli, Jonathan Schweig, Sarah Ohls

ResearchPublished Nov 12, 2025

Microschools are small schools that offer a more personalized and flexible learning experience compared with traditional schools. Many times, families choose to enroll in microschools because they are dissatisfied with local school options. Given the rapid growth of the microschool sector and the increasing investment of public dollars in education savings account programs that can be used to pay for microschools, there is a compelling need for evidence that these microschools support student learning.

However, many practical and conceptual factors complicate efforts to collect such evidence, particularly when using conventional approaches to quantify impacts. These complications include considerable variability in microschool models, little systematic student data, and the fact that conventional approaches to collecting data and quantifying impacts oppose the deinstitutionalized ethos of microschools.

In this report, the authors use data from the NWEA MAP Growth Research Database to illustrate the various difficulties that evaluators are likely to encounter when using conventional quasi-experimental methods in microschool impact studies. The authors highlight the considerations that should guide the design of studies so that they support valid and trustworthy inferences about microschool impacts on student outcomes. This report should be useful to researchers interested in studying the microschool sector, microschool leaders interested in evaluating their schools’ performance, and policymakers interested in the regulatory implications for the growing microschool sector.

Key Findings

  • The lack of comparable information on student achievement from microschool administrative records presents a serious challenge to microschool studies that rely on existing data. Microschools typically do not administer standardized assessments to their students. We were able to identify less than 0.1 percent of U.S. microschools for this analysis.
  • We estimated negligible impacts of students’ academic growth from the small number of microschools in our sample, using a method known as a virtual comparison group.
  • Researchers are likely to encounter difficulties in making accurate and trustworthy claims about microschool impacts when using traditional research methods. Students who attend microschools often differ from those who attend traditional public or private schools, and there is a lot of variation in what microschools look like and how they operate. Given these difficulties, traditional approaches to affect research may not be feasible or appropriate for the microschool space.

Recommendations

  • Researchers should align evaluation designs with the priorities of microschools and account for the ways in which microschool leaders measure program success while being transparent about the limitations of their studies.
  • Policymakers need to balance innovation and the public’s need to understand whether and how microschools are effective, whether and how they impact school systems, and the need to hold microschools accountable for their students’ outcomes.

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Covelli, Lauren, Jonathan Schweig, and Sarah Ohls, Is It Possible to Determine the Effects of the Microschool Sector on Students? A Cautionary Tale About Evaluating Microschool Impacts on Student Outcomes. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4414-1.html.
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This research was sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation and conducted in the Education and Employment Program of RAND Education, Employment, and Infrastructure.

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