SGL is practiced in various forms by the growing number of Microschools, Pod Schools and Cooperatives across the country. It is both a return to the effectiveness of the one room school houses of the past and a way to propel education into the future when paired with modern logistics and support technology. Though increasingly popular amongst affluent families with the time and material resources required to arrange and oversee them, we believe this transformational learning experience should be available to children everywhere. When compared to other forms of education, on a per student basis SGL is able to deliver better outcomes at a more affordable cost for the following reasons:

• Values Alignment - Education is a deeply formational experience. Who a child is influenced by and how they are formed is a decision that belongs to parents alone. SGL represents a whole new world of choice for families and teachers, allowing both to connect with each other around shared values and a common educational vision. 
• Accountability, Transparency,  Flexibility - In SGL, Families partner with and contract directly to professional educators in an at-will, direct exchange of value for service, strongly incentivizing teachers to provide great service that is fully transparent to their paying customers. Teachers are made directly responsible for their learning groups collective experience and can refuse service to any disruptive students or families to help ensure a positive peer learning environment throughout the year. Furthermore, SGL teachers are compensated to serve their students both in and out of the classroom. Students who miss class time are not penalized and will still be supported remotely through digital tools and ongoing monitoring to help parents understand their child's progression.
• Financial Sanity - Research is clear that the vast majority of a child's elementary education experience is dependent on their particular assigned teacher. Expensive buildings, fancy marketing, and large administration budgets have little to do with outcomes but perpetually inflate costs for families. By significantly reducing these superfluous expenses, SGL lets families attract higher quality teachers with better compensation, while keeping total tuition at a more reasonable level. In many cases, teachers who have been teaching at schools costing 2x-4x more are finding they can be compensated better through SGL while narrowing their focus to half the number of students they are used to!
  

Understanding the power of Personalization

Small Group Learning also confronts a largely unrecognized, but systemic problem with Private Education models. Exclusive private schools everywhere run application processes to select the best students they can...but then take credit for how successful their students are. The reality is those same students are  already high achievers and would likely be successful in any number of education contexts. By contrast, Small Group Learning is focused on creating a transformational experience for any student through highly personalized attention. Families and Teachers must mutually agree to certain expectations of behavior, but children are not pre-screened for their academic abilities to ensure they can move through pre-set materials. With only 8-12 students per teacher, the teacher is able to adapt their instruction to each students individual capabilities.

Those same high performing students? A growing body of evidence shows they do even better within the more personalized environment of SGL, where they are not held back by a pre-set curriculum and a pace designed for the collective average abilities of 20, 30 or even 40 other students. In SGL they can be challenged by their educator to their full abilities. Students with learning challenges? They can still be part of a close knit peer learning community and have an educator who understands them uniquely and is able to tailor an experience to their needs.

The problem...and a solution

We are excited to announce our partnership with Edefy, the first Small Group Learning marketplace and logistics platform to bring Families together and let them connect directly to professional Teachers at third party Host sites nearby. Edefy’s mobile app and web platform brings all parties together and through each level of shared commitment necessary to form, launch, and sustain optimized, in-person learning groups each year.

• Full Time - A professional educator leads and teaches a Full-Time Equivalent learning experience 4 days per week, Monday through Thursday for their assigned families. Because the educator is responsible for all aspects of the learning experience, Friday is dedicated to the teachers administrative tasks, including student evaluations and feedback and planning the coming week's activities and scope and sequence.
• Hybrid - A part-time professional educator partners with homeschooling families to help guide the learning experience throughout the year. Hybrid programs can be from 1 to 3 days per week, with professional instruction, group activities and socialization opportunities on in-person days, with work to be done at home on the off days.
• Cooperative - No paid professional. Dedicated homeschooling families gather together on selected days of the week to share instruction duties, do group projects and socialize their children.

The professional educators assigned to Full Time and Hybrid Learning Groups will be equipped to drive the years scope and sequence, curriculum selections, student progression, student progress monitoring, compliance with their states homeschooling requirements, and provide detailed weekly feedback to families.

Costs will vary according to Host Site and Program Type, however, on the Edefy platform, Full-Time program base costs tend to match up with the lower end of private elementary school options in a given geography. In addition, families who help sites fill and are positive contributors to their learning groups throughout the year will see their tuition costs significantly lowered through Earned Rewards each year. Rewards can add up to many hundreds of dollars in savings, reducing the cost of your SGL experience substantially. To browse Sites and view base costs, download the Edefy app at (Website Coming Soon)