Early-stage education incubator 4.0 Schools CEO Matt Candler was in Washington D.C. last week for the first-ever White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools.
“What we need — more than ever — is a systemic approach to creating new schools that prepare students for the future they will inherit while decreasing the risks and costs of testing of new ideas for schooling,” explains the 4.0 Schools website.
Candler revealed the Tiny Schools toolkit, a program designed to empower 1,000 communities across the country to create their own small-scale prototypes on next generation schools.
The goal of The Tiny Schools Project is to reduce the risk of creating new schools by testing promising concepts at a very small scale in intimate environments where willing families and students provide high-frequency feedback to school leaders before they build a full scale school.
4.0 Schools is also committing to provide training and startup capital to bring the 10 most effective prototypes to life as breakthrough public schools or low cost private schools.
“If we’re going to rethink school for the 21st century, we need to rethink how we create schools.” said Candler. “The Tiny Schools Prototyping Kit allows communities across the country to create innovative new schools based on local needs while ensuring those schools are battled tested and ready to scale based on clear evidence of success.”
The organization plans to develop additional resources for founders and communities to use as they launch new schools in the future.