In Indianapolis, an Adventure in Magnitudes Is Reshaping the Future of School

There is a funky old video from 1977 called Powers of Ten that bills itself, quite accurately, as “an adventure in magnitudes.”

Produced for IBM by the creators of the Eames Chair (as I said, it was the ’70s), the film takes the viewer on a comprehensive nine-minute journey—first outward, then inward—through the known universe.

All of it.

Beginning at a picnic by the lakeside, the camera pulls out ten times farther every ten seconds until our own galaxy is barely visible. Then it reverses course, and upon our return, we enter the hand of the sleeping picnicker, advancing with ten times more magnification until our journey ends inside a proton of a carbon atom within a DNA molecule in a white blood cell.

It is quite a trip—one I was reminded of last week when, as part of my yearlong exploration of twelve sites across the United States that are seeding learner-centered ecosystems, I entered the basement of a neighborhood church in Indianapolis to learn more about the four adults there who are attempting to subvert conventional thinking about what it means to bring a good idea “to scale.”

Welcome to the Purdue Polytechnic High School Lab and the world of microschooling.

What is a microschool, you ask, and what might its ideal role be in a community-wide ecosystem of learning?

It is a flexible model for innovation that is growing rapidly across the United States, so much so that there is now even a National Microschooling Center, which estimates that there are already more than 120,000 such places educating as many as two million students.

As the Center’s 2024 sector analysis shows, the median number of students in a microschool is just sixteen. Typically, they convene in commercial spaces, private homes, or places of worship. They can be organized as homeschools, public schools, or private schools; accredited or unaccredited; one-offs or networks. And although their rate of growth has become a notable new development in American education, they are not exactly new (one-room schoolhouse, anyone?). But as the center’s Don Soifer puts it, “They are still in their early adoption phase, which means they are frequently operating within regulatory, statutory, and funding frameworks that did not anticipate their innovations. So it is crucial that policy and regulatory frameworks adapt to catch up with this movement and do not restrict its growth in ways that block microschools from realizing their compelling, transformative potential.”

That potential is what led Lacey Beatty to start spending her days in an Indianapolis church basement. A lifelong educator with a warm smile and contagious energy, Beatty was part of the founding faculty of a new charter high school in 2017, Purdue Polytechnic High School (PPHS), which was developed in partnership with the university, business leaders, the city, and the state to raise the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds pursuing STEM careers. It was, as she described it, “a big bet and a new way of organizing the school day. Every eight weeks, students choose a different learning pathway and work with local and regional industry partners. They can also take classes and earn dual enrollment credits at Purdue and other local colleges.” Today, by all accounts, PPHS is a runaway success—so much so that it has now spread across three campuses, two cities, and 900 students.

How, then, might a network like PPHS become even more autonomous and adaptable?

For Beatty, that is the question microschooling can help answer. “Different kids thrive in different contexts,” she explained. “So if we are serious about creating a true ecosystem, the more shapes and sizes we can offer kids for their learning environments, the better.”

To that end, the PPHS Lab is part of the larger Purdue Polytechnic network. But unlike those other campuses, it has just twenty-five students and three full-time staff members (Beatty works across all the schools). “I believe microschools are a powerful force for educational freedom,” explained Dr. Keeanna Warren, who oversees the entire network of PPHS schools. “They are the truest form of community schools, built in partnership with local community members. This grassroots foundation ensures that microschools prioritize inclusivity and access and contribute to the creation of a different sort of citywide network: a meshwork of learning hubs, field sites, and community partners in which some are big, some are small, and some are really small.”

It’s a different sort of scale that we’re working with—one that is more human-centered, we hope, and more humane.

Tamika Riggs

Opening the Walls

When I arrive, one of the Lab’s students, an earnest sixteen-year-old named Nat, takes me on a tour. Six of the school’s students serve in an ambassadorial capacity—giving tours, recruiting other students, and providing an extra hand whenever necessary. Nat is one of them, wearing her gold ambassador’s name pin like a medal and walking us around a building that contains a much bigger footprint than I had originally imagined.

Square cinder block rooms house each of the Lab’s two advisories—the primary organizing principle of the school—with roughly twelve students each. But there is also a music room and a recording studio, features that provided the primary selling points for Richard, a taciturn ambassador-in-training with dyed blue locs at the tips. “At first I came here because it was a pathway to the main campus,” he explained. “But I have stayed because of the studio”—Richard is an aspiring rapper—“and because I have just found myself more motivated here than before.”

After the tour, Nat takes us to the room of her advisor, Jeff Edge, a jovial spirit who has transformed his windowless basement setting into a cozy, familial corner with a leather couch, a reading chair, and rectangular work tables. A floor lamp, its shade slightly crooked, provides the only illumination, along with a string of white holiday lights hung around the edges of the room’s chalkboard.

“We like the place we’ve created here, but our goal is to get them out of the building and into the community at least two days a week,” Jeff explains. “We were inspired by the work they’ve been doing at Big Picture Learning’s flagship school, The Met in Providence, or the Fannie Lou Hamer School in the Bronx—places where the whole point is ‘leaving to learn,’ and the adult’s job is to connect them to the right community partners and learning opportunities. And I know it’s just year two here, but we’re already doing a good job of letting kids feel connected to something larger than themselves.”

“The challenge going forward,” he adds, “is creating more professional pathway opportunities—and increasing both our reach and our impact. These kids need to be exposed to all the different ways they could choose to spend their lives after they graduate.”

While we’re speaking, a student named Luke volunteers his perspective. “The hardest part of going to school here is holding yourself accountable,” he begins, his intelligent eyes peering out from behind a pair of black glasses. “You’re left to your own nature here. There’s no hiding from it. You pretty much build your own schedule.”

For Luke, it’s exactly what he wants and where he wants to be—so much so that he’s willing to travel almost two hours each morning to get here. “At my previous school, I was miserable and unmotivated. I felt like the culture was toxic. I was suffocating, and I couldn’t improvise at all. But now I know what I like and where I think my future will be.”

Luke knows this because he has spent the past year and a half apprenticing at a local business called Horner Automation. At first, it was just job shadowing, but then Luke emailed them directly—of his own accord—to see about an internship. “We learned quickly that Luke was willing to try different things,” explains Ken Jannotta, Horner’s manager of global engineering. “That’s important because it meant he could bring fresh ideas to us as well.”

I asked Jannotta to say more about what Luke—and any other prospective intern—could meaningfully contribute to such an established business. “Luke’s curiosity and eagerness to learn have allowed a lot of people on our staff to grow,” he responds. “Engineers can be pretty introverted, after all. But we’ll also often tap interns for testing a new product because they’ll do or see things we didn’t expect. That helps us think outside the box. And now that we’ve done this for a while, we have a list of tasks that could work for other high school interns in the future.”

In the end, though, the PPHS Lab’s ability to foster meaningful connections is just as important as its variety of hands-on experiences. “What makes our environment different is the depth of our one-on-one work,” explains Lab advisor Tamika Riggs. “We can guide them and anticipate their needs before they even know they have them. And we can feel the impact we’re having each day. This environment prepares students to be adults. It gives them an opportunity to lead and to share their thoughts, to be challenged by other people’s thoughts, and to manage their own time.”

In this regard, in their ongoing efforts to cultivate a worthy system of schools, cities like Indianapolis are beginning to discover that the best solution may not be to go bigger or smaller—but to do both.

“The last few decades have shown us there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for American public education,” Riggs adds. “Comprehensive high schools can do some amazing things, and they work really well for some kids. But this model helps us rapidly adjust in a way they cannot, and it speaks to a type of kid who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

“It’s a different sort of scale that we’re working with—one that is more human-centered, we hope, and more humane.”

Education Reimagined is partnering with writer, filmmaker, and storyteller Sam Chaltain to author a series of pieces elevating the development of learner-centered ecosystems in communities across the United States.