Thirty states fund students instead of systems. 750,000+ children learn in microschools, and over 70% of the people running them are licensed teachers — trained by institutions that have built almost nothing for the sector they left for.
Central Michigan University's College of Education and Human Services offers an online M.A. in Educational Leadership with a Charter School Leadership emphasis — program text naming "public, private, charter, and virtual schools, educational service providers, authorizers." It is the first preparation program built for the choice sector found anywhere in this scan. CMU became the nation's first university charter authorizer in 1994 and remains its largest.
EdChoice's own survey data — the clearest statement of the problem anyone has published. Teachers were asked how prepared they felt to teach in each kind of school.
A 53-point fall between the school type preparation programs are built around and the fastest-growing one.
The two states now anchor the whole argument.
Florida — the most choice money in America (~1.4M students in some option). Universities hold lab-school charter authority; both UF and FSU run lab schools. Programs built for the sector: none. UF's full undergraduate course list contains no choice-related course.
Michigan — universities have authorized charters since 1994; CMU and GVSU alone hold roughly 148 schools serving 64,000+ students. And the education college offers a Charter School Leadership M.A. The instrument, held long enough, produced the program.
The refinement that matters: Michigan's engagement stops at the licensed boundary. Charter schools employ licensed teachers and licensed administrators — a Charter School Leadership degree maps cleanly onto existing credentials. Microschools, homeschool co-ops and ESA vendors do not. Even in the deepest university-charter state in the country, there is still nothing for the unlicensed slice of the sector — which is where the 750,000 microschool students actually are.
Click any row for the evidence and source. "Nothing found" is not the same as "nothing there" — always read it against the Checked column.
| Institution | State | Category | Checked |
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Named honestly, including where the strongest organizations in the field stopped short. Offered as openings, not criticisms.
Every organization measures its own side of the ledger, and measures it well. Nobody owns the seam — whether the workforce exists to staff what the policy enabled.
Why have education colleges built so little? The evidence does not yet separate these. Click any row for detail.
| Explanation | Status |
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