Students attending microschools are progressing at the same rate as their peers nationally and sometimes a whole lot faster than expected, even though parents often choose such programs because their kids have disabilities or other significant challenges, new data shows.

From fall 2025 to spring 2026, about 400 students from 27 schools made gains in math and reading on the widely used i-Ready tests, with more than half exceeding expected growth based on national norms in reading and 47% doing so in math.

Some microschools, especially larger ones, were “knocking it out of the park,” with “every student achieving over and above what was expected.” said Daniel Hamlin, dean of education at the University of Texas at Austin, who conducted the study on behalf of the National Microschooling Center, an advocacy organization.

Nearly half of the students had special learning needs, 28% had mental health needs and 14% had a chronic medical condition.

“You have a very high percentage of kids who would be classified in a public school as having a disability or some kind of other significant life circumstance, like a severe medical condition,” he said.

I-Ready creates a projected score for each individual student, based on the data from public and private school students nationwide. In the microschool sample, results were weaker among students in poverty, those in the elementary grades and Black students in math.

The study has multiple limitations. It’s small and the students who took the tests might not be representative of the microschool population in general, estimated at 1 million to 2 million students nationally. Families who choose microschools may also be different in several ways from those in public schools, and the schools weren’t randomly selected. Still, the research is significant because Hamlin was able to collect data from the same kids in the same microschools over the course of the school year. The Rand Corp. tried something similar last year and ran into multiple obstacles.

Read the full article about microschool students' test performance by Linda Jacobson at The 74.