Before Chipotle ushered in the phenomenon of being able to “have it your way,” the customization of a fast casual meal was relegated to condiments, not the entire entree. Nearly twenty years ago, the Washington Post wrote a piece about “Chipotlification”—the meal customization model Chipotle introduced—and how it was changing the face of fast casual eateries. In 2013, the restaurant chain boasted that there were 65,000 possible menu items—a mind boggling number of possibilities that would be exponentially more today (hello sofritos!).
“Chipotlification ” is the term I think best describes the relatively recent “unbundling” or “assembly” trends in education reform discussions nationally and in some states. These ideas refer to allowing parents to assemble educational components of their child’s education to provide them with a personalized learning experience. Unlike those wonky terms, “Chipotlification” better communicates that when customizing education, you need a bowl (or a taco or a tortilla, depending on your preferences) to hold it all together. Or as the national education nonprofit organization Bellwether describes it in their work on assembly: the “comprehensive platform” that connects parents and families to learning providers.
In the education edition of Chipotlification, a charter school could be the bowl.
While many parents would be thrilled to customize education on their own because they have the time and resources to hunt down the best music teachers, statistics classes, and pickleball teams, others will be happy to customize the last 10 percent (think guacamole or sour cream, black beans, or pinto beans), or even to follow a pre-set plan that seems to work best for their child.
Speaking as a mom, as much as I love the idea of customizing all the components of my child’s education, there is another part of me that would fear the decision making, driving, and waitlists that would invariably come with it in an area like Northern Virginia were I to do it all on my own. Many parents already do this during the summer to cobble together activities, which can be exhausting. I am sure there are many parents like me that would feel—well, honestly—a little tired when thinking of doing the “assembly” year-round to get the best options for my child, let alone for multiple children, not to mention the anxiety of whether I have assembled it correctly.
That is where charter schools—the bowls—come in. Charter schools can offer a structure for learning, but also allow for customization and independence, just like how when you want to swap out the rice for salad or tinker with the toppings, you can. Moreover, charters provide built-in accountability and funding, as well as expertise in building a personalized learning experience. Some innovative schools, GEM Prep in Idaho, are already taking the lead in demonstrating what this could look like and how it works.
GEM Prep, and others like it, allow students the opportunity for in-person and virtual learning. Students receive a mix of in-class and virtual instruction, providing students, especially in rural areas, with more access to courses and high-quality instructors. There are also charter schools, such as IEM and Springs in California, which allow students to conduct independent study at home as part of an instructor-guided learning experience, but that also includes a physical building where students can attend some classes. Springs offers students a range of settings and models, from classical to STEM. Another example is Great Hearts Nova, a virtual version of the brick-and-mortar Great Hearts classical schools with in-person microschool components. Third Future schools also personalize student learning with flexible learning modalities and schedules. Examples like these provide onramps for customization, especially for parents of students with unique learning needs that require additional services. To allow for even more customization for students, schools could provide educational grants to its families to further refine their students’ educational experiences.
Taking these approaches would leverage existing charter school accountability systems for new innovations. If a school didn’t have an orchestra or a specific foreign language option, it could enable parents to access those programs elsewhere. Ultimately the charter would be accountable for the resources used by parents who exercise their autonomy to tap into grants offered by that school. Parents could customize their child’s education, and the school would carefully curate and enable equitable access to resources.
The very concept of chartering is about assembling educational components. It is just that, typically, they are assembled at the community level, reflective of groups of parents and educators. Public charter schools provide leaders with autonomy and flexibility to offer an educational program that can be tailored down to the student level, but with educational expertise, funding, and safeguards to ensure students are learning. Charters are also a way to incrementally implement an assembled, learner-centered public education system both for parents and policymakers. Parents can add on different educational components without leaving their public schools, and policymakers can offer more options to parents while maintaining existing accountability for outcomes. Lastly, where facilities are limited, charter-based assembly could also help expand capacity in areas with high demand. Offering a mix of in-person and virtual can also help with staffing challenges.
As policymakers explore ways of expanding educational freedom, they should consider that charter schools can provide the best of both worlds when it comes to enabling a customized public education: a home base with a school culture, instructor support, and camaraderie, with flexibility to learn at home, pod, or school facility. As the recent data from CREDO show, charters have a large impact at the individual school level. The sum of its parts is greater than the whole. In the meantime, we need to increase access to charter schools that have freedom to innovate how they serve their students so more parents can find the right education that fits their child.
