The Promise of Unconventional Education
School’s Out: Why Families Are Choosing Unconventional Education by Mickey Revenaugh (Johns Hopkins, 2026)
Reviewed by Dixie Dillon Lane
Mickey Revenaugh’s new book School’s Out is an enthusiastic endorsement of American educational innovation and possibility. A wide-ranging tour of educational possibilities beyond conventional schools, the book will fascinate any reader who harbors concerns about ordinary American schooling or wonders what alternatives are already out there. Here we find the problems of education in 2026 met, not by dour pessimism, but by optimism and experimentation. “What could be better,” Revenaugh asks, “than finding ever-new ways to accommodate the desire for choice within the formerly one-size-fits-all system?” (23).
It is a vision well worth consideration. Revenaugh’s book matters not just because some parents may be interested in school choice, but because ordinary education in America is failing. This statement is not polemical; it is merely factual, at least in terms of the effective teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics. Nationally speaking, American public schools are routinely unsuccessful in teaching the majority of pupils to read and “figure” proficiently (see, for example, the federal government’s Nation’s Report Cards on fourth- and eighth-grade performance).
This is not to say that all schools are failing all children, but that the majority of American public school pupils are not reading or doing mathematics at grade level. So one understands why so many Americans are interested in considering alternatives to these schools, and also why our country as a whole should be paying attention to all possible solutions.
School’s Out offers snapshot portraits of several such possibilities as they are currently playing out in the world of unconventional education. In the course of the book, Revenaugh introduces us to teenagers who attend pod schools where each student brings his or her own curriculum; to children who spend many or even all of their school hours playing video games; and to families who road-school, unschool, traditionally homeschool, or practice virtual schooling. As a co-founder of an early online school herself, Revenaugh is especially excited about forms of alternative education that rely heavily on the internet, whether it’s sailing families who put together portside co-ops to provide internet access for homeschooling or children who attend online public charter schools. And there’s a great deal to be excited about, in both online and other forms of alternative schooling; as Revenaugh argues, unconventional education can offer a high degree of agency to parents (and sometimes children), giving them “an unprecedented opportunity to personalize their children’s learning” while also maintaining a “broad connection to community” (5). Anyone who is looking for something to try will benefit greatly from the many ideas and the sense of freedom portrayed in these pages.
For interested families, this book is just a beginning point. As a grand tour of possibilities, the book is sometimes light on nuance, and critique is sometimes missing or uneven. Readers may wonder whether gaming students really don’t become addicted, whether so much time online is really “safe” for anxious students, or whether learning pods are really closing down merely for financial reasons – surely sometimes there are other difficulties, as in any experiment or start-up? What works and what doesn’t in alternative education? Why are some practices described only with celebration, and others with more critique? To consider each of these ideas more deeply, readers will need to do additional research of their own before jumping in with their own kids or communities.
Inasmuch as School’s Out is primarily a work of introduction and advocacy, this does not detract from its purpose as a dynamic picture of possibility. And in some areas, the book has strength of detail and understanding. The book is excellent in its demonstration of fuzzy boundaries in education, for example, which is essential to understanding today’s educational landscape. Revenaugh’s discussion of homeschooling – probably the oldest of the educational alternatives profiled here – weaves in and out of many chapters, crossing lines and raising fascinating questions that affect practice, definition, and policy regarding home education. It is very hard to define whether online learning is homeschooling or public schooling (or both), for example, or whether education that does not occur at home, such as world-schooling, counts. Revenaugh correctly recognizes this broad world of homeschooling-without-boundaries as one ripe with innovation.
The book also gives a good overview of homeschoolers’ diverse motivations, and a chapter on “Unconventional Education in Black and Brown” goes deeply into the concerns and experiences of homeschoolers (as well as other families) of color. This is especially welcome, since few researchers have looked into this population in depth.
Some of the book’s unevenness in matters of critique and analysis may be related to the author’s use of A.I. Although “an early adopter of most every technology,” Revenaugh considers herself “skeptical” and has not allowed A.I. to “write [her] prose” (234). Yet she also discloses having used ChatGPT to help “analyze hours of interviews, confirm key themes across them, and pull out the pithiest quotes” for her final chapter, in which she discusses A.I. adoption in education quite positively (234). If she also used A.I. in this or similar ways as she developed her other chapters, this may help explain why the book’s use of sources and the presence or absence of critical analysis vary so much throughout the book.
To read the book, however, is a pleasure, and its belief in educational possibility is infectious. Revenaugh is also clearly warm, caring, and personally engaged in this study. She herself appears in the book several times as either an observer or an innovator. We may not have a single solution to the problems in American schooling, but we do have many ideas-in-progress, and some of them are working quite well for many children. School’s Out reminds us that fundamentally, we have everything we need to look for – and hopefully find – solutions for our country’s educational future.
Dixie Dillon Lane is an American historian and the author of Skipping School: A History of American Homeschooling and How It Went Mainstream (Eerdmans, 2026). She serves as an associate editor of Hearth & Field and as a contributing editor at Front Porch Republic.
