Why Are Schools So Big—and Should They Be?

Have you ever paused to wonder why most traditional schools are so large?

Today, my current network, Flourish, runs micro-schools for middle school students—each serving fewer than 100 children. Earlier in my career, I helped build Rocketship, a network of much larger “macro-schools” serving hundreds of students. Over the years, I’ve often asked myself: Why didn’t we design Rocketship as a micro-school network from the start?

The honest answer is simple: at the time, large schools were just how school was done. Few people questioned their size.

What’s interesting is that school size has very little to do with what happens in a classroom. Whether a school serves 80 students or 800, classes are often similar in size and routine. What changes dramatically is the student experience. Small schools are naturally more personal. Every teacher knows every student, and every student is truly seen.

So how did macro-schools become the norm?

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How Schools Got So Big

One major reason schools grew large is land. Many towns historically set aside significant acreage for schools. Once a school was built, the simplest way to accommodate growth was to keep adding students to the same campus. Over time, schools expanded far beyond their original design. (Hospitals and prisons suffer from this same institutional tendency.)

Think about the portable classrooms found on so many campuses. They’re often unattractive, awkwardly placed, and remarkably permanent. It’s almost always easier to add one more classroom—or one more student—than to build a new school. Ironically, once a macro-school exists, finding land to build another large school becomes extremely difficult.

There are also financial and operational reasons macro-schools took hold. Consider athletics and sports facilities. If academics and sports are combined, a school needs a large enough student body to efficiently use expensive fields, gyms, and equipment. Over time, these shared-cost efficiencies reinforced the logic of scale—even when that scale no longer served students particularly well.

Another contributing factor is how school districts are structured. Districts are designed to serve all students in a geographic area. As communities become denser, schools become denser too. Large schools solve administrative and logistical challenges—but they were never designed to optimize the day-to-day experience of children.

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What Parents Actually Want

Parents are increasingly realizing that while macro-schools may work for institutions, they often don’t work well for kids.

Parents want their children to be known. They want schools where adults notice when a child is struggling or thriving. They want environments that feel safe, caring, and human. As families begin choosing alternative educational options, district enrollments shrink and the argument for massive schools becomes less convincing.

Macro-schools may solve system-level problems—but they rarely solve the deeply personal needs of children.

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Why Smaller Is Better—for Students and Teachers

Regardless of how they evolved, macro-schools tend to be worse for students. In large environments, it’s simply too easy to get lost.

They’re also harder on teachers. In very large schools, teachers often feel like small cogs in a big machine. The work becomes more fragmented, more bureaucratic, and less relational.

Macro-schools are challenging for systems as well. They require layers of non-student-facing roles—principals, assistant principals, deans, and specialists—which adds cost and complexity while increasing the distance between decision-makers and students.

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Passion, Choice, and the Future of High School

One argument for large high schools is that more students allow for more specialized programs. And that can be valuable—especially if a student already knows what they want to pursue.

But most students enter high school still discovering who they are.

At Flourish, helping students identify their passions is an explicit part of our curriculum. We focus on what energizes them, what they enjoy, and what they might want to explore more deeply. By doing this work earlier, students are better prepared to choose high schools that truly align with their interests.

A student who discovers a passion for emergency medicine, for example, can intentionally seek out a high school that offers EMT training. As more schools help students find their passions earlier, the need for massive, one-size-fits-all high schools diminishes. Instead, we can imagine a future with many small, focused high schools—each serving a specific group of students exceptionally well.

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How Flourish Is Designed Differently

Each Flourish school has between one and four teachers. A lead teacher takes on additional responsibility for enrollment and parent relationships. Teachers are compensated based on both the number of students in the school and the happiness of students and families.

This simple structure maximizes what matters most—great teachers and strong relationships—while minimizing complexity. In a micro-school, many traditional support roles can be automated, keeping the focus squarely on the student–teacher relationship that so often gets lost in macro-schools.

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Mental Health, Belonging, and Bullying

School size has profound implications for student mental health.

Large institutions don’t just struggle to support wellbeing—they may actively undermine it. In contrast, micro-schools create environments where everyone knows one another. With fewer than 100 students, we are well below the “tribe size” of 150 identified by anthropologist Robin Dunbar as the upper limit for meaningful social relationships.

Bullying is also closely tied to scale. In a school of 500 students, it’s extremely difficult to maintain visibility, accountability, and a coherent culture. In a micro-school, students share common spaces, interact constantly, and build real responsibility toward one another. At Flourish, bullying is identified quickly and addressed directly—because no one is invisible.

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A Return to What Matters Most: A Modern One-Room Schoolhouse

In many ways, Flourish represents a return to the one-room schoolhouse—reimagined for the modern world.

A hundred years ago, children learned in small, tightly knit communities. Teachers knew every student. Relationships were central, and school was a place of belonging. That model worked not because it was simple, but because it was human-scaled.

Flourish brings that same sense of community forward, supported by modern tools. Our micro-schools recreate the closeness, shared accountability, and trust of a one-room schoolhouse—while leveraging today’s technology and AI. These tools allow us to automate administrative work, personalize learning, and free teachers to focus on what matters most: relationships.

With a small group of caring teachers working with students throughout the day, Flourish prioritizes connection over coverage and depth over breadth. Students are known. Their strengths are nurtured. Their challenges are noticed early.

We believe this combination—timeless structure, modern tools—points toward the future of education. We look forward to sharing Flourish’s results with parents and educators as we continue advancing the micro-school movement.