In School's Out, Mickey Revenaugh will introduce us to the three million fed-up families who have responded to the crisis in American public schools by leaving the traditional school system entirely.

Each chapter of School’s Out traces one branch of the evolving homeschooling movement, telling stories that illuminate the quiet revolution in American education from the perspective of the families seeking unconventional options for their kids. We’ll explore microsocieties with Black homeschoolers in Georgia, go unschooling off the grid in Illinois, catalog tortoises across the Arizona high desert in a roadschooling RV, and join an all-ages “pod prom” outside Boston. We’ll witness the agonized debate at one kitchen table over pulling a trans daughter out of school for her safety—and the equally fraught decision next door to homeschool to avoid “pronouns.”

In the final two chapters, we’ll catch up with unconventionally schooled young people post “graduation,” and look ahead to what the homeschooling movement means for the future of learning. By the journey’s end, we’ll see that the increasing personalization in children’s learning must be coupled with a broad connection to community to stave off isolation and despair. We’ll also see that the normalization of these new choices, which accelerated when the pandemic shuttered schools overnight, is driving both positive changeand nerve-wracking disruption in the traditional education system itself.