NavEd Network: Teaching Past the Edge of Driving Distance¶
I was schooled in a co-op three moms built. One was good at math, one at history, one at English. They pooled what they each knew and made a school that fit their kids. That is how I was schooled, and I am the kid giving it back.
A co-op like that has always worked the same way. It is not a curriculum you buy. It is people who are good at something, teaching the kids in front of them, because between the three of them there was already a school. NavEd exists to make that possible for more families, without the six-figure setup cost and without software built for a district that has an IT department to run it.
But there was always a second limit on top of the money, and it never had anything to do with skill. It was distance. Picture a parent who teaches history well. She can only teach the families near enough to drive to her. Live too far, and it does not matter how good she is. You are not in the co-op.
NavEd Network is the piece of NavEd built for that second limit, not the first one. The mission is to make it possible for anyone to build a microschool without being capped by who happens to live within driving distance. The vision behind it is a plain sentence: geography stopped deciding what a kid gets to learn. No gift goes unused, and nobody teaches for free unless they want to. This post is what that means today, in the actual product, not as a slogan.
What it is, plainly¶
A teacher signs up for a free Workspace at /network/signup/. Listing a course there costs nothing. The course itself is built in NavEd Lessons: units, steps, and work a student turns in as she goes, the same tool a teacher already uses to run a class for the students in front of her.
A parent who finds that course pays once, either an Individual price for one child or a Family price, and that is the whole transaction. There is no subscription and no payment plan today. The parent gives her name, her email, and her child's name, and pays by card. She does not get a NavEd login, and that is not a gap to be filled later. Her child is enrolled as a student inside the teacher's own Workspace and signs in there, the same as any other student that teacher already has. What the family is buying is a place in that teacher's course, taught by her, not a file to download.
The money goes to the teacher's own Stripe account. NavEd keeps 3 percent of the sale. Stripe's own card processing fee, 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, also comes out of what the teacher receives, the same as it would on any card payment she took herself. The fee math is worked out here if you're deciding what to charge.
No credential is required to list a course. The test is not a certificate. It is whether you taught this to the kids in front of you and it worked. A parent who taught her own two children a subject well is qualified to teach a family who lives somewhere she'll never drive to. That's not a loophole. It's the same standard the co-op I grew up in ran on: none of the three moms who taught me had a teaching certificate, and the school still worked, because each of them was good at what she taught.
What a family experiences¶
After a parent pays, her child is enrolled inside the teacher's own Workspace and signs in there, not with a NavEd account of the parent's own. How to sell a course you already teach and how buying a course works cover the sign-in details and the receipt.
What it isn't yet¶
The course list at /network/courses/ has no courses on it. The Network just opened, so there is nothing to browse there yet.
There's no live teaching on the Network, no scheduled class time, no messaging between a family and a teacher built into the product. A course is self-paced: a student works through the units on her own time, and the teacher grades what comes in. Nothing on the Network is ranked, and no course can be paid to sit above another one in the list. A teacher listing her first course shows up the same way a teacher who has taught for ten years does. Being early to an empty list isn't a disadvantage here, since there's no established leaderboard to break into.
Who it's for¶
Anyone teaching something well enough that families two states away would want their kid learning it. A tutor who runs the same Tuesday writing class every fall in a Classical Conversations community. A microschool founder who is also the only history teacher the school has. A university-model teacher who spends three days a week without a classroom of her own but still built a full course. A parent teaching her own kids at the kitchen table, if what she built for them is something another family would want too.
Homeschool co-ops, Classical Conversations communities, microschools, university-model schools, classical Christian schools, hybrid schools, small private academies, and families teaching at home are all the same kind of teacher for this purpose: someone who already taught something well, to kids who happened to live close enough to receive it. Whatever kind of school built the course, the Network treats it the same way.
The reason it exists is the same reason the co-op I grew up in existed: three people, each good at something, pooling it so more kids got taught. NavEd Network is the same pooling, without the requirement that everyone live close enough to drive. If you're still working out whether to start that kind of school at all, our guide to starting a microschool covers the part that comes before any of this.
FAQ¶
Is there anything to browse on the Network right now?
Not yet. The public course list just opened, and it has no courses on it today. This post is written for teachers who might be the first to list one, and for families who want to understand what buying a place will look like once there is something to buy.
Do I need a teaching credential to list a course?
No. What matters is whether you already taught it, to your own kids or the students in front of you, and it worked.
What does it cost to list a course?
Listing is free. NavEd keeps 3 percent of a sale, and takes nothing when a course doesn't sell.
Does my child get a NavEd login if I buy a course for her?
No. She's enrolled as a student inside the teacher's own Workspace, with a sign-in of her own for it. The buying parent never gets a NavEd account.
Does this replace my own school or co-op?
No. Nothing about buying or selling on the Network touches your own school's account or moves a student out of it. It exists for the teaching that happens after driving distance runs out, not instead of the school you already have.
Can a teacher pay to have her course ranked higher?
No. Nothing on the Network is ranked, and no course can be paid to sit above another.
If you teach something well enough that a family somewhere else would want it for their kid, the Workspace is free to start. Listing costs nothing, and nothing is owed until a family enrolls.
Curious what buying a place looks like from the family's side first? Read how it works.