NearBase exists at the intersection of two urgent realities: a national early childhood education crisis and 300,000 military families who can't afford to wait for the system to fix itself.
In January 2025 the Nation's Report Card confirmed what educators had been watching for a decade: fewer than one third of American students read at grade level. Scores have declined by a full grade level in some states since 2013 — and COVID accelerated a collapse that was already underway.
Charter schools held largely stable during this period. The Montessori programs, bilingual centers, and progressive independent schools in the NearBase database are disproportionately in the category that outperformed the national trend. Military families — among the most motivated parents in the country to find alternatives — deserve the information that helps them find those programs.
Reading score decline for both 4th and 8th graders in 2024 vs 2022, steepening an earlier 3-point decline between 2019 and 2022.
Public school students at the 25th percentile lost an average of 8 reading and math points from 2013–2024. Charter school students at the same percentile saw little to no decline.
8th grade science scores dropped 4 points since 2019. 12th grade math and reading dropped 3 points. The crisis spans every subject.
Chronic absenteeism — missing 3+ days per month — remains twice the pre-pandemic rate as of spring 2024, four years after COVID began.
Only 1 in 2,500 teachers loses their license for performance reasons. Compare to 1 in 57 doctors. The accountability gap is enormous.
Montessori programs show consistently higher outcomes in reading, math, executive function, and social skills — independent of socioeconomic background.
The founder of Wildflower Schools and former Google head of personalization on why smaller is better — and how Montessori micro-schools arise naturally when you design schools around children instead of administration.
The documentary that first named the crisis in DC, LA, and NYC schools. Washington DC was one of its central settings. The problems it described have worsened since 2010.
The most-viewed TED talk of all time. Robinson's argument that school systems educate children out of creativity is the philosophical bedrock of the alternative education movement.
Duckworth's research on grit — the predictor of success that IQ doesn't measure — and why the early childhood environment shapes it more than any other period.
Sep Kamvar: computer scientist, Google head of personalization, MIT Media Lab professor, author, and founder of the Wildflower Schools Network. He saw the gap in early childhood education and built the connective tissue to fill it — 50+ Montessori micro-schools across the country, all built on an open-source model that any teacher-entrepreneur can adopt.
NearBase is inspired by the same instinct: don't wait for the system to fix itself. Build the connective tissue that makes the alternatives findable, accessible, and equitable. Especially for the families who move too fast for the system to keep up with them.
NearBase is developing the Military Family Childcare Standard — a framework for what every preschool program should publish, and what every military family deserves to know before they PCS. Coming 2027.
Every licensed program should publish its waitlist time, acceptance age, and tuition openly — not just on request.
Programs serving military communities should understand MCCYN, EFMP, deployment flexibility, and mid-year enrollment.
Programs should publish whether they can serve multiple age groups simultaneously — critical for military families with children under 5.
Every program should clearly publish which subsidies and vouchers they accept — DC subsidy, MCCYN, Head Start eligibility, and state VPI.
Programs serving military families should offer portfolio handoff, transcript transfer, and enrollment flexibility when orders arrive.
Families should be able to share their experience — waitlist reality, director warmth, military awareness — so the next family benefits from their search.
New schools, waitlist changes, and military discounts near your next base — one short email when it matters, never spam.