For public schools, the controversy that ignites when education policy decisions touch on religion can get tricky. But some families, exhausted by the public school system, want education options that include values-based instruction expressly based in religious principles. 

American Heritage School is a private school that incorporates teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It recently launched LiftEd, an online platform that has created a more parent-driven education model for current home-schoolers and those leaving the public district school, among others.  

As LiftEd spreads across the state, nation and globe, Sutherland Institute decided to interview Peter Knecht, director of American Heritage School Worldwide, and Tim Hall, the assistant director, to learn more. 

Sutherland: American Heritage Schools has produced home-schooling resources called the Family School for about a decade. So, what is LiftEd? And why is LiftEd important to bring to families now? 

LiftEd: While the Family School has blessed thousands of students in over 100 countries, LiftEd stands on the shoulders of the Family School as a next generation resource and will bless even more.  

LiftEd is an innovative new learning platform that overcomes the barriers to both home schooling and online schooling. It connects students daily with effective and engaging lessons, peers that live nearby, and with their own family. The platform and educational content take the burden off the parent, allowing them to educate their children at home.  

For the first time, parents who feel called to step outside traditional educational options have an alternative that represents a secure landing place. LiftEd connects students to excellent teachers, friends and loved ones without the cost of private school, the overwhelm of home school, or the isolation and boredom of online school.  

Sutherland: It is important to a lot of families that parents are involved in their child’s education. In what ways can parents be directly or indirectly involved in the LiftEd platform? 

LiftEd: The prime influence of parents is at the core of American Heritage’s vision and mission. LiftEd lifts the burden of teaching daily lessons and makes it easy to connect with other families using the platform. All of this enhances parents’ ability to spend their time mentoring children and gathering with other likeminded learners. LiftEd is to parents and students what Excel is to accountants – a tool that frees them to go deeper and do more than they ever could have done before.  

LiftEd also invites parent contributions to daily lessons. Before every lesson, parents are sent a brief summary of what the students are about to learn, along with a prompt. They click a link which opens their camera, and they record a video answering the prompt in a personal way. LiftEd inserts that video message in the student’s daily learning pathway, such that their academic lessons are followed directly by a message from mom or dad (or grandma, Uncle Bud, or anyone else the parents forward the prompt to) reinforcing the day’s learning in a personal way. 

Each class also comes with a Mentor Guide that parents can use, if they choose, to direct the live gathering that follows every day’s lesson. Or parents can enroll their student in a virtual live gathering facilitated by one of our mentors.  

We also publish an audio version of the daily video lessons as a podcast parents can listen to daily to learn alongside their children and discuss the material together.  

Our goal is to facilitate the irreplaceable mentorship and guidance that parents provide to their children. By easing the burden of home education, we hope that parents will have even more time and energy to invest in their relationships with their children – helping them develop in the ways only a parent can and that no product or service ever could. 

Sutherland: Can LiftEd be used to personalize education to the needs of individual students, and if so, how? 

LiftEd: Absolutely. There are three main ways this happens.  

First, parents decide what “level” students should be in. We break K–8 education into three levels: Level 1 is kindergarten through 2nd grade; Level 2 is grades 3 through 5; and Level 3 is grades 6 through 8. Parents are free to adjust the level their student is enrolled in, even mid-year if needed. Because all levels are learning the same topics, with the instruction and assignments adapted for their age, it is easy to move from one level to the next whenever a student is ready.  

Second, the LiftEd lessons themselves contain elements called Explore Modules. These interactions allow students to dive deeper into aspects of the lesson that interest them. For example, during a lesson on Newton’s first law of motion, students are presented with options to “explore.” They must choose at least one, but are free to select a pathway examining Newton’s law in space, free body diagrams, inertia in skateboarding, or how inertia causes boiled eggs and raw eggs to spin differently. Students are encouraged daily to take charge of their own learning and dive deeper into the areas they resonate with. 

Finally, parents are given the Mentor Guides used to lead the Gathering portion of each lesson. Remember, students can enroll to attend this gathering virtually with LiftEd mentors, or parents can deliver or organize these mentored gatherings to happen at home or with a group. These Mentor Guides provide a structure and activities for the gathering, but parents are free to customize according to the individual needs of the students in their group. Many families gather with other families locally, to provide the Gathering in-person and supported by other parents. 

Sutherland: Aside from the online content, how do LiftEd families connect, and how do physical gatherings take place? 

LiftEd: Two answers here.  

First, the LiftEd platform itself connects families. There is a Family Directory where parents and students can find and contact other LiftEd families who live nearby, messaging them directly in the platform. And because students are grouped geographically into classes and interact with and view content contributed by their peers in each lesson, they come to know one another very quickly. The very architecture of the daily learning experience in LiftEd is intentionally arranged to foster the formation of local relationships. Nearly 40% of our families gathered in person with other families who their students met in their LiftEd cohort during our 2022-23 pilot year.  

Secondly, LiftEd is accompanied by our Family Education Center program. A Family Education Center is simply a group of at least two families who gather regularly around the material they are both experiencing in LiftEd.  

This can look many different ways. Some have groups of three to four families that gather every Friday for activities from our published Celebrations Packet (gathering ideas that go along with the curriculum). Others have groups of 10–15 families that meet multiple times each week, with parents assigned to mentor students in using our Mentor Guides. Whatever the arrangement, we publish numerous materials, trainings and resources to make gathering a turnkey proposition for families.  

Sutherland: What local, state or federal policies are necessary or get in the way of LiftEd’s work? 

LiftEd: Fortunately, government oversight and regulation in the U.S. is very low compared to many countries around the world. Federal policies do not currently govern alternatives to traditional public schools. Home and online schoolers who pursue an alternative to public school look to states and their respective school districts to satisfy any local requirements.  

Most, if not all, parents can overcome the barriers states and local school districts impose for home-schoolers. State requirements range from a simple affidavit parents sign at the school district level to affirm their intent to home-school in less-regulated states, to annual assessments and/or reporting to show academic work and progress in more highly regulated states.  

Recent school choice initiatives by many states also certainly help. As these policies spread, more and more parents have the resources to take advantage of high-quality educational alternatives such as LiftEd.   

Sutherland: LiftEd is an innovation with the potential to catalyze the changing face of education. What have been the biggest takeaways or successes since LiftED began? 

LiftEd: Two takeaways were most significant in our decision to stay the course with LiftEd in what will be a $20M investment for American Heritage School.  

First, during our 2022-23 pilot with 1,212 students, we measured the engagement and attrition of a very important subset of this pilot group – 115 students who were home-schooling for the first time and who had, before joining LiftEd, learned exclusively in the context of public schools.  

As mentioned above, attrition for new home-schoolers is as high as three of every four who try (74%). Of the 115 students who constituted this group, 112 were still with us by the end of the school year. All of them were paying students. The number of students is not statistically significant, but if LiftEd can help parents broadly be successful at over 30X the rate of traditional home schooling, then we consider this a significant success. 

Second, and perhaps even more important, we are not hanging our hats on a nice piece of software and great curriculum. Our aim is far higher than what software and curriculum alone can achieve. Software will be replaced, and curriculum will be commoditized eventually. LiftEd’s ability to create community will be what sets it apart and helps families succeed over time. Even during this first pilot year, without resources or tools to enable and encourage gathering in person, simply organizing students by their proximity to each other and then connecting them regularly on the platform resulted in nearly 40% of those students getting together in person outside the platform with students they met in their LiftEd groups.  

This is remarkable and encourages us to double down on all strategies to facilitate gathering beyond what we did during our 2022-23 pilot year. Much of our work is now squarely focused on how the platform and the content we are distributing on the platform can unleash this power of families who gather. 

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Conclusion 

In short, LiftED is an option that is worth looking into for families who are interested in taking a step toward a more parent-driven mode of education, but who want religious instruction and content experts to teach their children. Because it is a private option, it is not free; however, once the Utah Fits All scholarship becomes available, some families may use that opportunity to pay for their tuition. What is certain is that education options have never been so plentiful, and they are likely to only grow with time.