Built for kids when
school is the trigger.
An online school where the loud parts of school don't exist. Small, gentle cohorts, a calm rhythm, a mentor who notices, and a pace your child controls - so anxiety stops eating the school day. ESA and state funding can cover up to full tuition for qualifying families.
What traditional school keeps getting wrong.
Anxiety isn't a character flaw or a parenting failure. For a lot of kids, the structure of a traditional school day is the cause, not the cure.
Cold-call participation, pop quizzes, hallway social politics. For an anxious kid, the building is a constant low-grade alarm. Learning is what's left after the threat is managed.
School refusal, missing assignments, falling behind - they look like motivation problems. They're usually anxiety doing what anxiety does: shrinking the world to feel safe.
The therapist treats the anxiety, the school grades the work, neither talks to the other. Your child holds the gap between them every day.
The research, in your child's corner.
Mentorship reduces anxiety. Small classes and 1:1 support lower the social cost of learning. Mastery keeps a bad week from becoming a year. The evidence is unusually consistent.
In Bloom's original study, students taught 1:1 or in small groups with mastery learning outperformed conventional peers by two standard deviations. Modern meta-analyses still find tutoring among the most reliably effective interventions in education (avg ES 0.37 across 96 RCTs).
A study of mentoring outcomes for youth with learning disabilities and ADHD found significantly lower anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and improved interpersonal relations after sustained mentor relationships.
Mastery learning requires students to demonstrate proficiency before moving on. Traditional pacing leaves gaps that compound; mastery loops back until the concept is solid, which is especially important for students whose attention or processing speed varies day-to-day.
A 2023 meta-analysis of 66 studies found project-based learning produced an effect size of 0.71 on academic achievement - a medium-to-large gain - alongside improvements in collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking.
A school where school doesn't have to hurt.
Every component is here for a reason - and the reason traces back to the research above.
A few kids and a teacher who knows them - no cold calls, no spotlight, no 25-kid audience. Your child gets to be wrong, ask twice, take a beat. 1:1 support is there when they need it.
Someone who notices when something's off. Coordinates with you and (with permission) your child's therapist. Makes academic and emotional support the same conversation.
A bad week doesn't become a buried month of missing work. We loop back, reset, and keep the relationship to school intact.
Enrichment classes where social participation is optional, observation is welcome, and showing up is itself the win.
A real person on our team,
within one business day.
Tell us a little about your child. We'll confirm your state-funding award, walk through what's covered, and figure out together if Recess is the right fit.