The looming battle in K-12 education isn't just about erasing learning loss and repairing children's damaged mental health. It's also about steering clear of a return to the status quo.

As school reopening decisions hang in the air, complicated by rising COVID-19 cases and budget uncertainty, some families aren't waiting for a state or local answer. They're moving ahead with plans to enroll their children in a learning environment that hearkens back to the frontier days.

Forward-thinking education leaders have for years been heralding disruptive innovations that hold promise to lead us beyond the same "factory school" classroom models that have been prevalent and largely unchanged across America for over a century.