The value of a school isn’t measured in the expense of the building, the equipment it uses, or even the friendliness of its teachers. When it comes to choosing the right school for learning, the only quality that matters is the knowledge of students who graduate. How many adults do you know who passed high school history classes but couldn’t tell you a single thing they learned? What about math comprehension or spelling and grammar?
What this goes to show is that quizzes and test scores don’t mean anything if they’re connected to the wrong kind of curriculum. Most modern schools are working with an end-point plan that focuses only on where the lessons start and stop without any consideration for comprehensive learning in-between. If students can pass standardized tests but couldn’t tell you two years later what they knew, the learning wasn’t long-term and therefore neither was the teaching. As a concerned parent, the best thing you can do for your child is enroll them in a school with a customized curriculum.
End-Point Curriculums
Most schools function with the idea that if kids know ‘the right things’ by the end of the school year, that they have done their job. The administration puts together curriculum guides for teachers that emphasize a certain pace for instruction and an end-point the class must reach without any consideration for each student’s journey through the learning process or how completely a concept is understood.
At the end of each grading period, tests are taken and the next subject must be started or the class is ‘behind’. This is not only an impersonal one-size-fits-all learning style, it practically forces teachers to give kids the test answers without ensuring that they understand the actual subject matter or why those answers are correct. This leads to the phenomena we see today, high test scores and graduates who don’t remember anything they “learned” in school.
Customized Curriculums
Schools that use customized curriculums acknowledge that every student learns differently. Each child has a different set of talents and will understand some subjects more readily than others. With lessons custom-tailored to each learner, your child can speed through subjects they are talented at and take extra time for challenges without being treated like a disruption to the predetermined pace of a classroom.
For this reason, a custom curriculum is best implemented with one-on-one teaching where the students can have the full attention of their teachers, have all of their questions answered, and even embark on projects that explore what they are personally interested in for each subject. This kind of in-depth learning creates lasting memories because the children are allowed to gain a real understanding and form a personal connection with every lesson.
Finding a School with Customized Curriculums
Many parents who get fed up with their local school district’s insufficient education methods opt for homeschool, but this isn’t an option for everyone. If you don’t have eight hours a day to spend at home learning and then teaching your child, there are custom curriculum schools nestled all over the country offering one-on-one learning to small groups of children with education-savvy parents. For families that live in the Houston area, the Tenney school is a family owned and operated private school that implements the one-on-one custom curriculum method so that each child graduates with a complete knowledge of their lessons and a love for learning.
If you’ve been lamenting the quality of education your child gets in their current school, the end-point curriculum may well be the problem. Take a look around your neighborhood to find a custom curriculum school near you that could enhance your child’s learning and make sure that their years of education will serve them for a lifetime, not just until test season. For more information about custom curriculum learning or to take a tour of the Tenney School, please contact us today!