Our Educational Approach

To succeed in modern society, you have to know a lot. And you have to have this knowledge instantly accessible at your mental fingertips. So how do we get all this important knowledge? Well, you might think schools would teach it. But that's not always the case. Schools vary widely in the depth and breadth of what they teach. From one state to another, from one classroom to another, there's dramatic variation in the content of the curriculum and the pedagogical approach of the teachers.

Faced with such variation, how can we be sure our children are learning what they need to know? To address this question, the curriculum experts at K12 have consulted with many experts in various fields to gain insights into what experts know and how they structure their knowledge. We’ve also examined many state standards, research reports, and model curriculum programs. In our judgment, one of the strongest, most thoroughly researched models comes from the non-profit Core Knowledge Foundation, founded in 1986 by University of Virginia professor E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (Our own John Holdren worked there as Director of Research and Publications.)

Professor Hirsch set in motion a long process of research and consensus-building that led to the publication of the Core Knowledge Sequence. Core Knowledge offers specific content guidelines, grade by grade, in history, geography, mathematics, science, language arts, visual arts, and music. It explicitly and concretely lays out the important knowledge and skills our children need.

In its first years, the Core Knowledge Sequence was tested in a range of schools: private and public, rural, urban, and suburban, some serving the privileged and others the disadvantaged. The sequence was then revised based on this practical experience. The Core Knowledge Sequence has helped inspire and guide K12 as we developed our curriculum for the elementary and middle grades. We've adapted, varied, and added to the Core Knowledge recommendations based upon our own continuing research into how children learn, how technology can enhance learning, and the best materials to support learning.

The K12 curriculum offers rich, challenging, and engaging content. Moreover, this content is carefully sequenced so that, from one grade to the next, students build new knowledge on the strong foundations of what they’ve already learned. We’ve been careful to ensure that students of our curriculum won’t suffer from the repetitions and gaps that afflict many classrooms—our students won't get the same lesson, year after year, on the rainforest; nor will they get to high school without ever having heard of the Bill of Rights.

Our curriculum is designed to make sure that kids get the core knowledge they need—that they learn what they need to know to succeed and thrive.

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Practice vs Talent: Experts are made, not born