At Education Elements, we believe great curriculum isn’t found off the shelf; it’s built from the inside out. The best curriculum goes beyond standards. Designed for confidence, coherence, and community trust, effective curriculum is personalized for learners, professionalized for educators, and connected to the strategic vision that defines your district’s future.
I started teaching a while ago. In the late ’60s and early ’70s we were reading Summerhill, Deschooling Society, even Education and Ecstasy. We tried teacher-proof materials, CAI (computer-assisted instruction), pacing guides, tomes of scope and sequence, and “fidelity” as the magic key. Then came John Goodlad’s A Place Called School, opening “110,000 classroom doors” and wondering what decade he was in; and later A Nation at Risk, warning of a “rising tide of mediocrity.”
Fifty years later, our “firm grasp of the obvious” is clearer: excellent curriculum + expert teaching + authentic community engagement + tight feedback loops move learning. We’ve always sensed this; we sometimes chased shortcuts.
A concept design
The greatest gains occur when teacher expertise meets collective efficacy—and both are amplified when curriculum is co-created, continuously monitored, and grounded in feedback from the community it serves.