What Job Does Curriculum Need to Do?

If you’ve spent hours in curriculum catalogs, asked in Facebook groups, and still can’t land on the right choice, the problem usually isn’t that you don’t have enough information. It’s that you’re missing a filter.

Once you know what job you need curriculum to do, a lot of options fall away on their own, and you get to your choice faster, with more confidence.

Curriculum Is a Tool, Not a Personality Match

Here’s what makes this hard. If you’re just looking for a curriculum, you’re probably thinking “I want something my kid is going to like” or “I just need a math curriculum for sixth grade.” So the job becomes “my kid has to like it.” But you can’t know that ahead of time, and that’s a frustrating way to pick curriculum.

In Facebook groups you’ll see posts like “I need a math curriculum for grade six and my kid struggles with math.” That’s a good start. It’s narrowed down some. But you can do even better than that.

Curriculum is a tool. And a tool has one job. Get a specific task done.

Define the Job Before You Shop

This goes back to long-term vision. What does your kid need to know so they can move forward with their gifts and talents, so they have real options later on?

Sixth grade math looks different depending which curriculum you pick, and some things stay the same across publishers while others shift state to state, province to province. Sixth grade looks a little different everywhere. Ask yourself what your kid needs to know this year in math, then ask which curriculum will actually help them learn it so they can take the next step.

That’s what it means for curriculum to be a tool.

The Screwdriver Problem

I was putting doorknobs back on my doors recently, and I needed a screwdriver with a star tip, not a flat one. If I’d only had a flat screwdriver, I couldn’t have finished the job, even though it was still technically a screwdriver.

Curriculum works the same way. Somebody tells you a language arts program is excellent, but it’s way too advanced for where your kid is right now. It’s not a bad curriculum. It’s just the wrong tool for this job, this year.

Define the job first and think of curriculum as a tool, and that small shift helps you cut a bunch of options fast. You look at a program and just know this isn’t the right tool, so you move on, and you save so much time because you’re clear on what you actually need.

Once you have that clarity, most of your options fall away, and that frees up time for something else.

Even the Right Tool Might Need Tweaking

Sometimes you do all the work, choose carefully, and it still isn’t a perfect fit. I remember picking a curriculum for debate and public speaking. I thought I had the right tool, and it looked good on paper. Then we started using it, and I thought, I spent a lot of money on this. By every account, this was the right tool. Now we just need to make it work for our family.

That happens sometimes. It’s like the screwdriver again. The star screwdriver is technically the right tool, but maybe it’s a little too big, so it still works, but I have to make it work. Or maybe it’s a little too small and it slips, so I have to work around that too.

That’s curriculum. It might be the right tool, and you might still need to tweak it to fit your family’s life right now.

Next Steps

Stop wasting so much time. Here’s where to put your energy instead.

✓ Get clear on what you need this curriculum to do
✓ Use that as your filter as you search
✓ Narrow down to two or three choices
✓ Bring your kid into the final choice — middle school is where their say starts to grow

If you want help narrowing your options down to two or three fast, that’s exactly what The Curriculum Filter System™ is built for.