Why Independent Curriculum?

The case for independence begins with Secrets of the Brain, which summarizes how modern science has transformed our understanding of learning. If all the knowledge covered by standardized curriculums could somehow be fork-lifted into each student’s brain, such curriculums might make sense. But learning is created within the mind of a student, not absorbed from the teacher or a textbook. Physiologically, learning is creation of pathways in the brain. A standardized curriculum dramatically limits the ability of students and teachers to create, resulting in diminished possibilities for deep and long-lasting learning.

Students at ICG schools simply know that their academic lives are more meaningful and less stressful than those of students at schools devoted to test preparation.  “My friends at other schools tend to complain about their classes,” said one student from Fieldston School. “It’s not about the learning for them. It’s about getting into college. Students at Fieldston sign up for classes because they love the subject.”

Below are twenty of the most fundamental benefits of curricular independence:

1. Independence Promotes Deep Learning
Students and teachers in standardized environments cover material for an exam and have little time to linger on in-depth activities. Over and over again, you’ll read about how ICG schools prefer more focused courses that cover fewer topics in greater depth.  “With AP, you’re always having to throw away interesting stuff,” said Kwesi Koomson of Westtown School. “We have more thinking and more discussion, instead of lecturing and having to get through the material.” 

2. Independence Promotes Student-Centered Learning
Traditional courses in U.S. history cover the colonial period to the present. Test-driven biology courses generally include the same labs every year. In any coverage course, the teacher must stick to an agenda in order to keep the class on schedule. Student-centered activities can be shoehorned into the syllabus, but only in carefully limited doses. Interactivity is a hallmark of ICG classrooms, where student interaction often determines the direction of a course. “The best teachers are the ones who get students talking to students,” said Kirk Smothers of Calhoun School.

3. Independence Allows Learning Outside the Classroom
Only the material in textbooks ever appears on a standardized test. To prepare for a test, students must turn away from what is happening around them in the community and the wider world. At ICG schools, many advanced courses are built to carry students beyond the walls of the school. One example is a class on the Civil Rights Movement at Carolina Friends School, which traveled to Selma and made an oral history video out of the memories of twelve senior citizens from the area.

4. Independence Promotes Spontaneity
What if the world’s financial system came near to collapse? At Beaver Country Day School, a hands-on course in Biotech Investing quickly became a seminar on derivatives and mortgage-backed securities. At St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School, the World History course stopped in its tracks for a two-week examination of the global economic collapse. At ICG schools, flexibility is a watch word. “Our teachers have a lot more ability to be spontaneous now,” said David Olds of Crossroads School, which dropped AP in 2005. “More real stuff is happening, and the kids are loving it.”

5. Independence Honors Student Interests
Standardized classes can take occasional detours, but the bottom line is always to get back to the material to be covered on the exam. ICG schools build their advanced courses around engaging themes, as do colleges, and have the flexibility to respond to student interests. “We can get sidetracked and go off on cool biology tangents,” said a student at Westtown School about her advanced biology class, which replaced AP. “We also talk about things that are happening in the world now.”  In many cases, students have input in designing the courses, as in the Senior Seminar at Carolina Friends School, where students finishing the course plan the major themes for study in the following year.

6. School-As-Test-Prep Prepares Students for Yesterday
What are the crucial issues facing today’s world? To get an idea, survey the titles of advanced courses at ICG schools, which include: “The Middle East Cauldron: Historical Pespectives” (Putney School), “Genetics” (The Urban School of San Francisco), “Environmental Politics” (Calhoun School), and “East Meets West: Viewing the Other in Art, Literature, and Politics” (Fieldston School). As one student said about “Hiroshima to 9/11” at Westtown School, “It’s a course about our world right now. We’re able to have a dialogue about the events we’re living in.” On standardized exams, only yesterday’s major issues appear.

7. Standardized Tests Measure Only One Kind of Intelligence
The CEO of the Educational Testing Service told Bloomberg News that he “did very poorly” on the SAT. The head of College Board told the same reporters that he “did terrible on these kinds of tests.” But these men clearly have many abilities. ICG schools seek to eliminate the disconnect between success in school and success in real life. Read about The White Mountain School’s innovative Learning Outcomes that give students a holistic sense of themselves as learners and people.

8. Standardized Courses Diminish Interdisciplinary Learning
Standardized courses cover material within one subject, such as English, history, or language. There is virtually no latitude for teachers in different disciplines to work together, and no ability to teach truly interdisciplinary courses.  A sample of interdisciplinary electives at ICG Schools includes “American History Through Film,” (Sandia Preparatory School), “Religion and Social Change” (Westtown School), and “Classical Greek Drama” (St. Andrews-Sewanee School).

9. Standardized Courses Marginalize Project-Based Learning
Test-driven courses end in an exam. Most advanced courses at ICG schools emphasize projects. While tests merely require a review of work already done, projects require students to apply knowledge in a new context toward a meaningful product.  Check out how Beaver Country Day School uses projects to promote deeper learning, and read about Project Week at Putney School or Senior Projects at the Academy at Charlemont.

10. Labels Such as AP Crowd Out Interesting Courses
Most students take AP courses because they will “look good.” Often, that means by-passing other courses that may be more appealing but do not carry the AP label.  Read about the student at Fieldston School who wrote an English paper about how students took less interesting courses because they carried the AP label. This student urged Fieldston to drop AP, and three years later, it did.

11. School-As-Test-Prep Creates School Stress
In the real world, people work hard to excel in a profession of interest to them. In most schools, students rarely get to follow their interests. Everyone takes the same courses, and learning is merely an arena for competition between students to get good grades, and to get a high score on the exams. Bonus points come to the students who can take the largest number of these courses at the same time. Students in non-AP schools work just as hard, but their focus is much more on the stuff they are learning about.

12. Labels Such as AP Cause Turf Wars Among Teachers
In test-driven schools, teachers and departments tend to fight over class time because of coverage pressure. The problem is particularly acute in the sciences, where teachers often lobby for extra class periods, or schedule cram sessions outside of normal school hours to cover material that cannot be wedged in during class time. No such problem exists at post-AP schools, where staff can build a school schedule that serves the needs of all students.

13. School-As-Test-Prep Promotes Short Class Periods
Classes that cover a lot of material are best taught in daily periods that are relatively short, about 45 minutes. By that time, students tire of listening to even an engaging teacher. Student-centered learning is best conducted in long periods of at least an hour, which meet frequently but not every day. Student-centered learning takes time to initiate, but once students are engaged, time flies. Read about the in-depth learning possible in longer class periods at The Urban School of San Francisco.

14. Labels Such as AP Divert Resources Toward Some Students at the Expense of Others
AP divides schools into haves and have-nots.  Teachers in the AP track get prestige and resources. Non-AP teachers make do with the left-overs. And as one student who left an AP school put it, AP “puts some students on pedestals and makes other students feel really bad.”  In ICG schools, classes are differentiated based on subject matter, and students makes choices based on their intellectual interests.

15. Test-Driven Courses Eliminate Purpose from Learning
When asked about their motivation for learning, most high school students answer that they “want to go to a good college” or “want to be the best.” Students in test-driven schools do not typically connect learning to their individual interests or passions. They do school work less for its own sake than to show that they can handle “the most rigorous” courses. ICG schools allow students to choose among thematic classes, and then to choose topics within classes which they want to pursue further. Learning about the world merges with learning about oneself.

16. School-As-Test-Prep Hijacks School Mission
Most schools say that their mission is to “create lifelong learners” or to promote “learning for its own sake.” Few cite “to prepare students to get high scores on the AP exams.” But the latter gets the lion’s share of the effort in their high schools. Just as important, standardized courses limit the engagement of faculty in designing the school’s curriculum. At ICG schools, faculty constantly debate the shape of the curriculum, whether it best fulfills the mission of the school, and how the program could be improved.

17. Standardized Courses Makes Teachers Passive
Teachers in test-driven schools are custodians of a curriculum designed elsewhere rather than creators in their own right. Their own passions and interests are secondary, and their ability to join students in a process of discovery is limited. Such teachers get their “grades” in July, when scores from the tests administered in May are sent to schools.  Once teachers devise a winning formula to prepare students for the exam, they have little incentive to change.

18. Standardized Courses Limit Diversity in Curriculum
A selection of courses offered by ICG schools includes “Native American Literature” (Westtown School), “China in the 20th Century” (The Urban School of San Francisco), “Advanced Francophone Literature” (Putney School), “History of Western Philosophy” (St. Andrews-Sewanee School), and “We Real Cool: Songs of Global and Multicultural Identity” (Crossroads School). ICG schools are able to offer such diversity largely because students sign up for courses based on their interests rather than gravitating to a label such as AP.

19. Standardized Exams Ends the School Year in Early May
In some regions of the country, AP exams are administered more than a month before the end of school, leaving teachers to struggle with keeping student on task for the remainder of the year. (So much for life-long learning.) Many ICG schools schedule creative projects for the month of May, such as Sandia Preparatory School, which sends its twelfth graders into the wider community for a four week internship.

20. Standardized Tests and the Myth of Objectivity
Test-drive classes perpetuate the myth of a unique body of knowledge that underlies each discipline. In the words of Jim Cullen at Fieldston School, it is “the myth that there is this thing called U.S. History.”  In history, and every other discipline, there are processes and concepts to be understood. But these can be learned through an infinite variety of real-life circumstances. ICG schools choose the most engaging contexts available – the school community, the local community beyond school, and events happening in the world right now – to allow students to immerse themselves in meaningful work. AP feeds the myth that the far away trumps the here and now. Students lose the sense that they are real scholars when they are forced to go through the paces that every other student goes through. They also lose the sense of their teachers as both fellow learners and sources of valuable knowledge outside of what may appear on the test.

If all this is true, why don’t more schools move away from school-as-test-prep?
Many schools would do so if not for fear of parental opposition. When an article appeared in the New York Times describing Scarsdale High School’s decision to drop AP, an administrator at a nearby school circulated it to his colleagues under the heading, “Do we have the guts?”

We designed this site largely to help parents understand the movement toward independent curriculum that is gradually picking up steam around the country. Go to Parents for more information, and rest assured that students at post-AP schools get in at all the same colleges as do students at schools that offer AP courses.