Is your child on track? 🚂

How to set goals, measure progress & document learning outcomes. Plus, do homeschoolers get into college? Find out here...

Every parent we ever met, on some level, lives with a deep-seated fear of failing their child.

Sometimes fear can be a tool to help us make changes. But other times, it can hold us back from trusting our instincts and trying new approaches that can deeply benefit our children, and family as a whole.

If we want to use modular learning as an opportunity to build a customized education to help our child reach their full potential, the way we evaluate students doing modular learning needs to be different from how we evaluate students in traditional schools.

Essentially, standardized tests attempt to ensure that an “adequate” number of students perform at an “acceptable” level academically nationwide.

In modular learning, we want to ensure that each child is performing at the strongest level relative to their own capacity, and is developing all the social, emotional and intellectual tools they need to thrive. Rather than thinking about setting goals in stone, we encourage parents to think about creating a framework for experimentation that they can use to build a highly flexible education for their child that has space to evolve as they grow.

There’s also a more practical need to measure progress. Families may want to ensure kids are performing at grade level in case they choose to return to school. Proper documentation is often required for mandatory state reporting; a strong porfolio is necessary for applying to college. In this post, we look at developmental milestones, academic readiness and how to continually iterate our goals and process. 

We’ll also discuss how colleges view homeschoolers, and how to take into account college and career readiness into your framework for evaluation.

In this post we cover

🧪 1. Creating a framework for experimentation

⚖️ 2. Modular learning vs. school for measuring learning outcomes

📱 3. Applying “Design Thinking” to homeschooling

📊 4. Key performance indicators (KPIs) and quantifiable measurements for success

📝 5. Assessments and tools for tracking progress and identifying learning differences

🖥 6. Building a digital portfolio

🛟 7. When and where to find expert support

🎓 8. Getting into College

Measuring and documenting learning outcomes

The greatest hope of most parents is to help their children realize their full potential, and lead happy, healthy, successful lives. The greatest fear of many parents is failing their kids.  Traditional School, with grades and standardized tests, certified teachers, and experienced school administrators, provides a certain level of security for families that they’re doing right for their child. 

Families who choose modular learning are taking responsibility for their children’s learning and social-emotional outcomes, as well as their chances of getting into a good college and having a fulfilling career in the future.  But there is no universal road map for parents who choose this route. 

Since every child learns differently, successful modular learning will look different for every family.  By choosing modular learning, you’re making a bet that customizing their education will lead to better learning outcomes than following a cookie-cutter path. Like any artist or entrepreneur, you’re taking a risk in the hopes of making something better.

Fortunately, creating a proper framework for experimentation can mitigate many risks.  

🧪 1. Creating a framework for experimentation

When building new software, we often discuss creating a strong framework for experimentation. A good framework for experimentation involves building hypotheses, defining clear metrics that indicate success (KPIs), and choosing tools to evaluate how you’re performing relative to those outcomes, so you can consistently iterate on your method. In good product design, products are never finished but continuously improved based on data from structured experiments running all the time. 

Failure is an indispensable part of effective experimentation. As you embark on this new path, there will be many times that you'll be tempted to do what your friend is doing or fall back on standardized learning outcomes or experts.

Having a clear framework for experimentation will help you realistically assess how well your program is going relative to your goals, seek out feedback as needed - and constantly evolve your method to better suit your child’s academic, social, and emotional needs. 

It’s not as hard as it sounds. 

Unlike building a tech company, you only have one “user”, your child. If you have multiple siblings, modular learning will look different for each of them.  You can also incorporate goals such as family well-being into your metrics.

Sometimes startup founders have to be reminded to get user feedback. Parents don’t have to remind their kids to give them feedback 😊 As long as you have clear goals about what you want to achieve from modular learning and are open to trying new things, failing, and adapting along the way, you already have a framework for experimentation that will serve you well. 

In this post, we discuss the difference in evaluating outcomes in modular learning and traditional school, what to evaluate, tools and software to support families in measuring progress, and advice on getting into college. 

How to get started

If you work in tech or are an entrepreneur, you might already know how to create a framework for experimentation. So by all means, use that method! Otherwise, we have some simple ideas on how to get started with this method.

Create a mission, core values and flexible goals

Get started with three brainstorming sessions, at a time you have energy and time. Sit down alone, with your partner or co-parent (or a trusted friend), and with your child, and take some time writing out your initial goals for learning. Make sure to include social, emotional, and intellectual goals, as well as practical goals (such as getting into a good college.

It is vitally important you include your child in this process

Even if your child is three or four years old, they are not too young to have this conversation. If they’re a teen, these joint brainstorming sessions will benefit you all enormously in staying on track with learning. Children are much more geared towards learning, and success in life than many parents imagine. Depending on their personality and when they start homeschooling, they may even fully take charge or their own learning, which can be a huge gift. If your child is involved in goal-setting, and understand the “why” behind your homeschool strategy, they’ll be much more invested in the learning itself.

It’s up to you to decide who is running most of the learning, whether it’s you, or your child. But many families do let their child lead, and this can be a great choice for many kids. Others crave and do better with more structure. But again, it’s important to question assumptions. Your child may be much more self-directed than you realize, especially given space and time to explore their interests, experience natural consequences and freedom to experience that delicious sweet spot boredom that sparks creativity and action.

Giving kids the time and space they need to teach themselves

Take your time

Parents are often afraid that if they miss even one week of formal homeschooling, their child will get behind and won’t be able to catch up. This is largely an irrational fear. It may be true in a a school with standardized curriculum that a week away from school can set a child way back, but it does not apply to modular learning. When children learn at their own pace with 1-1 instruction, they learn much more efficiently. Take the time you need to develop your framework for experimentation. and don’t rush.

Question assumptions

Take the opportunity to question some of your biggest goals with your child: For example, is getting into a good college really important? Why is that so? If you want your child to learn to learn handwriting and they don’t, how do you think that will serve them? If you want your child to love learning, does it have to be fun all the time? How does your child feel about pushing themselves in subjects they dislike? Take the time to question assumptions so you’re really aligned as a family.

Make a pretty list and hang it somewhere:)

Narrow down your top ten goals, print it up, or write them out beautifully and hang it somewhere in your house. This will be like a mission statement and core values for your company, that you can keep referring to.

Choose tools to measure progress

Whether you’re method is check-ins, exams, built-in assessments, expert support or standardized exams, choose some tools to evaluate how you’re doing relative to the goals. (We’ll discuss tools we like later in this post)

Your tool may be simply checking in periodically to see how your child is doing relative to the list of goals you created.

Keep iterating

Have check-ins every couple months, weeks, or day about these goals. Change them as much as you like, but make sure they’re somewhere everyone can see, so you can constantly refer to them.

⚖️ 2. Modular learning vs. school for measuring learning outcomes: why traditional exams are less important

Continuous vs. Periodic Evaluation: Why modular learning is easier

In many ways, it’s easier to organically evaluate how a child is doing in modular learning than in school. In school, children are evaluated periodically, using quizzes and exams. Teachers and schools can use those quizzes and tests to tailor learning to how the group is doing as a whole. 

In modular learning, the lead educator (typically the parent) continuously observes one child and changes methods and tools to better support that particular child’s education.

Even if a parent doesn’t have clearly defined metrics for success, this simple ability to observe and iterate as they go improves learning outcomes. 

📱3. Applying design thinking to homeschooling

Part of the appeal of modular learning is that it reflects many of the principles of good product design.

In a design-thinking approach, designers incorporate human needs into the design process. They define a problem for an individual (or type of individual), and test ideas before ultimately coming to a solution. Design thinking doesn’t stop there. Designers are continuously observing and collecting feedback and data to improve their solution.

The five stages of design thinking are

Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

These can be easily applied to a modular approach, curating the ideal education solution for each individual child.

1. Empathize.

Families identify a problem

Through empathy, by listening and caring about their child, families identify that their child isn’t thriving. Perhaps their child isn’t happy or bored in school. Maybe they’re throwing a huge tantrum every morning, or expressing severe anxiety about going to school every day.

This stage of design thinking often lives in the gut. Parents know something is wrong, but aren’t sure what’s causing the problem, or whether to trust themselves.

In the beginning, this problem might be huge, and about school. There’s still a significant stigma around homeschooling. So frequently, families have hit rock bottom when they choose to homeschool.

As families progress, the problems may become more subtle, such as struggling with communication around learning or approaches to solving linear equations.

The problems will hopefully start to feel less negative, and more like an exciting challenge to solve to make learning even better.

2. Define

They articulate the problem as clearly as possible

Families may decide that the reason their child isn’t thriving is that traditional school isn’t the ideal solution for their kids or their family. Maybe their child isn’t doing well academically or bored in class. Perhaps they’re being bullied at school. Possibly, the whole family is simply exhausted from the grind of 6 am wake-up, breakfast, dress, school/work, pick-up, homework, bath, teeth brushing, pajamas, bed, 15 minutes of alone time, crash, sleep, rinse, and repeat. 

Sometimes children are expelled from school due to a learning or behavioral challenge. (We have seen these many of these kinds of children do a 360 when they start homeschooling).

The deeper families can understand and define the problem in as much detail as possible, the better, as this will help you come up with ideas to solve it.

In school, parents have few options when they’re faced with a problem.

The wonderful think about modular learning is that options are limitless when seeking solutions.

3. Ideate

They begin trying out ideas

They begin exploring different options for curriculum, ways to make friends and more flexible, affordable childcare options until they find the best fit. Ideally, they don’t try too much at once (one idea at a time is great)

If they have several children, there are multiple “user archetypes” whose needs constantly change as they grow. 

What works for one child won’t necessarily work for another, and its a shame to waste the vast potential of modular learning by giving the same education to ever child.

4. Test

They identify metrics for success

Either consciously or unconsciously, families decide what’s important to them and watch to see how their kids are doing relative to those outcomes. At a minimum, most families are measuring their child’s enjoyment and the progress they are making. 

5. Prototype

They create an MVP 

Based on a high level of expertise they’ve gained about their child through years of observation. They choose modules: a schedule, curriculum, classes, teachers, social experiences and childcare plan they hypothesize will meet their child and family’s needs. 

In modular learning, there is a direct feedback loop

In modular learning, parents observe how their child is doing, hear their complaints and excitement and shift the approach as it's happening. They don’t rely on periodic teacher reports, standardized tests to evaluate how learning is going. Even better, they don’t have to wait until their child hits rock bottom and something terrible happens, to hear what’s going wrong at school.

In one case, a parent told us that at the end of their child’s second grade year, the teacher informed them that the child hadn’t spoken once in class the entire year. Only then were they able to take action to address his selective mutism.

In school, teachers have very little room to adapt their strategy to the needs of individual children. They are restricted by large class sizes, a highly regimented curriculum and huge pressure to have their students perform well on standardized tests. In modular learning, the approach can change organically and continually.

6. The cycle continues

They keep changing and improving 

They continue to evaluate and iterate to improve the user experience relative to their metrics, changing curriculum, teaching strategy, and social experiences.

Children are changing all the time, and it makes sense that changing the approach to their learning would change too.

New ideas about education, opportunities, curriculum, and insights into the future workforces are emerging every day. It makes sense that a good learning strategy would be highly flexible and capable of integrating these ideas as they emerge.

In terms of time and often money, the cost of failing and adjusting the strategy in modular learning (trying a different curriculum, making a new friend) is astronomically lower than traditional school (enrolling in a different private or public school, moving to a different school district, hiring a tutor, imploring your school principal to change your child to a different teacher). 

📊 4. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and quantifiable measurements for success

In tech and entrepreneurship, we often use the term “Key Performance Indicators” to refer to the main 3-5 criteria we use to measure success, and evaluate how our project or company is doing.

At Modulo, we’ve found that there isn’t a lot of guidance out there to help support parents develop metrics to measure success. While most families who choose modular learning don’t think standardized tests provide constructive feedback, they aren’t aware of alternative ways to measure progress. 

A significant advantage to modular learning is that families can measure a child’s progress relative to that child’s own potential, as opposed to how their peers are doing.

You should set your own criteria to measure your child’s progress. However, to help you get started, here are the key areas we focus on at Modulo to help families ensure kids are thriving.

What to track

1) Family goals

Are you making progress relative to your individual goals for your child’s education and quality of family life?

Every family has different values, lives in a unique community, and has specific challenges and hopes for their child’s present well-being and future happiness. Those goals might be happiness and self-efficacy or something more concrete like teaching financial literacy or art history. Some families might want to shape their children into leaders who give back to their community.  You can also include your own goals in this process. Maybe you want to carve out more time for self-care, or travel the world as a family.

There’s evidence that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them. Whatever your goals, we recommend taking some time at the beginning of your modular learning journey to write them down in a journal - or even on a big piece of paper you can look at every day. 

Even better, include your child in this process. What are their own goals for their education, social life, and quality time with family?  It’s so helpful to give them this opportunity to participate actively in their learning and get the whole team aligned on goals. You can revisit these goals annually, monthly, weekly, or daily to ensure you’re on the right path.

2) Developmental Milestones

How is your child progressive relative to cognitive, social, and emotional milestones for every age?

Our friends at Understood.org have done a fabulous job at giving parents a guideline for where their child should be cognitively, socially, and emotionally at each age. This can be an invaluable tool to determine if some weaknesses or strengths could use extra attention - or identify challenges that need additional support. Understood.org no longer has a pillar page for each grade level, so we’ve included them here. 

Understood.org’s Developmental Milestones

• Preschool developmental milestones

• Kindergarten developmental milestones

• Elementary (1st-5th) developmental milestones

• Middle School (6th-8th) developmental milestones

• High School (9th-12th) developmental milestones

3) Academic Readiness

If academic readiness is important to you, how is your child performing to the typical academic skills expected at every grade level?

If you’re 100% focused on helping your child thrive relative to their own potential, there’s no need for them to be learning the same things that their peers are learning at school. But for some families, it may be especially important to keep the door back to school open. While it’s generally possible to opt out, some states do require homeschoolers to take standardized exams. 

Homeschoolers with a good mastery-based curriculum and a little structure should have no problem with standardized tests. However, having context for what children study at school in every grade helps ensure your child won’t feel lost if they choose to return to school. Fortunately, a lot of the educational software developed for modular learning is already aligned with state and federal standards for learning - and has built-in assessment tools. 

Parents might just be curious to see how well their program is working relative to traditional school. 

Here are Understood.org’s helpful academic readiness standards for starting every grade.