This is a far cry from the curriculums made up of vague lists of skills, which leave a teacher wondering where to begin and where to end. Or from the encyclopedic curriculums, so packed that it would be impossible to cover all the topics. As a result, second-grade teachers, for example, dont wonder whether their students are familiar with place value. They know that students have been presented with this material, and they know the scope of the presentation. So they can start building immediately on what children learned the year before.
Youngsters do math and write every day, and they spend a lot of time reading.
No work is considered done until it is error free, so students spend time each morning getting yesterdays work letter perfect. When they finish a piece of work, it goes into a folder, so students have a record of what they have accomplished, and every month they take this home to show their parents. The Calvert program has been in existence since 1905. That means that a lot of collective wisdom has gone into perfecting it. Many reforms are adopted without the time or resources to make them work.