Every so often, I get the question from a prospective parent about rigor. They love our approach, and are firm believers that students need to have a “love of learning” and a “love in learning”. But they ask: Is it rigorous?
As adults, our concept of rigor is informed by our own experiences. When many of us think of rigor, we think of lots of homework, long tests, sitting at a desk, and grinding it out. While that kind of work may be hard, is it rigor or compliance? Is it the type of learning that benefits future-facing students?
True rigor is about the level of thinking kids are doing, not how stressed they are. Can they analyze, design, and create? Do they grapple with open-ended questions well? Can they explain their thinking, defend their work? Do they persist and have grit?
Our project-based approach demands synthesis, application, and transfer—the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. It also requires something traditional rigor often ignores: motivation. When students care about what they’re doing, they naturally push themselves further.
This type of work is cognitively rigorous; what we grew up with feels more like compliance rigor.
If you are not sold on the idea that what we do is truly rigorous, let our MAP results speak for us. NWEA administers the MAP test to over 35,000 schools across the country. Of those schools, 3,500 are private schools like Saklan. If you look at our results, we not only rank well against schools in general, but score significantly higher than most of our private school cohort.
What we do may not look like the rigor of our childhoods. But it’s the rigor kids need today—and the rigor that prepares them for tomorrow.
Warmly,
David
#SaklanAcademics
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