There are two key elements to the Ideal Schools approach to education. The first element is a project-based curriculum and the second is a learner-centered orientation. These two elements shape all other decisions concerning faculty, school policies, assessments, and physical space.

Our project-based curriculum is designed around having students complete demanding projects or solving complex problems that require students to find new information from several academic content areas in a strategic and goal-directed way and to apply that information individually or as part of a group to complete a high quality product or a careful analysis of a problem.

The antithesis of the project-based approach is the traditional approach of dividing the school day into six or seven academic subjects without making clear the connections between the content areas and the problems to which the content knowledge would be relevant in the world outside of school. The project-based approach teaches academic content in a context which makes the utility and relevance of the content clear. The traditional approach leaves the student to figure out how unrelated content connects, if at all, and to what end instruction aims.

While a project-based approach increases student engagement and aids learning, it also reinvigorates instruction of discrete subject matter areas. Subject-matter instruction serves the purpose of helping students complete projects and solve problems, which puts the subject matter instruction in a context that helps students understand why learning math or history, for example, is important and useful. So, students will learn math, science, economics, political science and history, among other subjects, while completing a wide range of interesting projects, including designing and building actual things. In this way, traditional content is used as a tool to help students understand and solve real problems.

The high school curriculum builds towards a senior project each student chooses. This final project is the final assessment of our academic program, to ensure students have successfully completed their coursework and have learned what the school set out to teach, and it is an opportunity for students to focus on a subject they care about. They can build on the foundation of knowledge and skills that results from this project in college and beyond.