Homeschoolers Using Curriculum for School Market

It is not easy for homeschool parents to use curriculum pubished for the school market in their homeschooling. I will explain why.

The curriculums often have many parts. One course may have a dozen items associated with teaching that course. For a middle school grade language arts program I started using last spring, there really were a dozen different products which would be used to teach all components of the program. The same goes for a high school biology lab course that my son is going to use this year.

The only way to get aroung buying them all would be for the parent to make up and design the program built from the main text, using the main text for what we call a "spine". The amount of time and energy dedicated to that should not be underestimated. How much time do you as a homeschool parent to do that? How many courses for how many kids can you do that work for? Perhaps more importantly, do you know the right amount of practice or teaching to be done to help a child in that grade master the content? Do you know what must be mastered?

For each element that a student text or workbook is available for, there is a teacher manual that must be purchased unless the parent thinks they know enough to not need an answer key and has the time to figure out all the answers. Do you really want to make up sentences for your child to insert commas into? Is that how you want to spend your time?

Also, the old teacher editions are often available used but the current edition may not be. If your student text was revised in 2008 are you sure that the 2004 teacher manual still matches up to it or was a new revision in 2008 done on the teacher manual? You probably will have to reference the publisher's website to find that information. In one case the website was not helpful and I phoned the customer service department and was told an answer that turned out to be incorrect which I learned only after purchasing the books and reading them for myself!

Some websites ban the selling of teacher manuals, such as eBay. This can make it difficult to find used, affordable copies. When I say affordable, I am talking about spending $75-140 on a USED teacher manual. If you thought you got a bargain to find an old edition of the student text, you may struggle to find that same edition of the teacher manual.

In one case a student book I got for 50 cents had an elusive teacher edition for the student workbook portion, so I had to buy a new teacher edition (no used copies were available) and order also a new edition student manual, but I didn't realize that the program had been revised and expanded so my two products no longer could be used with each other. There is nothing as frustrating as having an answer key in hand that doesn't match the student workbook or test booklet!

In another case the new student workbook referenced the student to go read certain pages in the spine textbook but my old edition text was all different page numbers and content had been moved around so that was a pain to deal with. I gave up and bought the newer edition of the student text. So much for using this program in the first place because I'd found a student text for 50 cents and thought I found a bargain.

There is also the issue of total cost. The public school language arts program was going to cost over $300 for the year's materials. I didn't know that when I happily bought that spine book for fifty cents. There are often hidden costs that you find only after digging such as with one, the student text spine could be used for 2-3 years the teacher's manuals were issued at every grade level adding a higher cost to replace every year. I am unsure how the lessons varied from grade 5 to grade 6 but something about them must have been different! The biology course I am using (Prentice Hall Biology by Miller and Levine commonly used in grade 9 or 10) will cost at full retail over $400 for books alone, that does not include the lab equipment.

Quizzes and tests are not with the student text. They are often not with the teacher manual either, they are a separate purchase. In the high school years when grades are usually contained on a homeschool high school transcript the tests could be used.



Once all the parts of the curriculum are in hand there is additional planning to figure out lesson plans, what to do on what day, what text should be read when, which work in which of the multiple workbooks should be done when, and so forth.

The lessons for school texts are not set up to be a self-teaching program, they still rely on teacher lecture and teacher involvment to deliver content. One viewing of a teacher manual for high school science reveals that much information should be conveyed which is absent or lightly touched upon in the student's text. Often the additional content is written in wide margins alongside a copy of the student text. If the student and homeschool parent-teacher were using just the student text a portion of the content would not be delivered or learned.

Why does this matter, to teach a "full" course? If you are teaching a high school student who will be tested with SAT subject tests as required for college admissions, it only makes sense to be sure that the material the student will be tested on will actually have been taught and learned. A friend suggested I also use a SAT II test prep book as a spine to go along with textbooks to make sure that all the topics are covered. Prep books are not textbook replacements, they are study aids and contain sample tests to practice on.

Now that all this is known about school market curriculum, the ease of using curriculum designed for the homeschool market is clearly apparent. Although many homeschool parents label certain curriculums expensive the fact is they are cheap in comparison to school market materials.

A popular homeschool math program costs $25 for the student text and $40 for the reusable teacher edition (which retains a high resale value), yet many parents balk at that cost. Forget the programs that cost $120 to $165, some people are jus horrified by those costs.

However, let's be logical and compare apples to apples before making judgements about what is expensive versus what is reasonable. A math text for the school market would run well over $200 if not $300 or more. The homschool materials at a fraction of the cost are usually complete, sold in two pieces: teacher manual and student text, delivering lessons for the parent to give all paced out with no lesson planning needed. They include teacher information, student text, student workbook, student tests, and answer keys for everything often for under $100 or under $150 which we now see is a bargain price. After the non-consumable items are used the parent can resell the curriculum if they so desire to recoup some of the money spent.

Having learned all this the hard way I have a new appreciation for homeschool curriculum that exists on the market and I will no longer complain of the prices for the new curriculum as they are often much cheaper than school market materials in used condition! The homsechool curriculum is easier to use and complete.

The only time I will use materials written for the school market is when homeschool curriculum for that subject is not available, or when I've already made the mistake of spending a fair amount of money or a lot of money in the school market materials and want to use what I already invested in.

Perhaps some of my blog readers will learn from my mistakes and my past overspending? This may seem hard to believe or exaggerated but it is not, trust me. If you want to see examples leave me a comment and I'll do a future blog post itemizing products for one course with the prices, just let me know by leaving a comment.