Summary
William Michael, headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, addresses the common parental concern about the pace at which homeschool students should progress. He explains that the question stems from a modern school mindset, where artificial deadlines and schedules create unnecessary pressure. Homeschooling, however, offers freedom from such constraints, allowing families to work 365 days a year without rigid calendars, tailoring education to individual children’s needs and paces. Unlike modern schools, which group students by age and prioritize grades over mastery, homeschooling focuses on true understanding for life, not just school requirements. Mr. Michael advises parents to create a balanced study schedule, prioritize task completion, and use the academy’s color-coded “completed tasks” report to track progress (green for recent, yellow/orange for 1-2 weeks ago, red for over two weeks). Standardized tests ($30, recommended in May/June) can confirm grade-level performance, alleviating concerns.
Full Talk
Today is Monday, September 22nd, 2025, and this is William Michael, headmaster of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy.
One of the most common questions that I receive from parents, especially those who are new to the academy, is what sort of pace should students work at in their courses? What how many lessons should they get done each week or each month whatever what’s the pace at which students should make progress and this is a confusing question for a couple of reasons and I think the parents asking it are themselves a bit confused about what they’re asking.
We’ve all been programmed by modern schools to think that there’s a necessary pace. There’s deadlines and due dates and so on. And all of that is artificial. All of that is optional. None of that is necessary. And yet we’re all programmed, as I said, to think that way because we think of the modern schools.
Many of us or most of us have been raised in modern schools. And when we get involved in education, when we educate our children, it’s hard for us to think outside of that box. So, we start going to default mode and allowing thoughts about pacing and deadlines to to fill us with anxiety um concerning standards that really don’t even apply to homeschooling. So that’s why I say the question is both confusing and a sign of confusion.
When we choose to homeschool our children, we’re freed from almost all of that artificial schedule-based pressure that we feel in modern schools. Modern students in schools have 180 school days a year and the school meets from 8 in the morning until 3:00 or so in the afternoon and they get about 5 hours of time for class activity.
As homeschool families, we have much more time available to us for school-related activities, for academic tasks. We have all day every day, 365 days a year. And while we’re obviously not going to spend all of that time on academic tasks, the point is we’re not working within the artificial restrictions of a modern school calendar or a modern school schedule.
One of the greatest benefits, maybe the greatest benefit of homeschooling, is the freedom from that schedule system. And the reason why that freedom is so important is because the way that schools work is is the opposite of how homeschooling works.
In homeschooling, we take our own children, one, two, three, whatever number of children we have, and we seek to lead them to master and gain a working understanding of subjects that we judge to be important, not just for school requirements, but for life. We want to lead our children to mastery because we want them to be able to use the knowledge of the subjects that they study.
And we quickly learn that our children are different. They’re different in their gifts and abilities. They’re different in their interests. And so we learn that if we want to give our children the same education, it’s going to need to be given at different paces. Each child is going to pursue, and homeschooling allows this. Homeschooling allows each child to pursue the same quality of learning at his or her own pace. And that again is maybe the greatest benefit of homeschooling.
And modern schools, as I said, do everything the other way around. They lump children together based on their date of birth. They establish an artificial school schedule and then they run the kids through that schedule taking no responsibility for the mastery of any of those students for the subjects of the curriculum. They simply grade them.
And so if a student doesn’t learn the content, he just gets a grade. It may be a B or a C or a D, hopefully not an F because that’s really the only way to be held back. But as long as a student learns oh 60% or so of the content, he’s going to get pushed on to the next grade and he’s just going to get a grade assigned to him for his present year of studies.
And that’s how the modern school works because the teachers and the schools are not responsible for the mastery of individual students. That’s really the parents’ responsibility. And when we consider that it’s the parents’ responsibility, we then begin to ask why would we pursue this through a school when we can just do this ourselves?
And that’s the question that in 2025 I would hope that many parents are asking themselves. Why don’t we just pursue this at home without the costs or trouble of the modern schools?
So when we bring the kids home, we come out of that restricted artificial calendar and schedule. And when we start talking about pacing at home, because obviously there has to be some progress, some some goal for progress being made. My argument would be that it first begins with a balanced schedule, a good schedule where you can map out for your children fixed blocks of time for studying.
But then in those blocks of scheduled time, the goal is very simple. The goal is to get as many tasks done as possible or to get as much of any task done as possible in that scheduled time because all that matters all that matters is the completion of tasks. All that matters is the completion of the tasks.
There are thousands and thousands of tasks. And the curriculum in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy has been already broken down into lessons into tasks, individual activities for students. So really the students can just concentrate all of their attention, all of their energy, all of their time on completing those tasks and also allowing those tasks to judge the students’ progress.
Many parents go into the studies with their own sets of standards and they create problems for themselves forgetting that there are thousands and thousands of tasks to be completed. Let the activities provide the standard for achievement and encourage the kids to just get as many tasks done in the scheduled time as possible. And let that be the simple rule for pacing.
And if you do that, if you do that and you commit regularly to put in the time to do the work to focus on task completion, everything else will take care of itself. There won’t be any problems with respect to pacing.
Now, one helpful tool that we provide in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy, if you go to the study center and open up the right menu on the study center, you’ll see in the reports area uh a a section or a report I should say that’s titled um something like completed tasks or tasks completed, something like that, on the right menu. If you open that report, it will show for the student tasks that have been recently completed.
So, it’ll list all the tasks and all the different courses that have been completed. And what’s helpful about that report, what that report is intended to provide is a quick overview of what kind of progress the student is making. It’s a color-coded report.
So when you open that report, it will list all of the recently completed tasks and it will color-code them based on when they were completed. So when you see green tasks on that report, it means that that was a task that was completed recently within the past week. If you see a yellow or orange colored task, it means that task was completed more than one week ago but less than two weeks. So relatively recently.
And then thirdly, if you see completed tasks that are listed in red color, that means that they were completed more than two weeks ago. So when you look at that report, you can see where students are making progress because the tasks are green or orange and you can see where the students are not making progress where the tasks are red.
And so the simple goal, my simple solution to this question about pacing is to just try to keep that completed task report green. Keep the report green. It’s that simple. That means that you’re making progress with tasks being completed every week through the school year.
And as long as those reports are green, you can be sure that you’re making steady progress. I’ve designed it to be that simple because I know that that’s the kind of feedback that parents and students need. And it’s that simple. Keep the completed tasks report green and you can be sure that you’re making good progress.
Now, to quiet any anxious concerns parents have, at the end of the school year in May or June, arrange with us in the academy to take standardized tests for your grade level. Costs $30 for one student and you’ll get access to an online standardized test for your grade level. You can complete that online standardized test at your own convenience and it will give you standardized test scores for the grade level and as long as those test scores look good, you can be sure that everything’s fine as far as modern standards are concerned. Very simple.
Once you get those test results and see that the test results are good, you can file them away and just be done with it. There’s no need for any other concerns about grade level requirements.
If in a worst case scenario, the student does poorly on a standardized test for his grade level, you’ll have all of that feedback. You’ll have the individual subject tests and their scores, and you’ll be able to identify weaknesses and focus on those weaknesses for the following school year. So, it’s still nothing to stress out about.
At the worst, if you get some bad scores, you simply focus on those subjects in the coming school year. So, all of that kind of school-related, grade level-related, progress-related anxiety can be put away.
We provide everything the kids need in the academy. We provide a curriculum that greatly exceeds anything available in modern schools. We provide reports that give you a very simple way of of following the students’ progress throughout the year. And then grade level standardized tests just answer all of those questions once for all.
So there should be no concerns about the pace at which students need to progress. Just establish a balanced schedule. Make sure you exercise some discipline in keeping that schedule during scheduled study times. Try to get as as many tasks done as possible and then follow those completed task reports and try to keep them green.
If you do that, you’ll be in great shape. And as I said, you can always check things out in the end by taking a grade level standardized test. So I hope that that provides some comfort with questions relating to pacing in studies in the Classical Liberal Arts Academy.
I I very strongly advise parents to not take away from the children the freedom to study at their own pace. Just encourage the kids to complete tasks and allow the tasks to determine whether they should move on or not and track those reports. But maintain that freedom for scheduling, maintain that freedom for quality study and don’t stress too much about pacing.
So anyway, I hope that’s helpful. That’s really the benefit that you have in homeschooling. Remember, you’re not limited to a 180-day schedule. You’re not limited to just this small window of time each day for studies.
You can lay study times out around your family schedule. Find times that are best for your family. Find times of year of the year that are best for your family and commit to studying throughout the year and just working constantly to get as many tasks done as possible.
And if you do that with some discipline, you’ll have no problem not only satisfying grade level requirements, but you’ll be able to exceed them and get into studies, classical Catholic studies, which aren’t even offered in modern schools. And that’s the goal of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy.
So, I hope that’s helpful. If you have any more specific questions about these sorts of things, just get in touch with me by email. My address is mail@classliberalarts.com. Let me know what concerns you have and I’ll be sure to get helpful answers to you. Hope that’s helpful. God bless.
