When fully implemented, this site can be a tool that offers many benefits.

CAROL makes grades and grading obsolete.

Grades do far more harm than good. They make students afraid. They constitute external motivation that reduces students' internal motivation. They rarely measure anything clearly or accurately. They put an enormous burden on teachers' time. They tend to constrict instruction by leading teachers to give assignments than can be easily graded, as opposed to assignments that are complex. And grades tend to end up in places where the grade itself is mysterious: an "B+" on a report card or transcript doesn't have any direct link to the assignments that it purports to measure.

CAROL, however, keeps all assessments directly linked to the thing that they assess. When assessing a written product, the product can exist right in CAROL, where it can be accessed by family members (or, if put in a public portfolio, college admissions officers). Other forms of media could be added: photos of artwork, videos of presentations, audio clips, and so on.

Further, CAROL keeps the ends clear. A teacher wants the student to be able to, for example, "distinguish between American literary movements." That's the end that the teacher has in mind. The means to that end can be much more flexible when a teacher can easily say to a student: "Show me that you can do this. Here are some ways that I suggest you show me, but if you can come up with a solution of your own, that's fantastic."

And CAROL keeps the ends clear for the students. Right now, high school students typically know exactly how many "credits" they need in various categories to graduate. And they know what they have to do to get certain grades onto their report cards. But they rarely have any clear idea about what they need to be able to do, academically and intellectually, as adults. CAROL puts that desired end result right in front of their eyes from Day One.

CAROL removes a bottleneck that holds students back.

A typical teacher can really only manage one major activity, per class, at a time. The teacher "teaches to the middle"—leaving the advanced students bored and the behind-schedule students stressed.

CAROL isn't going to change that. A teacher using CAROL is still going to have to say, "Here's an activity that I think is appropriate for most of you; most of you are still trying to figure out the difference between 'thesis,' 'claim,' and 'evidence.'"

However, the teacher can continue: "Those of you who have got it already—don't wait for me. Other Milestones already lie ahead of you: go get 'em!"

(And the students who are still learning how to write paragraphs can focus on what they really need, without being dragged through an activity that is not yet right for them.)

CAROL promotes sharing.

If multiple teachers are using the same Roadmap, the instructional aids that one teacher contributes will help all the teachers' students.

A useful "Thing-to-Try" that will help a student be able to "Explain the effects of the U.S. Constitution's articles and amendments" can be posted by one teacher and then accessed by students of every teacher.

CAROL will even bring students into the work of teaching: a student who comes across an especially interesting book can post that book up as a "Thing-to-Try," and then other students—in the same class, in the same school, or perhaps even in different schools—can see and consider that suggestion when they are learning how to "Find, read, and like a lot of books."

CAROL + internet + laptops > textbooks

Textbooks are more expensive than you'd realize; a big high school literature anthology costs about $80. It doesn't take many textbooks before you've hit the price of a low-end laptop.

But plug that laptop into the internet and it contains far more educationally-rich content than a big stack of textbooks will ever carry.

Plus: kids love technology.

CAROL promotes efficiency.

With a bit of even further development, CAROL will be able to manage the kinds of information that most schools struggle with: attendance records, student contact information, "phone logs" recording contacts between various teachers and various family members, scheduling information, and even externally-mandated paperwork can be automated when it is linked to the core student and coach accounts.

(I know that this is possible, because I made such a system using much more primitive technology several years ago.)

CAROL "tweaks the environment."

Chip and Dan Heath's Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard identifies "tweaking the environment" as one of its nine key ways to change deeply-ingrained patterns of behavior.

The current typical school environment leads teachers to think in terms of assignments to give: they try to come up with assignments that are worthwhile for most of the kids but manageable to implement and easy enough to grade.

And the current typical school environment leads students to think in terms of what they need to do in order to get the grade and get out.

Also, the current typical school environment tends to force teachers into keeping the students all doing about the same thing at the same time, because it's just too hard to let any students take any variant path.

At the same time, that environment tends to lead the students to see their students as both opponent and referee at once.

CAROL is a tool that can help change that.

Invitation

This site now exists as a demonstration of a tool intended for use at a proposed unconventional charter high school and in conjunction with the rest of Education Compendium.

This site still needs considerable work.

People interested in assisting with its development should contact George Hill at callforcollaborators@gmail.com.