Skill-Based Placement and Mastery Checks for K–5

Why placement comes before everything

A grade label answers one question: how old is this child. A curriculum needs the answer to a different one: what can this child do. The two drift apart in almost every family — the seven-year-old reading above his grade in one skill and below it in another — and a school year built on the wrong answer wastes months politely.

So the system starts with placement by skill. Not to sort children, and not to alarm anyone: only so that the first lesson a family teaches is one the child actually needs.

HARVEST, and what it is not

HARVEST is the placement tool: free, adaptive, running in the browser with nothing uploaded, about twenty minutes for reading. It narrows in on where a child's skills actually sit and prints a report a parent can act on — which book, which level, where to begin.

The honesty matters more than the feature list. HARVEST is not a standardized or normed test, it is not a diagnostic instrument, it cannot identify dyslexia or any condition, and it does not replace your judgment of your own child. It is a structured way to start at a skill instead of a birthday — that, and no more. Its methodology page says all of this at length, because a placement tool you cannot see the limits of is not one you should trust.

HARVEST — the methodology, including its limits

The daily and weekly evidence loop

After placement, the checking is continuous and small. Every reading lesson ends with an exit ticket — a few minutes that answer 'did today land?' while today can still be fixed. Every week ends with a mastery check, and each check has parallel forms: a child who misses it gets reteaching and different questions on the same skill, so passing means the skill moved, not the answers.

Underneath, every skill set in the practice library carries teaching guidance — what the skill is, signs a child is ready, and what to do if they struggle — so the extra sessions the evidence sometimes demands come with directions, not just more paper.

The mastery rule that decides advancement

One published standard governs the whole system: a skill counts as mastered at 90% or better across five or more sessions on different days. The clauses are the design — 90% because nearly-right is where trouble hides, five sessions because one good day proves the day, different days because only memory that survives sleep is worth building on.

It is stated identically on the FAQ, the curriculum map and the HARVEST page, and it is our standard: informed by research on review and retrieval, set by us, and applied by you. No study dictated the numbers, and we will not pretend one did.

What happens on a miss

The loop's whole value is in the miss. A failed check routes to reteaching from the guide — a different explanation, usually a step smaller or a stage more concrete — then the parallel form. In phonics, a persistent gap can step sideways into Foundations to Fluency, whose 96 workbooks are arranged by pattern rather than grade, so a ten-year-old repairs a Level 2 skill in a book labeled by the skill.

A week gets repeated sometimes. A year never does, because the evidence never lets a gap grow a year deep.

Foundations to Fluency — repair by pattern, any age

What this system does not claim

It does not claim to measure intelligence, diagnose conditions, or predict a child's future — and any placement tool that implies those things should worry you. It does not remove the parent's judgment; it feeds it. It has not been independently validated as a battery, and HARVEST's own reliability study is honestly described as unfinished on its page.

What it claims is smaller and keepable: a child who starts at the right skill and advances only on evidence will not spend a year sitting politely in the wrong book. That is the entire promise, and every piece of it is inspectable before you pay anything.

Placement tests and skill checklists — the general guide