Editorial methodology

How we review homeschool curriculum.

Editorial credibility starts with sourcing discipline, continues with explicit rubric criteria, and ends with the editorial firewall that keeps affiliate relationships from influencing what we recommend. This page documents how Every Homeschool reviews curriculum so the reader can audit our work.

The one-line editorial rule

If you can’t link to it, you can’t claim it.

Every factual claim on Every Homeschool requires an inline hyperlink to a primary source. Prices, dates, ESA program details, prevalence statistics, curriculum sequence claims, accreditation status, publisher founding histories, affiliate-program terms. No claim ships without a citation. The reader can click through and verify in seconds.

Primary-source ranking

When multiple sources are available, we prefer them in this order:

1. Publisher’s own website (for product details, pricing, official descriptions)
2. Government statute or regulatory document (for legal frameworks, ESA programs)
3. Peer-reviewed academic literature (for research claims, prevalence data, intervention efficacy)
4. Established review aggregators (Cathy Duffy Reviews, HSLDA, the Davidson Institute, the Belin-Blank Center) where their reputation rests on long-term editorial quality
5. Wikipedia (for high-level definitional claims where it is treated as a tertiary source, never sole)

Bloggers, social-media posts, and uncredentialed commentary are never used as sole sources for editorial claims. They may appear as illustrative examples within a paragraph cited to a higher-tier source.

Rubric review criteria

Each publisher rubric review on Every Homeschool evaluates the curriculum against a consistent set of criteria. The full review is rendered in narrative form rather than as a numeric score, because reading homeschool curriculum recommendations as a single composite number tends to obscure the practical fit-or-no-fit question that matters to the family. The narrative covers:

• What the curriculum is, by publisher description and observed materials
• Pedagogical method, with the named tradition (classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, traditional, etc.) when applicable
• Worldview, by the publisher’s own self-identification
• Grade-level scope and the sequence the publisher offers
• Parent intensity, calibrated 1-5 with 1 being self-directed for the student and 5 being teacher-intensive
• Cost tier (free, budget, standard, premium) with current pricing time-stamped
• ESA acceptance across major state programs where applicable
• Strengths, by what families using the curriculum consistently report
• Limitations, by what families struggle with or what the program does not cover
• Best fit, by the family profile for which the curriculum is the clearest answer

Comparison-table featured-publisher methodology

Each pillar guide opens with a comparison table featuring 5-8 curricula. The selection methodology is documented in full at Ops/COMPARISON-TABLE-METHODOLOGY.md in the editorial-operations repository. The one-line rule: featured curricula are picked by composite public-interest + robustness score, computed from publicly verifiable inputs, before any affiliate relationship is considered. Affiliate status is irrelevant to inclusion.

The composite score weights two equal halves:

• Public-interest signals (50%): editorial mention frequency across the Every Homeschool corpus, search-engine visibility in 2025-2026 review aggregators, adoption by classical-Christian school networks, discussion frequency in r/homeschool and related forums.
• Robustness signals (50%): years in operation, grade-band coverage, active update cadence (5-year revision check), ESA acceptance breadth, publisher stability (privately held with stable leadership versus founder-at-retirement-risk).

Editorial firewall (the hard prohibitions)

The editorial firewall protects the reader from the standard failure mode of affiliate-driven publishing: where the products with the highest commission rates climb the recommendation rankings and the products with the lowest (or no) affiliate programs get pushed down. Our explicit prohibitions:

• No favoritism toward affiliate-active publishers. If a curriculum has an active affiliate program, that fact does NOT raise its composite score or its rubric review verdict. The score is computed first; affiliate status is a separate metadata field rendered only as the FTC-compliance (affiliate) marker.
• No paid placement. No publisher pays for inclusion in any directory entry, comparison table, pillar guide, or rubric review. Publisher PR outreach does not influence inclusion. Sponsored content is not accepted.
• No rank-by-commission-rate. Within any comparison or pillar guide, rows are ordered by composite editorial score, not by commission percentage. A 30% recurring-commission program and a 4% one-time program are treated identically in ordering.
• Transparent rejection. When a high-search-volume curriculum is excluded from a featured set (because the publisher recently shut down, or the grade coverage is too narrow, or the curriculum’s evidence base does not meet our threshold), the exclusion reason is documentable. Inquiries from publishers about why they are not featured receive a public-facing reply that cites the composite-score deficit or other factual basis.
• Reportorial voice on every worldview. The same factual register applies to every worldview, classical, Charlotte Mason, Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, evangelical, secular, Jewish, LDS. No worldview gets advocacy language; no worldview gets dismissive language. The reader gets the same neutral description regardless of which tradition they hold.

Corrections policy

Errors get corrected on the page within 24 hours of confirmation. A dated correction note is added at /corrections. The next weekly dispatch surfaces the correction so existing readers see the update. The original error is preserved in the corrections log so the correction trail is auditable.

Spot a factual error or a citation that does not check out? Email editor@everyhomeschool.com. Corrections take priority over new content.

Re-evaluation cycle

• Time-stamped prices. Curriculum prices and ESA program amounts show when they were verified. Re-verification every 90 days.
• Annual full review of featured sets. Each May, the pillar-guide comparison tables are rebuilt from scratch using the prior 12 months of editorial mention frequency, web-research signals, and ESA program updates.
• Quarterly drift check. Each quarter, every featured publisher is verified to still be in business, still updating its curriculum, and still meeting the inclusion criteria.
• Triggered review. Major publisher news (acquisition, bankruptcy, founder retirement, scandal, significant curriculum revision) triggers an immediate re-evaluation of that publisher’s coverage.

Worldview classification

Every publisher is classified by the worldview tradition it serves, as the publisher self-identifies. Worldview categories used on Every Homeschool:

• Christian (broadly evangelical, Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox): the curriculum integrates Christian worldview content. The specific tradition (evangelical vs Catholic vs Reformed etc.) is named when the publisher self-identifies.
• Mennonite / plain community: distinct from Protestant categories due to practice rather than theology.
• Jewish: non-Christian Jewish-tradition curriculum.
• LDS: Latter-day Saint. LDS publishers are classified as LDS exclusively, not combined with any Christian category, even when the publisher markets itself as non-denominational Christian. The Good and the Beautiful is the canonical example.
• Secular: worldview-neutral. Science is presented as mainstream science; history without doctrinal framing; literature curated on literary merit.

We do not reclassify publishers from how they self-identify. We do not create categories that the curriculum does not explicitly state in its own published materials.

Author attribution

Every Homeschool publishes under a collective editorial byline (“Every Homeschool Editorial Team”) rather than individual contributor names on the public pages. The editorial team is the small staff of human writers and researchers who produce, verify, and update the content. Internal accountability for any given piece is tracked in our editorial operations; the public byline reflects the institutional voice.

Author-attribution to AI systems is prohibited on every Every Homeschool surface per the editorial standards adopted 2026-05-12. AI tools may participate in research, drafting, and operations as production utilities; authorship rests with the editorial team and the institutional standard.

How we make money

Every Homeschool is reader-supported through affiliate links to curriculum publishers. When a reader purchases a curriculum through one of our tagged outbound links, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to the reader. Full details on which publishers we partner with, our editorial-firewall protections against affiliate bias, and the FTC-compliance disclosures are at /about#how-we-make-money.

We do not run display advertising. We do not accept paid placement. We do not run sponsored content. We do not sell our reader email list (we do not maintain a reader email list at this time).