Summers-Knoll works on a PreK-8 model of education that sees the benefits of building long-term learning communities and avoiding unnecessary academic regressions. Recent research suggests that the transition from elementary to middle school can be tough for students, with students on average losing ground in math, reading, and overall completion rates as they switch from one to the other. Students who remain in PreK-8 schools avoid these pitfalls.

The Summers-Knoll curriculum also allows students, teachers, and classes to encounter and re-encounter subjects together, forming powerful connections between subjects across time. They can make meaningful relationships between vermiform composting (in 1st and 2nd grade) and personal nutrition (in 5th and 6th grade), for example, and between botany (in 3rd and 4th grade) and evolutionary adaptation (5th and 6th grades). These connections illuminate the ways in which knowledge grows if it has a strong foundation, the ways that learning leads to new learning.

The Summers-Knoll PreK-8 model encourages students to evolve a series of core strengths in academic subjects so that they will be prepared for high school and develop the kind of powerful mental flexibility that will help them solve pedagogical and personal problems throughout their teen years—and beyond.