964 Joan Ln
Killen, AL 35645

Brooks used to be an excellent school. However, now it has gone downhill since then. The principal is passive aggressive if you don't want to do sports, and will pick on your student if you don't. Almost all of the teachers have entirely too much on their hands, they're too involved in sports and less in the academic part of their jobs in actually teaching the students. This needs to be changed. The main hallway used to be inviting, when I visited for a family event, it looked abandoned and terribly underkept. High School is not about athletics, it is about preparing these students for life and that includes their academics, not just math and science and football!!

The faculty and staff at Underwood are committed to providing a positive environment for growth and learning. The campus is small and allows students to have a more personal connection with teachers. The administration encourages student engagement and works hard to make learning fun and interactive. Underwood provides a private school experience in a public-school setting.

K-2: Uses combination of Common Core curriculum and poorly Xeroxed worksheets. Material is grossly inappropriate, developmentally speaking, expecting students to read sentences after 3 wks of K, gave an Algebra Assessment to 5-year-olds, 1st grade reading book full of 3- and 4-syllable words. Expects 1st graders to write compositions, hours of homework every night. No art in 1st grade, no hands-on activities, no experiments, no high-quality learning experiences. Goes from this to teaching almost nothing in 4th grade. Almost no social studies, very little science except for fill-in-the-blank study sheets that are riddled with grammatical errors. Math is hit-or-miss, and when there is math, it's absurd convoluted Common Core, which only serves to confuse students and parents. No real spelling tests, where students are expected to actually learn to spell words they need to be using. Instead, spelling lists of 25 multi-syllabic words per week, and students only have to recognize the correctly spelled word on the test. Useless! Vocabulary words like "rille." Seriously? After testing in the Spring, the last few weeks classes do nothing, learn nothing. Our student ended the year with As and Bs, met all his goals, and was promoted to the next grade. We gave him Math and Reading placement tests at the end of the school year, and he only got 2 correct out of 20 on the Math test, and scored well below grade level on the Reading placement test. Good grades don't mean diddly squat if the kids don't learn anything. Wasted year - only one bright spot: excellent Music Room and music teacher, but kids only get 30 minutes per week of music class. Back to homeschooling! The state of Alabama is currently ranked #50 nationally in education - we have the worst schools in the country, and it's easy to see why!