13104 Trail Hollow Dr
Houston, TX 77079

I was treated like a 3 class citizen for my nationality.

We wanted to provide a review for any new family ( not from Houston/ outside Memorial) considering this school for their children, specially for people of colour, or hailing from a different country. Our review is personal to our experience at the school and we appreciate may provide a different viewpoint than held by the majority of white families. We joined the school last year arriving as expats from another English speaking country, our child is brown of Asian heritage, was in third grade and was sadly bullied at the school. We raised a complaint but were told that meanness did not equate to bullying and the school assistant principal offered our son counseling at the school. We then learnt from other families of instances of bullying, specially from those of color, different religion. Some were too afraid to raise this publicly, but spoke of it in private. Many had no option to leave the school. We also had comments which we feel were racist made by a class teacher regarding black students our child was seen playing with being a “bad influence”on our child. This was a tipping point for us. We did not get invited to birthday parties, many families at the neighborhood pool would treat us as “invisible” and look past us. We were told by the school this was “normal”. My son was also bullied to give a gift to two boys “from a respectable” doctor family, who refused to invite him to their birthday thereafter. My younger daughter made only one friend, was questioned about her hair colour, was told to go away from a group of girls playing together and her only friend would never come over for play dates to our home. The school is very focused on testing results and lessons are raced through ending in a test. The GT classes are great but at Bendwood and many children we hear want to drop out of the GT program because of bullying/ rough playing at recess there. The school does little to educate its children to be inclusive, open minded or sympathetic. Foul language and hitting, video gaming, showing off about branded shoes seems to be the ethos here. We tried hard, knocked many doors and spoke to teachers. A few families in the neighborhood cared ( mind you also not native to Memorial) and we are thankful for their kindness. After a year we finally left the school for a private school this academic year. We hope this review sheds a light for anyone similarly placed as us, a professional, educated, brown immigrant family.

This review applies to the schools in the feeder pattern Meadow Wood Elementary-Spring Forest Middle-Stratford High School, and to an extent to Spring Branch ISD in general, after having children continuously enrolled from 2006 to present. Overall I think that Spring Branch is a district that provides a mediocre education, but relies on the test scores of children from affluent families south of I-10, who would score above average no matter what, to buoy its overall academic performance and make it appear like a high performing district, while the performance in the lower income schools north of I-10 tells a different story, while these schools and their families are often neglected to cater to the affluent schools. I have been unimpressed with the teachers at Meadow Wood, Spring Forest, and Stratford. Writing, in particular, is poorly taught, with too much emphasis on stream-of-consciousness journaling, and students enter, and go through high school without being properly taught how to structure an informative or persuasive paper. Science is also poorly taught at the secondary level, even in pre-AP and AP level classes, particularly biology and chemistry, which I have degrees in, and had to teach my children myself, because the instruction was sub-par. History instruction has also been pretty bad. In 8th grade US History at Spring Forest, far too much emphasis was placed on time consuming arts and crafts projects, with lots of points taken off for "not being creative enough" and titles not being written big enough, things that had nothing to do with actually demonstrating knowledge of the topic. In high school AP World history, the teacher, a coach, regularly interjected his own extreme political positions into classroom discussions, such as a justification of Jim Crow laws, comparing Canada to Nazi Germany because of its assisted suicide laws, etc. He also called a girl the epithet for female dog to her face in class. Yet he was allowed to continue teaching despite parent complaints.It's not just the instruction, it is the community culture and values in the neighborhoods that feed into Stratford and Memorial High Schools. So many wealthy, entitled students, whose bad behavior is enabled and defended by parents. Wild parties fueled by alcohol bought by the parents, designer drug use, academic dishonesty, unsportsmanlike behavior at and around football games that has been allowed to continue unchecked for years.