8218 S G Street S
Tacoma, WA 98408

This is by far the worse school I've had to deal with for any of my six children. They say they have support for IEP students but when it comes down to it, they leave them in the dirt and force them to learn the same way as the rest of the students who aren't on an IEP. We had this issue last year where they didn't even know he was on an IEP and then the promised they would address all the concerns which took the entire school year to remediate. Then after an entire school year of screw-ups, we go on summer break and end up right back where we started the first year. The teachers refuse to accommodate our student and think that he should do everything the same as everyone else regardless of his IEP. At this point, I want to remove all my students from going to Baker and smear the school. Even the principal is incompetent when we go to her with our concerns and she refers us back to the teachers that we have had the issues with. When we were looking to remove our one student last year, she called and pleaded with us to not do it and said she would do everything she can to make things better for our student, but here we are with empty promises and more failures on the Baker administration. I'm ashamed that I even fell for their talks of fixing the issues when I should have known that this website was right about the terrible issues plaguing this school. The entire staff should be replaced by competent teachers. No parent should be forced to put their kids at this school.

I'll make this quick. My child was punched by another child and the only reason I found out about it is because I noticed the marks on my child. The school was not going to tell me this happened. When I confronted the school they first tried to blame my child for the reason they got hit. Then when that fell through. They admitted that they knew this other child was a problem, that they thought they had them under control and that they were not going to punish them because their life was already difficult enough. The only help they would offer was to watch the problem child closer and to make sure all teachers were to keep a better eye on them..

-The teachers cared. Whether their class was a core education requirement or an elective, they cared as much as you did. I remember my teachers (some of them) being enthusiastic and passionate about what they were teaching and that was contagious. -The classes were not challenging. I took general classes, honors, and AP. The AP classes were considerably more difficult than either of the other two. Even in the honors classes, it didn't take much effort to succeed. -The student body was apathetic. When it came to academics, my fellow students couldn't seem to care less. School was a place for them to hang out. Some of them obviously did their work alongside socializing. I don't believe there was any inspiration to learn. The teachers may have cared but I didn't see them pushing the students who did it. There was a stark difference in the AP classes, where people were there because they wanted to be, and general and honors classes. Very few of the students around me seemed to care about their education.-Seeing the average test scores doesn't surprise me in the least.It's hard to rate some of the things this website is asking me to.Homework? Depends. I'm of the belief that homework should be what isn't finished in class. Some of my classes were like that. Others gave homework assignments and refused to let you work on them in class. Others still were somewhere in the middle of that. Was any of it effective? Again, I point to the test scores.Teachers? Obviously not if the test scores were so low, but I think more than a handful of them were still really good teachers.Leadership? Hard to say really. I didn't have much interaction until later and even then, I didn't see much interaction between students and faculty. The only time I witnessed interactions were when students were in trouble. I believe effective leadership is being around more than just when people are in trouble. Are we talking about student leadership? Then no, because they had literally no effect on me.Character? I didn't see any effort being put into making young adults successful members of society. However, if you took the initiative to join a club, that's a different story. But the ones who need the help aren't the ones seeking it.I don't have enough experience to make an in depth comment on the last two.