Bentley Elementary School

I have had 3 kids in this school. I appreciate it is a small school and the student to teacher ratio allows for smaller classroom sizes. However, they utilize classroom management strategies that result in kids feeling bad about themselves than build self-esteem such as moving clothes pins down a chart to indicate whether they are behaving or not, using glow or grow notes to show when they are doing good or need improvement indicating that these will be reflected on their grades which is not true of coursen and causes kids to be hard on themselves for no valid reasons. Positive reinforcement and redirection is a much more valid approach that also does not cause harm to the child. Additionally, there is no room for helping kids catch up if needed. There is no push in or pull out services for kids with issues, there are not two blocked hours for reading and literacy like public schools which don't do service to kids who need assistance catching up. Further they are utilizing and outdated methodology for teaching reading rather than the new science of reading. I dislike that there is not an art teacher who has studied art, the kids primarily did finger knitting. No portfolio came home these past two years unlike the art teachers from several years ago. They did not learn any basic art concepts to help them develop those skills. There are a lack of clubs and sports available and at times my kids have had to miss recess and specials to catch up which is not allowed in public school because kids need these, whether totally missed or late, it is a punishment to the kids and seems to be minimized by the school . Last year a student made a verbal threat of violence towards classmates and none of the parents were told, only the parent of the child who made the threat. Further, the report cards are in no way reflective of their actual learning as the NWEA shows for my kids at least, ether not meeting goals or actually decreasing from Fall to Spring which makes me wonder how are they indicating mastery of subjects when scores are not showing meeting goals. The people are nice, I enjoy meeting with them, however, that is just not enough to when the education of our children are at stake.

Teachers are not well trained and there is a high rate of teacher turnover. Pay for teachers is terrible, so there is a mix of desperate and highly motivated teachers. Educational standards are not age-appropriate and educational methods do not encourage learning. Any high test scores that they boast are a result of only accepting children who are already ahead academically, and are self-learners. In a year of attending, my child learned nothing from their academics program, and little from their Islamic studies program. The one benefit was how much qur'an my child was able to memorize. I was very pleased. But a major negative was their worksheet-based teaching method. Students would be taught from worksheets, given identical copies of those worksheets for homework and exam review, and then their semester exams would be a big packet composed of identical worksheets. It was a joke, especially given that my child was in kindergarten and I do not believe "exam week" is very appropriate at that age. Despite not struggling at all academically at ST, my child was behind when it came to starting first-grade class at a new school.

This school is really good for people who need help with math writing reading .ect. And this school has prayer, good food and more! also has homework.