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Any other parents feel that greatschools.net is too biased in their review process of parental feedback?
Anonymous May 21, 2009
The school my child attends has had chronic problems with bullying. Families I have known have resorted to taking their children out of the school and even home-schooling because of this issue. When I have tried to provide this feedback on greatschools, my review was unaccepted and the school's rating of "10" has remained. None of the parents I have spoken to at my child's school would give it a 10. I am curious to know if other parents feel that the greatschools rating of their public school is similarly inflated. Thank you.
tjlove September 18, 2012
@momoftwodelmar: Hi, I'm the community manager here at GreatSchools and wanted to address your concerns. Unfortunately, sometimes schools or people associated with those schools do post positive reviews as a way of burying the negative ones. We can look into the reviews posted for this school and try to determine if any are fake. We do strive to create a fair and unbiased environment for parents to post their experiences with schools, whether positive or negative. We only remove reviews that violate our school review and/or community guidelines. If you ever see a review that you feel is in violation you can report it by clicking on the little flag located in the upper right-hand corner of the review. You can also email us directly with any questions or concerns at commentfeedback@greatschools.org
You can read our guidelines here: http://www.greatschools.org/about/guidelines.page
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momoftwodelmar September 17, 2012
Me again. Also, I felt that our old school, Santa Fe Montessori in Solana Beach CA, had a ton of posts about legitimate violations of state safety codes, which were buried against mountains of positive reviews, all in a very tight time period. It's my opinion that unscrupulous schools and administrators have people they know post false positive reviews as "parents", or do it themselves with various logins to one person on this site, to hide negative ones from the public's eye. Really disappointing and unethical. Anyone else experience that?80629
momoftwodelmar September 17, 2012
I'm not sure of the process here, but I read this thread and the story of your son broke my heart. I just posted on our now-former school, Santa Fe Montessori, in Solana Beach, because of a bullying problem and a lack of compliance to their own procedures for children hitting. It's really a national epidemic. I pray for your lovely son, and can only imagine what it felt like to have him go through that. Never stop being your child's advocate and don't expect schools, especially tuition-based ones, to act out of altruism and what is right.
Good luck. The new documentary on bullying may be something to watch with your little guy, so he knows it is NOT ok and he is not alone.
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ulia77 September 15, 2012
Absolutely, it is biased! I also tried to post a review that was apparently not to their liking. If they won't let let me rate/review one school with problems, then I refuse to to post the great ratings and reviews for 2 other school my child attended.
This is a great disservice to parents and students on their part.
But i guess the name "GREATschools.com" says it all, doesn't it?
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AgathaX March 31, 2010
I agree with the other parents here about providing us with a forum for true expression. OF COURSE these are all opinions... if we are using this site we are all well schooled in how to assess reviews! It seems that the same rules are NOT applied to the positive ones. A great social media site is one that allows the users to create and determine the content (within reason) and one that holds a authentic forum. This is not an authentic forum if you are not allowing a true conversation to happen here. You are skewing my research and I think I will no longer use this site or click on your ads. Letting the schools use this site as a means of advertising sells short the parents who are looking for a place to find more information and make choices... when you limit us you sell yourself short and your opinion of us.54513
woofwoof March 30, 2010
I had no idea this website would not post "factual negative reviews." I'm going to have to consider if I want to continue contributing to this website, which I've used as a resource for years.....I mean, if they can give a "great schools rating" with a low number, and base it on facts and stats, why can parents not provide comparable reviews based on experience? Of course, it's all anecdotal, but the stats have to begin somewhere.54463
dudedad March 29, 2010
" if your review contains any negative factual information we won't post it."
Amazing! Factual information is the ONLY INFORMATION. Biased opinion is mostly throw away junk. I don't even read reviews that start with "... is a great school" Of course it's a great school, that's why I sent my kid there! This level of censorship is as bad as no censorship and it's what is wrong with the internet. Misinformation.54437
smm1978 November 19, 2009
well site is called great schools and not honest schools..
Last year I thankfully moved away from a horrible school district. I had lots of bad experiences with three of the schools there. I mean like, faculty being total pricks, lots of them I feel had no place working in a school, also the school curriculum was pathetic, bullying rampant in the school and so many other things wrong.
So I wrote and honest, and politically correct review about two of the schools, basically sugar coated it but still gave a well written review about these schools.
All reviews rejected, didn't bother trying to water my reviews down any more, had I done that I would basically have to praise a failing and rapidly declining school district, which I'm not about to do.26745
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