I have seen a number of reviews on AA and other Charter schools.
There tend to be 4 grips here.

1) the students have to do a lot of homework. That is a fact. It is also a fact that the kids do a lot of homework at ANY of the top rated schools. This is basically practise for the kids to make sure that they know how to apply the work. Without homework, then it is obvious that they are not learning.

2) In Charter schools, the parents are typically required to put in X hours per kid. At AA, that is 40 hrs/child / year. Keep in mind that the norm was that parents would work with the school, as opposed to just simply picking up their kids. It is work, but is also allows you to meet others.

3) Another is that the parents and kids can be clickish. That is a fact. There is little doubt about it. In fact, I think that the parents appear to be more clickish than are the kids. BUT, that comes from spending time together. It is not much different than what you will see at a work place. You spend time and find that you like some ppl, while others you do not like. Simple as that.

4) This schools admin has a heavy hand. To be honest, it does. The teachers are controlled CLOSELY by the admin/owners. I have never seen a school this tightly controlled. Likewise, the school runs on Windows and has horrible security issues. They are constantly cracked and have loads of virus running around. Rather than allow a group form of information, they insist on email to disseminate information so as to control the flow of what each parent sees (with a group form such as G+, blogging, facebook, etc, then all get to speak about it, which means that you can NOT control what is said/done as easily; basically, democracy vs. totalitarian ). BUT that is more due to the issue of a PE teaching knowing only about windows and pushing a hammer to deal with screws.

More importantly, when other schools were failing all around during this 2007-recent time recession, they have had a decent control of the finances. Basically, they are expanding while other schools are closing.

The real issue should be, are the kids learning academia, social skills, sports, etc? I wish that the school would do a bit more with sports, BUT, when it comes to academia, they are top notch. The teachers that they have are dedicated and LOVE the school/kids. They make sure that the children are moving. With flu running around the nation, they have us volunteer to wipe down tables, chairs, etc. WEEKLY. They push uniforms while allowing some leeway on various days. The kids learn to respect not just teacher, but everyone. Ethics are fairly decent.

If you want a school where you drop off your kids and you count on the teachers to do everything, well, this is NOT your school. In fact, NONE of the charter schools will be right for you. However, if you want to prepare your children for the future and know that academia is very important, then you will be hard pressed to beat this school.

I will say that supposedly this school has a more science/math bent, but I am not really seeing it. Compared to other public schools, it is about the same. However, the school itself was prepared for it. They even have a chemical hood, which is unusual for an elementary school.

Still, I would rate this school a 6 if I could.

Excellent for analytical type learning styles.