Coventry Oak Elementary

My son attended Coventry Oak Elementary for Kindergarten. It was apparent after the first few weeks that they were not interested in teaching any child that was "above benchmark", their entire focus was on getting the children that were under benchmark up to the standards (which needs to be done, but not at the expense of the other children).

I sent messages to his teacher multiple times inquiring about the curriculum, but hardly ever received a response, and when I did receive a response it would be very vague. During parent teacher conferences all of our concerns would be pushed to the wayside and anything the teacher said she would do to make things more enjoyable for my son were never fulfilled. She told us she was making "special groups" for the kids who were exceeding expectations, however this just turned into the group of children that were placed in front of a computer to self-teach. She told us that she would try to move his level in a reading program back down, because he had passed where he needed to be and was having trouble understanding the material because no instruction was being given. The reading program would allow them to progress without a mastery of the subject matter, but she never moved his level back down and would send home notes and tell him in class that he was performing poorly on the reading assessments, which were at a second/third grade level at that time.

On an average day my son would spend 3 or more hours self-teaching himself with computer programs. If he had a question about the material he was reprimanded for raising his hand to ask, because the teachers were busy with other students. On multiple occasions he reported to me (and I confirmed with his teacher) that his particular computer was not working and he spent 30+ minutes waiting for someone to come and assist him so he could move on with his lessons.

During free time he would work on the computer to complete lessons that he had started earlier in the day, but not quite finished. HIs teacher told him "The smartest kid in the class should worry more about making friends than working ahead".

Any time we would contact his teacher about problems we were having he would seem to be in trouble at school the next day. I’m not saying my child is never in trouble, but every time we contacted the teacher he would be in trouble for something the next day (or sometimes the same day if we contacted her during school hours)

He has been able to progress academically due to us working with him at home on curriculum of our choosing, because we are unable to get any sort of guidelines from his teacher. He is reading chapter books and doing multiplications, but this is in no way a reflection on his teacher. I have always had great respect for teachers, but this teacher gives most other teachers a bad reputation. I am so thankful that we were able to get our son into a different school for the coming school year.

We tried to address these issues with the principal, but were never able to get in contact with her