My daughter came out of class excited and confident…read more Shan is very patient and spent time teaching my child. Shan has a calm demeanor and projects respect for the learner and caregivers. my daughter has never been so excited after an academic course.

What happened to Shan? We did the camp and there was no Shan there. Does she teach during the…read moreregular school year and not over summer? We were disappointed to not see the manager of the center the entire time we were there. Who's in charge and how can we sign up for more sessions when we don't know whom to talk to. Very strange place.

We were so lucky to have found Darcy to help our son with his college application process!! She and…read moreJordan clicked right from the start and it helped tremendously that she took the time and effort to get to know him. Darcy made the whole college application process enjoyable and seamless. Darcy was a great listener, counselor, mentor, and friend!! Without a doubt, she played a huge role in getting Jordan accepted into many great colleges, some with full or half scholarships too!!!

In my almost 20 years as a local test prep professional, I have yet to come across a College…read moreCounselor or human being that I could recommend more wholeheartedly than Darcy Prime. There's nobody better at helping students discoverer their true voices. There's nobody better at making the very stressful undertaking of applying to college an enjoyable and enlightening exercise. If reports from my students are any indicator, there's nobody better at boosting the self esteem of 16 and 17 year olds. To quote one lucky student," My friends tell me they dread spending time with their college counselors. Whenever I'm with Darcy, I feel about 10 feet tall ! " I have passed her name along countless times to grateful families thrilled with her wonderful approach and her spectacular results. Impressive. But what are her credentials ? Darcy is a double Stanford alumna (Undergrad: English Literature; Grad school: Adolescent Psychology). After graduating from Stanford, she spent 12 years working as the Associate Director of Stanford Admissions. For the past 14 years, Darcy has worked as a private college counselor. Her rates are surprisingly reasonable. She is also the nicest person I know. The downside is there's just one Darcy Prime. She can only take so many students each year, so contact her sooner than later. Whether it's college counselors or people in general, there's nobody better.

That negativity is nonsense. Don't let the distorted views of others sway your opinion of Oak…read moreKnoll. The reality is school quality is multidimensional. At most schools, student engagement, developing citizenship skills, social and emotional health, and critical thinking are often overlooked and secondary to test scores. That's not the case at Oak Knoll. Often revered as the best public school in the area, Oak Knoll rivals any private school in Silicon Valley. Our two oldest children were prepared exceptionally well for public middle and private high school. This preparedness went beyond academics. They had developed life skills like empathy, self-efficacy, and accountability. Strengths this generation needs more than ever to succeed in the modern post-COVID world. We considered relocating to the east coast for business, and after researching and touring the schools, it quickly became evident that Oak Knoll outperformed every school we considered. Ultimately, we left that professional opportunity on the table to keep our kids at Oak Knoll. Leadership and community here are fueled by empathy. Every teacher we know in the district wants to work at Oak Knoll. That should be evidence enough.

As a parent, I want my children to feel happy, safe, and supported at school, and they absolutely…read moredo at Oak Knoll. They simply LOVE their school. The teachers and staff go above and beyond, and have created a very special, warm environment with a strong sense of community. There is a clear focus on academics and individual progression, as well as on a child's social and emotional development. I could not be happier with my children's educational experience.

Wow - these reviews are really old. Bishop is a great school and I'm happy to send my 2nd grade son…read morehere. The principal and assistant principal are very positive and set a great upbeat tone for the campus. I *think* they've only been in leadership since 2019. (My son started Kinder in 2020). Bishop has dedicated teachers and staff and a culture of leadership and personal agency. I love there there are many male teachers here. Positive male role models make such a big difference in children's success and outcomes as adults. The teachers run many of the after-school activities (e.g., ukulele, coding, cooking and fractions, leadership) and the amount of care and love they put into supporting the students' school experience is really inspirational. Low scores are largely correlated with the socioeconomics of the community since it's a neighborhood school. Bishop is a Title 1 school, meaning it has a high percentage of families that have low socioeconomic status (SES). In Sunnyvale School District, Bishop has the highest percentage of low SES students (60.2%) and highest percentage of English Language Learners (50.9%). A constant goal is more family engagement, especially amongst Spanish-speaking families. It's really difficult to involve families whose schedules don't allow for extra participation or funds to be spent at school. The cultures of many families in our school don't have the same kind of norms of school involvement as is common in a lot of American schools. Many families in our neighborhood choose private schools or the two choice schools in our district which has a very significant impact on what families are left at the school. While it has the highest needs, Bishop also has the lowest community resources. Our PTO budget is a fraction of some of the schools in South Sunnyvale. I believe it's the responsibility for those of us that have the privilege of being more involved in our children's education to step up by supporting our public schools as well as we can. Maybe it means creating a display to show off your heritage at the multi-cultural festival; perhaps you can help clean up popcorn after a school movie night; maybe you can mark laps on the back of kids' shirts during the Walkathon. All contributions to the school are significant, appreciated, and the form the school's culture. I love that my son (and my daughter in two years) gets to spend his days with kids that aren't just like him. Attending Bishop - our neighborhood school - is preparing him for "real life" with diverse people. I believe in public schools. I hope that others in our neighborhood will also consider sending their kids to Bishop. If you're considering sending your kids here, do it.

Absolutely horrific school. The "school day" is all about playing, drawing, exercising, and…read moreunsupervised time-wasting (kids playing around, again), and feeding kids 1990's processed food, only interrupted by a couple of kindergarten-level classes (in an elementary school). The most worthless part of it is the afternoon program called KLAS, which is all about collecting government support and grants to provide the school some extra funds, but most of the staff does not care to effectively help your kid (with a very few exceptions). Our kid kept bringing home the homework, because there was no effective help given in the afternoon class (which is meant for helping kids with homework and learning). Kids don't feel comfortable asking for help, and the staff remains completely unaware (or ignorant) of that. They expect the books and the parents to do all the teaching and kids to learn on their own. Why? Because they don't truly care and let kids do nothing but play. All they do is play. Play, play, play and play. Do everything in your power you can to stay away from this shameless low-level institution. It's an embarrassment, even by California elementary educational standards.

I graduated from Pinewood in '09 and am so grateful my parents spent the money to send me here…read more College was an academic breeze compared to my experience here. Most people are familiar with liberal arts universities. Think of Pinewood as a liberal arts prep school. First of all, you will absolutely learn to write here. Writing classes (separate from literature) are required every year, and you master everything from rhetoric to creative writing. Other classes will require you to write a lot; the best class on campus (a History class, of all things), had us writing 3-4 essays a week. Is this the busy work that the poor reviewers are referencing? I certainly hope not, because each essay was graded with focus and it taught me a TON. Yes, it's a lot of work, but you learn how to think critically and crank out solid material in a short amount of time. Those are life skills you don't learn without repetition. The humanities are also given a great deal of focus, and you study the histories of art, music, and theater. You also pick one of these disciplines to pursue during high school. The arts department is exceptional for how small the school is (50 per grade). The academics are very rigorous. I came from a public school, where I was 3rd in my class, but at Pinewood I was probably in the bottom 40% of my class. If I could have chosen my upbringing, I would have started attending Pinewood from Kindergarten, because I felt very behind on everything from math to grammar to foreign language. Everybody who grew up going to the lower campuses were at the pointy end of the stick. Like all small prep schools, there can be some politics among the faculty, and if you get on the wrong teacher's bad side it will stay with you past that year, but overall it's a fantastic atmosphere with solid teachers. Yes, some of them don't spend every free moment pondering how to influence their students for good, but there are many teachers for whom that does seem to be the case. They are devoted and academically nurturing. And EVERYBODY IS SO NICE. It's borderline weird. Although having so few students means a not many options for friends, everybody will be beyond polite to you and you will never eat lunch alone. Oh yeah, and I still go watch the Girls' Basketball team dominate.

Pinewood provides an outstanding education. Their writing program is the best. The teachers are…read moregreat. Students are lucky to be accepted to this fine education establishment.

Fusion Palo Alto is as good as it gets. Helped my son get back on track. Caring teachers and…read moreexceptional admin. Highly recommend!

I feel compelled to write a review given the poor review I see here. Fusion Palo Alto has been a…read morelife saver for our family during COVID. My son was struggling academically with public middle school online classes. He is thriving at Fusion. The teachers are engaging and the admin staff very responsive. I'd also like to note that there is a new head of school since the last reviews.

This school is an absolute gem!! I cannot believe that we were lucky enough to find such a perfect…read moreeducational home for our younger daughter, who fits the "twice exceptional" (or multi-exceptional) profile perfectly. Anne Boswell was exceptional during the admissions process. Victoria Trevor is a fantastic and deeply caring school director and math teacher. We also love Mr. Aakash, Ms Ariel, Ms Katy, and everyone else there!

TLDR: best school I've ever seen. The amount of work they put into the emotional well-being of…read morekids is astonishing. Teacher-student ratio is 4 (students) to 1 (teacher), students cherish every minute of the school. Where do I start? Probably 2 years ago, in a public school, where my sweet, bright, curious, always friendly 7 y o turned into a severely depressed, school-hating, crazy-acting, constantly talking about self-harm sad little person. Every day I would receive emails from school saying that my son would go above and beyond trying to escape from English classes. At home, he would beg me day and night not to take him to school. For home much longer could I stomach that? I took him out, and put him in homeschooling. Diagnosed him for dyslexia (that was pretty obvious), and started working with him myself and with dyslexia tutors. And... that did not help much! He was so confident that there was something fundamentally wrong with him, and these special classes made him believe it even more. I tried to see if he would like a couple of small private schools, he made it very clear that he would not. I was at loss, but, luckily, his therapist recommended Athena, and we signed up for a summer camp. On the first day, I had to drag him there, he came back smiling and with a forgotten peace inside. A few more days of camp - and my happy, curious, confident kid was back again!! 1,5 years later, I still feel like crying as I am writing it. It, of course, took him about a year of Athena enrollment to truly believe that he can be anyone he wants, that dyslexia is actually a superpower (now, when they taught him to read, he can read upside down and mirrored text, that is indeed a dyslexia perk). He's made a lot of friends. Teachers adore him, and he loves them back. He reads everything now. I drive him from South San Jose to Palo Alto and back, 2 hours per day. I pay expensive tuition (more that half of what I make), and I regret nothing. I would like to add that every person that works at Athena is very kind, not just polite and smiling, but deeply caring about the students. There is a lot of 1-o-1 work with each child. Teachers prepare the topics that interest students. Students, that have even deeply traumatized by their learning experience somewhere else, thrive. Thank you so much, Athena founders, teachers, and administration, for making this heavenly school.

My son went to this after-school program from when he was 6 till he finished elementary school. He…read moreattened the after-school program during school year and summer programs as well, since both my wife and myself work full-time. Teachers are always tentative on all kids' needs and work hard to make sure kids are taken care of. Summer programs are both educational and fun, meaning half day of math, reading, and Chinese, and half-a-day of activities or out to the nearby park. I really like this place and would recommend to anyone who is looking for a good after school program for their kids.

Their website graphic misspells "Knowledge" so I am not too sure about their English teaching…read moreskills...