This was really dumb. Some parent went and complained on the GREATSCHOOLS website about our school. It was obviously one person because they posted 4 times on the same date and had pretty much the same complaints. I could even tell which class it came from. I think they did it so the whole first page of the site on our school would be negative. If you move onto the next page, the rest of the reviews for two pages are good, and the last page has 2 good and 2 bad reviews from a few years ago. I hate sites like that because people can say whatever they want to say. And mostly people only go on them when they are mad about something. We are a private school and people often look at things like that about private schools. It just irks me, because I know we are a great school. She didn't know what she was talking about.
Don't you wish there was some screening process they had to go through before allowing the postings to go through. I'm sorry that your school is having to deal with such negative publicity.
Surely most people realize that if a complaint was true and valid, a post on a website isn't the place to find a solution or make change. Okay, well, that's what I tell myself before I look at those sites (which I don't unless I stumble on them somehow).
Isn't there a way you can let the web site folks know that your school would like to protest the posts? Some sites offer that function, and others pull mulitple complaints when they find all have come from the same IP addy.
People are becoming savvy internet consumers, and I think a lot of people realize that people troll websites like that with bad reviews. I'm sure parents will be suspicious when they see four reviews, all in a row, with the same complaints just like you're suspicious. If you want, you could always post a positive review to balance it out. I'm pretty sure teachers and staff can review the school, too.
I just went and checked out my school. We had a majority of excellent reviews along with some questionable ones. I found that the ones that were the harshest, couldn't spell worth a hoot!
Yes, teachers can post reviews on greatschools. That might be a good way to at least bump down the negative reviews. I think that people will probably recognize that it's just one person trying to make trouble. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
MissFroggy, I think it's unfortunate that those parents have such a poor attitude towards your school. Sometimes I think parents like that have too much time on their hands. I mean, 4 comments in the same day? If they think the school is so awful, then they need to have the guts to come to administration in person. I would just ignore those kinds of comments. If parents are seriously considering sending their little ones to a private school, I would hope that they would actually visit the school to see first hand what it's like, rather than trust internet reviews. I stumbled upon some reviews of a neighboring school. This one reviewer actually bashed specific teachers...and used real names. I was shocked to see those kind of comments allowed. The review was so off base because I knew many of the teachers and they were all great.
It really is sad that some people have so much free time and bad will that they would want to do this. I think that you should go on and just put a good review...like positive said - bump down the negative!
You should see what students write on Rate My Teachers. I don't think many people take those things seriously, though.
It is frustrating! I just read a negative comment about my school a few days ago. Even by reading the comment you could tell that the parent was wrong. I think most comments have to be taken with a grain of salt. There are going to be parents who get mad, complain and don't get their way-because their way is wrong. So they turn to sites like that so they can anonymously bash a school. There isn't much we can do, and I don't really concern myself with it.
I emailed our development person to see if she could get a couple parents to say something good so that they can at least push the bad reviews to the end of the board. Ick.
I think people go out of their way to complain way more often than they do to praise, so naturally these corny "review" websites are going to bash everyone in sight. I noticed my old school had some negative reviews, and I just ignore them because a.) they usually are full of spelling and grammar mistakes and b.) if an issue was that important to people, they'd get of their butts and do something about it rather than just complaining on the internet. Slamming individuals by name is another matter, though. I feel that's crossing the line. ratemyprofessor and ratemyteacher are hilarious. A lot of my favorite professors in college had low scores. I just searched for my name on ratemyteacher and didn't find myself, but I found another teacher with my last name who had a comment that said "she wears pockets with buttons." Still trying to figure that one out.
My school has gotten a few negative comments on that site before. I figure that out of 1200+ kids we have, the few that post negative comments are usually the ones whose kids are problems at the school and the parents are sick of receiving calls from the teachers or administration.
It's terrible, and just downright unfair!!! Can the computer guru on your campus make it disappear?? I did have a parent write my superintendent one time complaining about me. She called me the "Devil incarnate" and didn't even spell incarnate correctly. Writing the letter really hurt me deeply. It took me a while to figure out who the lady was. This woman's horrible daughter neglected to tell her mom that she got into trouble because I lifted her backpack and asked her to empty the 30 lb. thing. She had filled it w/books from my library and was stealing them!!!! I didn't send the girl to the office and in retrospect I wish I'd had her suspended. I made her sit on the ledge for a week at recess. After I figured out who it was I called the parent and asked her if she had a problem w/me that we should discuss it before she sent hate letters to my superintendent. She denied everything. What made it even worse, the superintendent sent the letter down to my principal to discuss it w/me. I ended up writing the superintendent telling him what had transpired w/the book thieving and he said he knew it was a stupid letter but felt that I should know about it, it wasn't a reprimand from him.
yeah, heaven forbid we allow somebody freedom of speech, there should be some sort of law forbiding that.....
I didn't even know about the website until I read that post. I agree it's unfair that anyone can just write anything they want-I don't know of any teacher who has had no disgruntled parents in their career. I also thought it was unjust that they come up with a rating based solely on test scores. There's so much more to a school than those scores and it's only really taking into account 3-5 grades to make their judgement. I did think it was funny though, my school had 3 postings from parents and 2 out of the 3 were critical of our principal. I'm wondering if an employee posted those, because the complaints were things a parent wouldn't really concern themselves with. If it was run better I would think it could be a valuable tool for parents moving to the area to compare schools, unfortunately it's completely subjective-it's like reading people's movie reviews or the book reviews on Amazon - you don't know who these people are or what they are using as criteria.
I just looked at Great Schools and Rate My Teacher. Great Schools looked pretty accurate for the schools I looked up. There were a few posts by parents who obviously wanted to defend the attitudes of their children or blame someone else for their own laziness - but most of the posters voiced ligitimate complaints. Rate My Teacher - I decided that rating a teacher on "easiness" was a dead give away. It's not my intention to be easy - but thorough and demanding. I didn't find my name but it's early yet. I guess my point is that there are surely enough challenges facing us to make a couple of web sites look as insignificant as they really are. Sweat the things that matter.
