Nicole Benavente

Review of Northshore Christian Academy

When it was time to put my daughter in school my h...

When it was time to put my daughter in school my husband ( attended private school) felt very strongly on doing private school. He felt that by putting her there that she would be more educated. As for me (attended public school) I did not care if it was public or private just as long as my child was happy and learning. My daughter ended up attending NCA from K-3rd and over the course of those few years I watched her struggle and get further and further behind. By the middle of 3rd grade I finally had convinced my husband that NCA was not helping our daughters education but infact hindering it. By the time I pulled her out she had lost all confidence in herself and was 2 grade lvls behind in both math and reading. She is now in a public school and almost done with 4th grade. She has had lots of one on one and has gone to tutoring that the school provides. In just one school year she managed to find confidence in herself again and bring her reading and math up to her grade lvl. So happy we made the change! Although NCA was not a right fit for my daughter I can see how it would be a great place for other kids. If your kid needs to be challenged this is a great place!

What we liked
First off the school is extremely welcoming and all the teachers are really nice and helpful and constantly keep parents involved and informed which I loved. They also did tons of extra fun activities like charity work, party's, concerts, field trips just to name a few. It seemed like every week there was some big activity they would be doing. we really do miss the wonderful teachers and all the fun activities that we Did at NCA.

what we didn't like
Homework is an all day every day thing. We would get home from school at about 5pm and we would do HW till 9pm and some times later. we also did lots of hw on weekends. i know 2 other families that attended the school and they had to do the same thing because the amount of work given is a lot. There was never enough time to really focus on areas that my daughter needed help on because there was to much HW. They also give the kids to many extracurricular activities that are required for HW. Such as projects, Spanish, biblical to name a few. They also expect kids to do more then just grade lvl work. For an example in 2nd grade My daughter had to study for a test on the definitions of atoms, neutrons, electrons, protons ect... Not an easy concept for a 2nd grader to grasp. I'm pretty sure that all the extracurricular activities that were required is why my daughter fell so far behind. I even had one of the teachers tell me she had never worked for a school that had such a demanding curriculum. In my opinion sometimes less is more. The last thing I did not like is when my daughter was in kidnigarten they basically told us that if we did not put my daughter in tutoring classes she would not be able to attend the following year. Hint: this is why they have high testing scores. It's a business so why would they keep kids that are going to drop testing scores. Anyway we paid for tutoring and it didn't help, but we did what they asked so they let us stay.

In short if your kid needs to be challanged or does well in school with little effort this might be the perfect place for your child. If your kid struggles in school or has to study really hard to get good grades I suggest going somewhere else.

One last thing if your kid does go to this school dont let them be in Mrs. Meaders class. My daughter is really quit and well behaved so she never did anything to her, but my daughter would come home crying and would tell me horrible stores about what this lady did to other kids. She talked about her throwing things in the class and trying to humiliate kids in front of the rest of the class.