Don't forget to visit The Waldorf Review for more up-to-date school reviews and news stories.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Waldorf School Reviews - General Info

As we can see, I'm compiling a LOT of negative reviews for Waldorf schools around the world here.  I have a couple of things I'd like to say about these. 

First, you may ask, "where are all the positive reviews?"  Well, the problem with the "positive" reviews is that they tend not to be too honest.  When they are from actual parents, they are indeed worthwhile I suppose.  One never really knows what the relationship of the reviewer is to the school when it comes to positive reviews.  Often, they are placed by teachers and administrators.  Many comments indicate that negative reviews have been flagged and removed.  Having a high "star rating" is important to some schools.  We see LOTS of 5 star reviews that are obviously there to pad the ratings - many are a single line right out of any Waldorf brochure.  "This school educates the whole child" - 5 stars... I say baloney!  The negative reviews make us aware of what's REALLY going on in these schools.  I've included a lot of 3-star reviews, BTW, because they tend to highlight what's wrong with the school along with what's OK. 

Second, I want to say, I'm not done with the review pages yet.  There are many that are sub-titled "Reviews by Parents" yet contain only a single review.  That's a place holder for more negative reviews as they come in (and they will) - and while I'm giving each school its own page, I can include news stories and other interesting stuff about each individual school.  Additionally, the keyword labels need a lot of work.  I want to identify the exact problems in each review and attach only those keywords to them.  So, if we want to search for all the reviews that contain "bullying" we will be able to do that.

Having said this - it's probably time to announce my intention to produce a second blog JUST for Waldorf school reviews, school data, news stories and so forth (not focused on Highland Hall as this one is).  I'll be copying my reviews to the new blog when I set it up.  My intention is to make it a source of critical information about Waldorf schools.  Parents/students will be able to comment on the new blog... and NO, we're not going to have a bunch of bliss-ninny's debating Waldorf here.  I've got way too many places to go around the internet - I don't want to be babysitting a blog. 

So, look for the new blog to show up right around the time I finish posting the list of Waldorf schools on this blog (yes, there will be duplicate lists - so what?). 

OK - on to more reviews!