Bret Harte Middle School

Terrible administration. Principal and VP do not help to solve problems and are there to only hear 1 side of the story.

I saw many kids who went through this school and they are so working hard and highly motivated. Most of parents are so involved in their kids academic progress and very supportive to their kids ‘ needs. This school is such a precious asset to our community and I am so proud of this school.

If I had known how bad this school is, I would’ve started my child in private school.

Almaden Valley is so beautiful, it's a shame this school has issues. PROS: * Generally teachers are quite good and nice. * Homework load is not too high, quite reasonable. * Parents and students overall are very friendly. CONS:* Math teachers here are an experiment gone bad. Many kids do after school math and are a couple of years ahead, which means that the math teachers can behave very poorly and their kids still get high test scores. What we've noticed about math teachers (Pre-Algebra and Algebra):** Don't lift a finger to help a struggling or new student. Don't give any reminders, don't take a minute to make sure something is understood, not once, not ever. Just watch the kid drown. Kid deserves it I guess. ** Heap all sorts of complexity onto otherwise straightforward math concepts. Kids have to follow overly complicated homework and classwork tracking schemes. Assignments are NOT submitted online making missing work a "he-said-she-said" unnecessary nightmare. Kids have to learn "teacher math" and show their work and answers in very specific, non-math-related ways dictated very strictly by the teacher. They're ruining what should otherwise be a very beautiful and abstract subject matter.