Challenger School – Ardenwood

Our daughter has been in Challenger for 7 years. We’re leaving now because the school seems increasingly focused on revenue and does a rotten job of acting like parents are customers. This only becomes obvious over time.
One area we’ve seen problems in is that they are unable to retain good teachers. There is high turnover in the teachers and your child can, by luck of the draw, end up with a horrible teacher. We’d been lucky for many years but when our daughter hit 4^th grade we had a teacher that was incapable of teaching. She could present lessons, but teaching is far different.
Overall we’ve had good teachers but I expect consistency for the price they charge. Another example is that this year the math teacher goes on tirades about poor scores at times. The kids expect them. One day a week ago she spent 24 minutes of their class time complaining about their poor scores. I know because my daughter tuned her out and did something interesting, like watching how much time she wasted.
I also find the school incredibly petty when it comes to asking to be paid. For seven years we paid in full in one payment before the school year started. This year my daughter signed up for an after school Spanish class — something I would have thought the school would try to encourage. Well, they do encourage it, but as far as I can tell, only for financial reasons.
The cost of the Spanish class was $ 400. It starts 10 minutes after our daughter gets out of her regular classes. Challenger requires an extended care charge for the 10 minutes of $ 20/​day, making the cost of the 15 classes $ 700. The $ 20 charge is the same as for a child that stays in extended care for 2+ hours. I expect more from a school that charges $ 13 000/​year. Whether it’s about flexibility or it’s about a rational, moderate approach, they fail here.
On top of the charge they then have sent a dunning letter telling us our account was past due. The letter has no information in it other than that; it was quite a surprise to a parent that has paid in full every year. This is how I found out we were being charged for the 10 minutes between regular classes and the Spanish class.
Yesterday I received an email from Challenger again informing me our account was past due. No additional information was included. Well, it turns out that they don’t bother to tell us that we owe money before they send out a dunning email threatening a late fee for charges that are not even 30 days old.
We were going to quietly leave the school at the end of this year and chalk things up to experience. It wasn’t all bad, but we’ve discovered enough negatives over the year that we’ve decided to go public in the coming year. Comparing math work and history work, it’s not different. And we can get math teachers that burn up 24 minutes complaining at any school.
An issue we’ve had for a while is that they focus on academics but not creativity or social skills — things that are critical to success in life. But you can’t tout test scores with those so they don’t count at Challenger. This gets increasingly problematic as the grade level increases and the number of students decreases.
My recent experiences with Challenger have driven me to write this review. No, I’m not happy with them. It’s primarily about their petty behavior with regards to the charges and how they handle them. But that caused me to reflect on their overall approach in a different light. It’s about the money. They don’t charge enough to do it really right. But they charge too much to do it the way they do.

We love this school. 2 kids, one in 4^th and one in kindergarten. We were scared about they hype around the school being a boiling room. We haven’t seen that. The extra structure helps to teach kids right, we were in Warm Springs earlier (950 API public school) but still can see the difference, our elder guy really likes to watch history channel now, has a glowing curiosity about science and nature.
Our younger one keeps making up boardwork problems for us grownups to solve.
Who could ask for more? BTW, went to Stratford before selecting Challenger but found them too stand-​offish.

Horrible environment for kids. Too much hype about academics, but by the time the kid comes out of the school, they would not develop much of the fundamental skills that will help them in life. They throw too much stuff at the kids beyond the kids’ capacity, and so the kids memorize stuff because they won’t have time to understand the concepts. The school has ridiculous rules (that furthers the school’s and teachers’ interests) and will not bend them at any cost. You cannot even try to reason with them for the fear that they will take it out on the children, which they do by putting the children on spot in front of the class embarrassing them.

grossest school in existence. try to push their oppressive capitalist régime on students. history teachers are always the worst — twist the truth and don’t listen to reason or logic. this school will psychologically damage your kid. do yourself a favor and don’t spend money on being creatively stifled and oppressed.

I find this school to be one of the best in terms of curriculum, structure, and discipline that a child needs to be a good student. I would rather have my child go to school with a higher standard of learning rather than her falling behind since everything is very competitive out there, both in College and finding a job there after.
Yes, there’s plenty of HW and tests that a student will take, but that’s part of learning. The tuition fee is high, but at least it does not require a parent to volunteer or sell anything for fund raising! Uniform is not the best and most comfortable for my child to wear, but that saves me money to keep buying new clothes or worry what she has to wear to school everyday. I just wish that their after school programs are included in their tuition fee along with after school extended care or lunch. One other negative thing about Challenger is that some PEs are held during peak hours of sunlight! I don’t like that, and not sure if they are encouraging the students to wear sunscreen to protect the children’s delicate skin! My child wears them everyday before going to school!
My child loves the school, and very happy that she’s part of the Challenger School. The teachers are great and they have been very proud to have my child in their classroom! «Knowledge is power, and education is the key to success.»

This is the second summer DD1 has attended. Last year she was at the Cedar campus which was also great (she loved the playground). I can’t say enough about the academics– she learns an amazing amount when she’s at Challenger. But honestly, a big part of why I put her in summer school here is that they get MUSIC in the classroom EVERY DAY. It’s important to me that she gets well-​rounded curricula in a diverse setting and this school does that pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s very pricey.