Rainard School

11059 Timberline Road

Houston, TX 77043

61 Reviews

School District
Grade

PK-8
Type

private

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Reviews

Submitted by parent on January 28, 2022

A welcoming school with a talented and kind staff. They’re involved with the children and help them grow as individuals. Our child is thriving for the first time (5th grade) and actually finally loves school. He is happy and learning so much. They go on field trips and make learning interesting! I wish we could stay here after 8th grade.
Submitted by parent on May 08, 2019

Excellent. I have two kids in school and we have experienced every classroom and worked with every teacher from pK to MS. The teachers are excellent. The monthly fieldtrips are great and cover anything from museums, hands-on crafts, natural sanctuaries to reenactments. My kids absolutely love the school and are learning a lot every day. Our annual IOWA test results are always several grade levels above the age level. I would highly recommend this school for gifted kids.
Submitted by parent on September 10, 2018

When I wake up my child in the morning to go to school, he shouts “yay!”. The preschoolers there aren’t just learning the days of the week, they are learning about the days of the week, including etymology and origin. My son told me that Thursday was originally called “Thor’s Day” after the Norse god, Thor. Then they made their own little hammers out of clay. The kids have plenty of time to play outside, explore, learn, and create. The small class sizes means they also get a lot of attention. We love Rainard and we love that our son not only loves school, but loves to learn.
Submitted by parent on June 20, 2018

There needs to be a zero rating. My kid attended here for a while and we’re disappointed with academics. We decided to give it another year just to see if things would improve. They didn’t no matter how many meetings we asked for, phone calls we made or emails we wrote. Administration totally ignored our concerns and brushed under the rug. The students there are out of control but that’s because there is hardly any supervision. Teachers are stressed out and take it out on the kids in the class. Maybe this is why everyone’s leaving. The good reviews are made by parents who have left the school. Please don't be fooled. Save your money and send them to SBISD where at least they’ll stay at grade level.
Submitted by parent on October 13, 2017

Our two kids went to Rainard for a couple of years. We changed schools this year. We are very happy we did so. Our kids did not learn much at this school. There was quite a bit of bullying, favoritism and very little individual education as promised. Classrooms were disorganized and out of control. My kids were happy because they did not have to do much.
Submitted by parent on August 20, 2017

Our children love Rainard, and so do we! While the school is small, they provide everything our gifted children need.
Submitted by other on June 04, 2017

My daughter just graduated from Rainard and will be attending NYU in the fall. Her experience at Rainard no doubt helped her to not only graduate a year early but to get accepted into a great university. The faculty at Rainard is top notch. They challenge their students and clearly enjoy teaching. The small community at Rainard is supportive and enables you to be involved with your child's eduacation. I'm thrilled about my daughter's experience at Rainard and look forward to watching my son enjoy his middle and high school years here. He's loved his classes at Rainard, including the great field trips that enrich their studies. I was nervous about my children switching from public schools to a smaller school, but it was a great decision. Rainard is truly supportive of the gifted child.
Submitted by principal on May 03, 2017

Thank you for considering Rainard! Last year, we celebrated 30 years of gifted education. Our core mission endures—to provide an exceptional education for the needs and abilities of gifted students. Since the Fall of 1986 and every day since we have strived to provide challenging and creative education to gifted minds and to inspire joy in learning. Over the last four years, we have worked hard to build a continuous improvement culture to refining curriculum, tailoring our offerings to students, and incorporating best practices from ongoing research of gifted education. This effort includes listening to the candid feedback in online reviews—positive and negative—as it allows us to build upon our strengths and to address areas of weakness. Our school is truly unique, as are our students. Visit us and see for yourself. – Tara Tomicic, Ph.D., Head of School since 2014, Board Member since 2012.
Submitted by parent on March 09, 2017

A board member asked me to write this review and I was happy to do it! My child started to shut down at his old school but has really found a place here! I think the teachers are great and while most don’t have traditional teaching backgrounds they really care about the kids. I agree with some of the negative reviews below about poor communication. But the teachers are always available to talk, and I can check up on my kid at pick up and drop off. Rainard also has a lot of fun field trips and class projects.I would give Rainard 5 stars, but there’s always room for improvement. I kind of wish that the school could recruit more kids. I like the small class sizes but it means fewer friends for my son and families to participate in volunteering and fundraising. With the requests for money all year long it seems like the school is struggling.
Submitted by parent on February 08, 2017

At first, Rainard seemed like a good fit for our children, but we have become progressively displeased at the experience and the lack of learning at the school and will be leaving next year. We have come to realize that Rainard not only does not understand gifted education but education at all. Teachers are creating their own curriculum (at best) or making it up on the fly (at worst) which has resulted in our children now testing below grade level! The administration is largely absent (including physically) and communication is intermittent at best. We have also noticed a steady decrease in students over the years including those of parents most closely involved in the school and now realize why. There are also persistent problems with discipline--the same children with the same issues and nothing ever gets resolved.
Submitted by parent on January 15, 2017

Early on, we were very pleased with Rainard. However, we are currently so displeased with the school that we will be removing our child before the end of the year. Despite the school being called a gifted school, there is no curriculum in place. Teachers create everything themselves so there is no rhyme or reason to the flow of the lessons. Second, there is very little instruction. Not all of their learning should be done at home or with tutors! This year just seems to be random project after random project with lots of busy work. To improve they need curriculum plans that align to some kind of national standard. The school also struggles with discipline. Since Gifted kids also have other traits (like ADHD) they need structure or else it becomes chaos, which distracts from the teacher being able to teach. An example of this are the many poorly-planned field trips that change with barely any notice. Also, communication is terrible because some teachers completely ignore emails. It’s also hard to meet with the school leadership because they are NEVER there l when it starts in the morning. To sum it up we are regretting moving our child to Rainard as we feel they are not learning anything beyond what they learned before they got here.
Submitted by parent on January 14, 2017

Rainard is the first school where my daughter has "fit in" and where she is excited to learn again. The teachers are engaged and know each student on a personal level, and they show an enormous amount of enthusiasm in their teaching. I love hearing my daughter's daily report of what she's done in school that day and all the things teachers have introduced that she never would have heard of if not for Rainard (i.e. she learned binary and hexadecimal in geometry class this week along with the geometry lesson, they did a computational linguistics exercise last week, etc). Her science teacher truly individualizes the assignments according to each student's level of comprehension, and the high school English teacher is amazing working with the kids. So while no school is perfect for every child, Rainard is a wonderful school for my daughter. Rainard has returned my child's enthusiasm for learning.
Submitted by parent on October 19, 2015

This has been an excellent school for my family. Unfortunately, it appears as though the school is being flamed in this comment area. If you are interested in the school I suggest you talk with folks about it. I am really happy with the school.
Submitted by parent on October 10, 2015

As a parent of a former student I feel I have to share my experience at Rainard hoping parents considering this school will be aware of some serious flaws of which I was unaware until after enrolling. First and foremost is a near complete lack of communication between my child's teachers and we parents. In order to have an accurate knowledge of what your child is working on and how he or she is doing it's necessary to have 1) past class assignments graded and sent home 2) present classwork assignments and/or homework and 3) a lesson plan of what will be studied in the future. At Rainard we got 0/3 of these. No lesson plan just loose "we may study this or we may not", no emails about what's being studied currently and only after repeated requests did we get any graded work sent home and then discovered it was incomplete. We finally got it all though...in June. Some information was provided on a website but this was full of vague descriptions, few dates and inconsistent grading scales.This lack of communication goes beyond the classroom however, things like field trips or class events will pop up out of nowhere or morph from day trips to overnight trips with just a few days notice. Very difficult if both parents work.But one might put up with all of this if the education was worth it. My child entered Rainard ahead of grade level math and left Rainard behind in math, so no it was not worth it. Children need consistency and predictability in order to focus on schoolwork and parents need communication. All the chaos at this school is a serious distraction for students and parents alike, I would recommend looking elsewhere.
Submitted by parent on June 11, 2015

The School Official Point of View should be your first red flag when looking at Rainard. We read the reviews before we attended and were told that the reviews were from students who were not asked to come back. So, we fell for the company line and believed the other reviews to be false. We found out the hard way that where there is smoke, there is fire. The good reviews are here because they continually remind parents at meetings to go to Great Schools and post good reviews.I would urge you to speak to parents who are NON BOARD MEMBERS before enrolling. See how different their experience is. Take the negative reviews seriously, because we ignored them then now can completely relate to some of their points.The reality is that we wanted to believe the negative reviews were false because we wanted our child in a place that was perfect for him. Take the emotion out of the decision out and look at what the school actually is, not what you want it to be.$15,000+ later we know we should have taken the negative reviews seriously.
Submitted by parent on May 27, 2015

My kids love going to Rainard. They love school and mostly is because the experience they have had here has been amazing.
Submitted by parent on May 23, 2015

Rainard has been an amazing experience for our daughter and us over the past two years. We had a high-ability, high-achieving child on our hands and the right school selection was crucial. We wanted a school which will nurture her intellectual ability and not prune it down within the confines of an artificial age limited curriculum. Rainard has given us that. We wanted a school which will meet her academic needs while grouping her with her age peers. She found that peer group at Rainard. We wanted a school with a small class size with individualized teacher attention. Rainard's class size of 12 provides that luxury. We wanted a school where the teachers were trained and experienced in gifted education and could academically, emotionally and socially nurture gifted kids. We found that group of enthusiastic, capable and caring teachers at Rainard. We wanted a school which encouraged independent thinking and an inquisitive mind. Rainard's encouragement for analytic thinking and supplementation with project based learning and educational and fun field trips provides that. Parents have opportunity for daily interaction with teachers both at drop off and pick up. Core subject education is very well complemented by foreign language ( French or Spanish), music, art and physical education. Many after school enrichment classes are offered. The PTA is very active and involved. The school administration has been responsive and made many positive changes. This academic year has been even better than last year.Rainard does not have the lavish building facilities of a well funded public school or a well endowed private school. But the school has retained a natural environment with many mature trees and plants and its a pleasure to see the children laughing and freely playing under a canopy of lush green trees. Due to its small total student body, Rainard cannot provide the experience for team sports. But many students are involved in active individual and team sports outside the environment of the school. Our daughter has made excellent academic progress with an advanced curriculum and grown emotionally and socially at the same time with similar age peers. It's gratifying to see the smile on her face when she says she loves everything about her school. We highly recommend Rainard as an excellent school for gifted education and believe it's an oasis for gifted kids.
Submitted by parent on March 18, 2015

After much research, we looked into Rainard for our child, and we couldn't be more pleased. Coming from another private school where my child was stagnating academically, being here has been like a breath of fresh air. My child is learning without being limited by traditional grade level and age boundaries - and around a gifted peer group as well. The small size and low ratio of pupils to instructors ensure students receive a lot of attention. I have to "dock" a star because the facilities could use updating and because there has been some turnover during our years here. The school is a non-profit that doesn't have many resources, but truthfully, the spartan portable buildings are not ideal. They do a good job of sprucing them up, though, and making them cheery and attractive on the inside. Regarding turnover, the school is transparent about changes. I can attest that most core teachers have been with Rainard for years, but there have been some changes with some teachers and also clerical and administration changes too. I don't like that, but the school has quickly found competent replacements. I hope we've seen the last of changes, but thus far things have been good.
Submitted by parent on March 09, 2015

Many of the negative reviews here have nothing to do with "not being invited back." Most of the negative parent reviews are made by parents who were *begged* to return and chose not to because of the horrific conditions for the students. There was no begging the Board could offer to make us change our mind and return. Interestingly, our children were behind in several core subjects when they returned to a "regular" classroom. That speaks for itself. The teaching just isn't happening at Rainard.
Submitted by parent on March 08, 2015

The school turnover rate speaks for itself. Ask how many teachers return each year (for the history of the school), how many leave each year (get specifics for each year), how many students return each year, how many leave each year (I would guess it's about 50%),etc. then you can make an informed decision.