Teachers College Community School

After a rocky start, this school is moving up! great teachers.

TCCS is improving every year and keep moving forward.We are happy family to be in this great community.

There is a lot of hyperbole among the community and parents at TCCS. Because the school is allied with Teachers College, and consequently being touted as a superior public school, everyone involved seems to think it's fantastic. In my strong opinion, the truth is far from that. First and most importantly, the teachers - My kindergartner had a few good teachers, one great teacher, and a couple of mediocre ones. Unfortunately the mediocre ones were the ones whom which he spent the most time with. I'm basing this on my direct observation of classes, as well as my son's track record. He went to a spectacularly great pre-school, has always been a stellar and hyper-focussed student in classes and private instruction, and has always loved and continues to love every educational experience he's presented with; EXCEPT for his main classes at TCCS. He liked his after-school classes presented by Teachers College graduate students, but he was bored and un-challenged with the DOE curriculum and teachers. On more than one occasion I was told by those teachers that he needed to be "slowed down". WHAT?!?!?!?!? To be fair, I have spoken to parents of students that had different TCCS teachers and it sounded like a completely different story. Maybe we just drew a not-so-good card. Next, the administrative/organizational part of TCCS - the school secretary Ms H. is really great, going above and beyond the call of duty to keep the train from skidding off the rails. Almost everything else is a mess, from the after-school finances and implementation, to the field-trip notifications, to the school-lunch money collection. Sending home daily printed notifications of school events is archaic in the era of email, texting, websites, etc etc. In conclusion, TCCS could possibly be a good choice if you get lucky enough to get some of the better teachers, but are you willing to gamble on your child's education? If your child is precocious, driven, advanced, an independent thinker, or any of the other things you WANT them to be, it's a long-shot that TCCS will challenge them, in my opinion. it's probably better than the average DOE school, but most-likely not nearly as good as the vast majority if independent schools in the city. As they are a relatively new school, I hope they can raise the bar. We can't take the chance, so we'll be moving on for next year.