The Goddard School

I have worked here for more than two years. I enjoy working with the toddlers. I like Goddard and the teaching tools we use to make lesson planning meaningful and fun for the children. The owners and directors are so courteous and fair and always treat me with respect. I love the little community that we have become over the past year and a half. In all honesty, no one has asked me to post this. I say this because I mean it and I highly recommend to any family and teacher who loves children.

My child attended Goddard for approximately nine months in 2019. While I would caution any parent against choosing this program, I most strongly advise parents of Black children to go elsewhere. As someone with a master's degree in education from the University of Michigan and nearly twenty years of teaching experience in a well-regarded school district, I know what an exceptional early childhood program looks like. This program isn't even average. Goddard’s licensing record, publicly available via the Indiana FSSA website, is alarmingly poor. Their citation record includes THREE failures to appropriately report child abuse or neglect, failure to follow background check requirements, feeding a child breast milk from the wrong mother, and leaving toddlers unsupervised outdoors. Goddard’s current Paths to Quality rating is a level one—the worst possible score for a licensed center—and their licensing status in 2020 was “probationary.” Clearly I am not alone in my assessment. I rarely observed positive interactions between children and teachers when I visited the classroom. The “lesson plans” I received, when I actually received them, were generally nonsensical, developmentally inappropriate, and were so riddled with spelling errors that I assumed the author my son’s “teacher” was functionally illiterate. Seeing children parked in front of a computer watching videos was a common sight at pickup. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw children being read to. Staff turnover at Goddard was so high that I quickly lost track of the teachers’ names. I saw no evidence of any academic learning in the time my son attended Goddard, despite my child's strong math and language skills and high levels of learning at his past and current preschools. When Mrs. Patel the owner was asked to name ONE skill my child had learned at Goddard, she was completely unable to cite a single, provable, example of a learned skill, despite her claims of being in the classroom “all the time” observing. I’ve successfully taught my son to spell simple words, count to 100, and write his name... all before his fourth birthday. Since leaving Goddard, he blossomed at his new school. My son’s abilities are not the problem. In addition to a complete lack of the promised top-quality curriculum, my child was repeatedly labeled a “behavior problem” by school staff, while similar behaviors from the non-Black children in his class were largely ignored or excused by both the teaching staff and the owner. Numerous times I witnessed non-Black children including, on multiple occasions, the owner’s daughter throwing objects or hitting others being left uncorrected by the adults in charge, or these behaviors being reported to the child's parents at pickup, but not being documented by the school in formal incident reports as was consistently done for my child. Despite my repeatedly stated concern that my son was being negatively labeled and targeted for disproportionate discipline due to his size, strength, and race, I supported the staff’s disciplinary efforts. I will not condone physical aggression, from my child or ANY other student. When I dared to raise significant, fully legitimate, concerns about the poor quality of the Goddard School program to its owner, without sugar coating the blatant racism my child experienced at Goddard, after school had closed and away from other parents, I was told I was "frightening" the owner/staff and banned from the Goddard School property, under threat of arrest, in a letter written by the owner's attorney/husband. To be clear, at no point, in ANY conversation EVER, was any threat, physical or otherwise, made to the owner or anyone else on the Goddard staff. There was no profanity used in any discussion, private or otherwise, no written rules in the Goddard parent manual were violated, nor was I even yelling at the time. My critique was delivered in a firm tone at a normal volume. Mrs. Patel simply did not care for my "tone" or "demeaning“ factual remarks about her "school" and its leadership.

I drove by this location when it was being built, and thought many times "that would be perfect for us!" When the school was close to completion, I decided to get more information. The first time I called, I spoke to the owner. She was very informative and helpful, and I was able to get my daughter enrolled quickly. From day one, I have had nothing but good experiences with Goddard. My child continues her strong development, and is flourishing. I consider it a very strong endorsement when she can't wait to go in the morning, and doesn't want to leave in the evening. The few times I am able to pick her up early, she is quite upset and doesn't want to go home. I especially like how the days are structured around fun activities that keep the children involved and excited to learn. My daughter has been learning sign language, Spanish, and geography among other things. I can tell she is genuinely interested and excited to learn. Whenever we have had concerns or issues come up, the owner and director have been great at communicating with us in a timely manner. I cannot express the importance of peace of mind that I experience when I drop her off each day, that says it all!

We are thrilled with this school! Our one year old daughter is consistently in a happy mood when we drop her off and when we pick her up. She has even learned some sign language, which has made understanding what she wants much easier. The teachers are engaged and clearly care about the children. The owner is usually on-site with an open door for questions, which is awesome. We're glad our daughter is somewhere so nice.

We can’t say enough good things about the Goddard School. It’s been a wonderful environment for our children and I feel they are overly prepared for Kindergarten and first grade. Highly highly recommend.