Brilliant MicroschoolsReviews of brilliantmicroschools-brilliantgrades.com

My experience with BMS was extremely disappointing. My daughter was enrolled in 5th grade. She got nearly straight A's the entire year. We were told by her teacher she was doing amazing and wished she could have 10 students like my her. My daughter stated to us she was not learning anything and felt like she wasn't being challenged. We spoke with the teacher about this multiple times but were reassured the work would get harder. She completed Spanish 1 with an A yet knows no Spanish. She can't tell me a greeting, a month on the calendar or a day of the week. I had to teach her long division myself. She started at a new school for 6th and after taking her placement test we learned she had to repeat the 5th grade. Upon informing BMS of this, their response was to send me her report cards and say we could have pulled out at any point if we were unsatisfied. They blamed being in a different state and a difference of curriculum. They refused to refund any money and had zero accountability. Beware of this school, I cannot recommend them to anyone based off of our experience.

I was going to consider enrolling my son into this school however when I had the initial call I was rushed off the phone and seem like the person only wanted to tell me prices which I thought was extremely expensive. Then I was immediately scheduled for a zoom call and was 5 mins late and he canceled seem too pushy I didn’t have a chance to think if I wanted to move forward with a zoom call. Think first before deciding on this school with your kiddo too pushy for me for the price it’s No for me

This school sucks. My child isn't learning anything. They claim in the interview your kid will be 2 grades above grade level by the time they're done. LOL. This school should be free, or at least half the price for what they offer. The classes need to be much smaller because helping each kid takes so much time out of the day, and there's only 2-3 hours of school as is. My kid has had to change teachers several times because they are so mediocre, and/or don't know how to run a classroom. Lots of time wasted and rushing not learning anything. Not recommended.

This school claimed to be able to work with special needs students, ADHD, dyslexia, executive function disorder, etc. It claimed to have small class sizes. However, my son is a high school student who has experienced a lot of bullying, has ADHD and executive function disorder, among other things. Navigating everything at his age has been incredibly difficult for him. We were clear about his challenges when we were going through the enrollment process and they said they could work with him. However, I have found that they overall expected him to perform like a neurotypical student, with little accommodation or consideration given to his special needs. The first semester was good. My son took well to the transition and enjoyed online homeschool. He started to finally feel safe and was able to learn. The class size was maybe about 15, not 10-12 as promised. The second semester was horrible. Even larger class size. I’d see maybe 18-20 kids on camera. My son had a few issues where his impulsiveness and executive function disorder caused him to make some mistakes when messaging friends outside of class time. After an incident in November, they told us he couldn’t log into his online class until they decided his punishment. He missed 5 days of school while they decided. 5 days. He missed more class while they decided what his punishment for the infraction would be then his punishment would have lasted in other schools. They sent me an email with their decision with a punishment that seemed way to harsh. Weeks of more missed class while he went through their remediation process, for which they were going to charge us more money. It didn’t make sense so we requested a call. The main administrator promised to call us, was 30 minutes late, then only talked to us for 5 minutes, giving very poor answers to our questions before she had to take a “very important call” and hung up. That was the last we heard from anyone at the school. We asked for my son’s transcripts a month ago and still they have not provided them, they say the request is being processed under their standard process and timelines, if that tells you anything about how they operate. Oh and this review has been edited to add that they also contacted me about this review and said that they would sue for defamation and/ or include sensitive information in their reply if I didn’t remove it. It’s now been over 2 months since my son attended classes. I have asked repeatedly for his transcripts so I can get him in the right classes in his new school. They still have not finished them. If your student has no issues, great. Should you actually need assistance, don’t expect to receive it.

I initially loved the teacher and curriculum at Brilliant Micro School, but unfortunately, the lack of parent support and administrative response was a significant disappointment. Despite voicing multiple concerns, particularly about classroom disruptions and inappropriate topics being introduced, no principal or any other administrative figure has reached out to address my experiences to this day. I reached out several times, hoping for solutions, but received little support or response from parent administration. It’s clear they are not committed to providing a constructive learning environment or to addressing parental concerns.

My daughter was doing well in this school, excelling academically but they have a very strict camera policy where they require full face on camera. She has some trauma and being on camera fully was very traumatic and she would just have her eyes - but this was not good enough for them. They kicked her out 1 day before school was due to start! Since they responded I want to add, I have multiple screenshots showing she was on camera from eyes up and most students were not full face either. Also they have never acknowledged the timing of waiting until the beginning of the school year to make this decision. Now they want to offer a private tutor option, unacceptable!

We signed up last week for private school. Told we got the last two 6th grade spots. Yay! We were clear about our needs. Talked to Paul. He told us we'd have an onboarding process that would set us up and eval our kids. Get us ready for the first day, assess where they are, smoothe the worries etc. That was 8/28. By Friday 9/1 I had heard nothing and was messaging the school to make sure we were good for start date of Tuesday 9/5. Nervous to say the least. So on Saturday messages come in asking if we can onboard on Labor Day. Weird, ok. The person we meet, come to find out isn't in country. She doesn't know tech, she's asking us to log into apps, realizes we haven't received them. Again, we're anxious. We explain it feels messy. We paid you, you promised, what's the process again. She didn't know. Said it was up to the individual teacher. We met her for 15 minutes. She didn't talk about that. I guess I was supposed to negotiate that. I asked the onboard person to suspend this process and have an admin call. Wake up today to an email from the co-owner telling me to read the parent handbook and if I don't like it leave. But they aren't going to call us till the 26th, too busy. But maybe Claudia can deal with me. Ummm, ok. So I talk to Claudia who is in the UK, again, no one here stateside. Weird. I thought it was WASC but I didn't take heed that this is international. Ok. Claudia is interruptive. Offended that I am upset with this experience and when I say yes, because I am advocating a) for my finances and children, b) for the promises you sold me she then says, "with love I think it's best we end this here." So, this is the program. Haphazard and janky for private school. No real brick and mortar here stateside. No rhyme or reason and definitely not a conducive experience to setting your anxiety at ease. If you are an advocate for your child this school will can you like a hot cake. They didn't understand technology questions about Microsoft surface, we didn't have all the apps that they wanted to train us on. We were told we'd be set up for the first day with evals and lead in to class. We liked the teacher we met. The onboarding person we met was unable to answer questions. I'm concerned that this is a great sales pitch, but not a great option if you have twice exceptional kids that need extra services. When you advocate with tough questions they allow 15 min zoom calls with power point presentations and redirect you to a handbook. Parents with kids with higher learning needs may need to think longer and harder about whether this is a good fit for them and whether having questions answered from abroad is best practice vs what we know traditionally. The program quickly sent the message if you're going to ask questions and advocate we don't want to be bothered, here's your money back. That says everything you need to know. They are quick to defend and not listen with the intent to hear and again, great sales pitch, crap delivery/follow through. If this is training the leaders of tomorrow they should improve communication, listening and delivery. Good luck special needs families! Edit: thank you for the reply Brilliant Microschool. Parents don't need tone policing when your team shows up ill prepared. As I described and argue here, and you can be crass and say I am arguing, again, as an advocate for my kids it's my job, and secondly, your sales person stipulated that individualized learning plans were going to be appointed on start up, so thus, the confusion for me. To be trained on an app that wasn't available was premature, to then ask to speak with someone who stated she wasn't here in the states is indeed, by virtue of the issue I raise, a non-stateside problem. We can argue the point that there are no direct business hours, that you call a number and someone from wherever around the globe calls back, because yes, while you are based in Brandon, Florida you use a NY number for your outsourced customer service so you're not being transparent and parents CAN know this. You did refund my money, thank you for that, no one would expect less, you didn't deliver and you were quick to cop out when I asked questions, thus the call out on tone policing. If this is the student you want in your program I am glad the universe did us a favor-- if you're unwilling to be questioned about ethics or processes and quick to return money when a parent asks a question that's unfortunate and says a lot about who and what you will serve. You will attack my demeanor, men do that. Is that really a "brilliant" program for 2E kids as billed? My children hit the nail on the head and said during the onboarding call, "Mom, this is un-brilliant if they're not prepared and they are the school and they can't answer the questions." So my review stands, and obvi you don't do direct communication too well. Blessing and releasing.

Brilliant grades is the middle-man between the tutor/teachers and the students. They don't do anything to ensure that the tutor/teacher will be available for classes however they will ensure that they charge the family each and every time to ensure that they get their cut. Obviously not a professional company if they can't even deal with scheduling correctly. If you look up the company listed in their terms of service there isn't anything listed online. Smells of fraud all around. Quick update, Brilliant Grades has acknowledged their mistakes, although I didn't consent to having my personal email address publicly available and they have asked me to take down the negative review acknowledging that they are aware of the situation. Additional update: They pretended that they were going to issue a refund, I assumed they thought I would take down my review first. No refund has been processed, although they attempted to have my review taken down. Latest update 2/11/2025: They responded to the review claiming that's not how they operate. I still have the voicemail where they asked to take down this review. It took them over a year to respond after making false claims and attempting to have the review taken down. Still no refund from them.