Achievement First reviews

- Really hard to balance work and life. The expectation (whether stated or unsaid) is that every teacher gives everything that he or she has to help kids improve. And there are some great things about this - really dedicated people who you can count on. But, you're constantly exhausted and it seems really difficult to balance raising a family, in particular. Even without kids, I have a hard time maintaining hobbies, interests, and even friendships outside of school because of the expectations for the quality of work and teaching we are expected to give. After six years, I just needed a change. - At the high school level, we haven't figured out how to tap into rich and consistent parent engagement. I think a lot of parents feel like outsiders in the building. It doesn't really feel like a community center or "family" in the way that we'd like to think. - We're a much more diverse school and organization than we used to be, but the network as a whole still feels pretty white, Euro-centric, etc. - Not a lot of true "veteran" teachers around. Pretty much everyone is in their 20s or 30s, including principals and deans.

At my school, there was sometimes a lack of work/life balance. Also, the new teacher evaluation system was unveiled and was meant to be a way to have teachers earned being paid 6 figure salaries (which all teachers deserve) but to get the ranking necessary you had to be a perfect/god like teacher and it just seemed unattainable and unrealistic.