The issues with AF start at the top and go right down through the schools. One immediate indication of how poorly things are going is the fact that they have failed to hire a CEO in the past two years. If you are looking at working at AF, take that fact seriously and start doing your own research.
AF states that its leading value is "leading for racial equity" but they seem to be very unclear about what that actually means and to operationalize that value. IE: if I was designing schools to be responsive to the inequity that exists in education, I wouldn't create more schools for black and brown students that have overcrowded classrooms. But...here we are. Research actually shows that small class sizes do make a difference in neighborhoods such as those where AF operates. Obviously, they get money the more students they "serve" and so those classrooms are just going to stay crowded.
Adding on to that, a number of AF schools employ the "greenfield model" which, among other things, is supposed to make schools extremely relationship-based , with discipline being restorative and not punitive. (Excellent, right? Indeed, it was one of the reasons I chose to work at AF). However, when you teach over 100 kids a day, often as the sole teacher in the room, this is unrealistic. Self contained classrooms would likely serve this end much, much better. At my school, there were a few teachers who were able to do this, but if you are a leader at an organization and you can't mobilize the majority of your staff to execute effectively on some particular tenet of your school model, well, then it's not really a solution at all.
The curriculum often lacks cohesion, and as a teacher I sometimes felt like I was being asked to indoctrinate my students with the perspective of curriculum writers at the central office. While I often agreed with the perspective given through the curriculum, I believe strongly that it is NOT my job to tell kids what to think, but instead to help them evaluate ideas. I have no idea who approved curriculum and lessons and feedback was never taken seriously by curriculum writers. It seemed people at the central office often had hurt feelings when receiving feedback. I would regularly go through their assessments and find serious issues with at least 4 questions that just weren't well-written or were unclear about what they were asking students to do. Bring it up to network though and all you'd get was defensiveness. So I stopped.
I noticed a comment on this page where a principal said that this wasn't a job for people who wouldn't do "whatever it takes." This sort of mindset is a problem though, because "whatever it takes" implies self-sacrifice and a school-before-self mindset regardless of whatever else a person may have going on. You should work late even if you have your own kids at home? And if you don't work late because that is the situation, is something wrong with you? Do you not care about children? (Obviously, late hours aren't compensated here.) Linking this back to the idea of leading for racial equity, schools in high need areas would benefit greatly from having highly experienced teachers in their classrooms. But if the expectation is work-before-ALL-else, people are going to leave pretty quickly and you will continue to have inexperienced teachers in front of your classrooms with 35 kids. (Again, have you really created any sort of solution here?) Also, hardly anyone at these schools are parents, which again speaks to the work-life balance here. MOST people do end up having kids at some point, so if you don't have a work environment that either compensates for the many hours spent working, or has a more reasonable number of hours spent working then people are going to leave and you will lack experienced educators and leaders. AF does not compensate that well for hours spent working and when school is in session the hours are very long. This is working against their equity efforts.
I'd also say that they have not mastered discipline in the AF school I worked at. In an effort to be restorative, there was no system in place to help students learn natural consequences in a firm but loving way. IE: Students not doing work never meant they'd need to complete it over lunch or recess, in fact, this was prohibited. The school desperately needed to create base-level expectations for their students and implement them in a kind way, but one that also utilized natural consequences such as those that exist in the world. A disservice was being done for our students, and it was evident in the way our restorative approach was mocked. Kids knew there were no real consequences in the building. They were right about it.
