Achievement First reviews

I’m sorry to see this was your experience. As a former school leader, I always cared about my team “walking the walk” during our PD and living the expectations we held for our kids -- but I totally agree it’s a fine line. Certainly the point or intention is not to talk down to the team. Even more troubling was your feeling that a lack of trust was directed particularly to the teachers of color. The bottom line is that we need MORE teachers who share the racial and/or socio-economic background of our scholars and it’s even more important to us that they have a fundamentally empowering and positive experience in our schools. When we survey our employees across the organization, one of the things that we look for is whether there is a gap between our black, latino and multi-racial team members and those who do not identify as BLM and I’m proud to say that our focus on D & I and a lot of strong work by many school teams has allowed to us close that gap over the last three years. Today, on average, there is no gap in how our teachers report feeling along those lines of races. But there are some schools where gaps persist -- and gaps at the leadership level, including along lines of gender. More must be done. And if you’re open to discussing your experience, I would love to find out more to continue figuring out how we can improve (tomkaiser@achievementfirst.org). -Tom Kaiser, Chief Talent Officer