Achievement First reviews

This has been the worst job of my life. Leadership is 100% incompetent and are only satisfied with their version of perfection. Two quotes from coworkers that accurately sum up my experience at this school are, "If you're not perfect you suck," and "We need to move away from being a school that relies on compliance." Stuff like this causes student investment and teacher investment to be terrible. It is common at this school that if you're not perfect, you will be removed from the classroom and replaced by a leadership team member, instead of being taught the correct way to teach. Also, the curriculum is set up in a way that allows no creativity in how the content is delivered. If you dont follow the pre-written questions, then the entire lesson will be sidetracked. Next, the discipline system is not even close to being age appropriate. Students are expected to sit in perfect posture with their hands folded all day, which is especially problematic when their only time to expend energy is routinely taken away from them. Overall, this school has a long way to go in providing a consistently high quality education for students that need it the most. Also, work-life balance doesnt exist. P.S. all the ridiculousness that I just listed only scratches the surface of what is commonplace at this place. It truly sucks to have worked here and I feel bad that the kids have to deal with this on a daily basis.

- Tries to be democratic, but actually run in a pretty top-down way - People here to love to generate ideas and brainstorm, but following through on execution is protracted, painful, and usually not successful - Disorganized systems - there are tons of network-wide long emails, floating Google Docs and Sheets, etc. - Very formal/rigid meeting and email structures - Pay is not too great (expected for a non-profit though)