Achievement First reviews

The lack of experience with leadership is appalling. I had 5 years more experience in the classroom than my principal did. The weak leadership leads to unhappy and micromanaged teachers. They expect you to handle every type of behavior without support. The network accepts students with needs that they do not and can not accommodate and then expects the teachers to just handle it. Leadership is totally focused on the wrong thing with the development of teachers. Lesson planning over classroom management and teaching skills is backwards. Teachers can't teach the lessons because they don't know how to manage the classroom. The leadership doesn't value student/teacher relationships and doesn't allow anytime to build them. Leaving this job was the best thing I ever did for myself. I don't recommend any that any educator works for them, it almost destroyed my passion and love for teaching.

inequitable pay scales and HORRIBLE benefits upper management is invisible to school based staff and incredibly out of touch. Their policies very negatively impact the experiences of teachers and leaders in the building DSOs function as HR and are often not qualified to do so. Not an environment conducive to caregivers. Hours make it almost impossible to take care of your family. Lack of transparency results in the development of false and damaging narratives Women of color are paid less and have higher expectations Experiences vary depending on the relationships you may have with people in decision making roles School based leadership gets a bad rap but staff rarely see the chaos they are dealing with behind the scenes Policies/expectations for teachers do not honor teachers as experts and fail to prevent burnout, and school leaders are forced to implement these policies even if they vehemently disagree. AF continues to add ridiculously overpaid positions at the Network level and no one at the school level has any idea what they do. We say we have to make tough financial decisions but those decisions only seem to affect those of us in the building.