Achievement First reviews

During the summer and early fall, without fail, there are a string of positive reviews for AF. This is because they are short staffed, and need to fill vacant positions. Quickly. This is for a few reasons, some folks do some summer soul searching and quit because they realize they can no longer continue to treat kids like convicts, while working themselves to exhaustion (80+ hour weeks are not unheard of. 70 is fairly common - does the salary still sound so good now?). Other folks, new to this charter chain, realize that after a month, that they aren't part of the "cool" clique, and are thus treated kind of crappily by some of the more established staff and management - deliberately left out of after work functions, in school conversations, and greeted with eye rolls or feigned uncomprehension at staff meetings (hint: if you are not an enthusiastic TFA'r, have previous education experience that espouses methods other than Doug Lemov's, you're not going to fit in). And finally some new teachers figure out after a month or two that AF is a bit of a scam. Your hours are much more than promised, the mistreatment of children is systemic, management are often not very good at their jobs, their is a cultish aspect with staff who are happy, dissenting opinions are not heard, those dissenting are subject to retaliation, that AF's model creates children who are not capable of independent thought or are angry because they can't escape this sham. Regarding race, there is so much tension because young white folks that have read a book or two, explain to kids and black staff how they feel, without understanding what the real issues are.

The work in and of itself is hard- but that is true no matter what organization you go with. AF is still learning and still growing, so programmatic evolution (improvements and changes) that affect everyone and require ongoing alignment of vision & teamwork are a part of the work here. Further- and also common of charter networks- a fraction of people who come in do not intend to teach long-term (or do not know if they want to), which can cause a higher turnover rate or a lower-than average number of years of experience than might be seen in a more traditional setting. However, it seems like in the last couple of years teaching/staff at schools is on the whole becoming older and more experienced - potentially as a result of the teacher career pathway?