It's hard to know where to start here so I'll organize my thoughts into branches.
Professional Development & Culture: If you are a teacher (have trained to be a teacher), have taught anywhere public or otherwise, this is not the place for you. You will question everything they are doing (and they don't like to be questioned). There is little to no autonomy in your classroom. The professional development is not development at all if you trained to be a teacher. It is simply going through the curriculum and taking off school days to do it. If everyone was certified and trained, that wouldn't be necessary. For the trained and experienced it's a waste of time and boring to sit through. The amount of PDs is crazy. Every Friday from 1-4pm nd now from July 28 until Aug. 24. from 8am-4pm That's too much. And its not even helpful.
Student academics: They use a phonics program from the 1980s from when they thought it was best for students to learn by rote memorization. The phonics program is not progressive. They use bits and pieces of all these different curriculums and systems but never the whole thing so it isn't as effective as it should be (i.e. choral responses as in Whole body training but they don't use the whole system, they don't even use the whole phonics system). Some schools don't have spelling or grammar embedded in their curriculum. Teachers aren't given curriculum maps it's like a secret. Teachers who aren't qualified to teach are teaching subjects they don't know anything about. A lot of the curiculum skips around and doesn't build on top of each other foundationally. I just closed my door and taught what I needed to taught my way. No one was coming in to observe me anyways after my first few observations i got feedback from the administration (which is lacking in experience and certification) that was actually wrong. WRONG feedback for an academic lesson from a leader in my school on three different occassions.
Moral and Ethical Issues: The administration encourages cheating on reading tests. It isn't stated so boldly as that, but they do not follow protocols on how to administer, correctly, reading tests to students. They simply want to reach their school goals so they can look better in the network and then earn more money. (schools that get in the top 5% and 10% earn bonuses). As a charter school there is not a union to protect you. If you work here, please find a private union to join. I did the second month I started working when I realized just how insane their practices are. Please read more In special services.
Special Services: In most schools there is no true ELL program. They say there is, but there isn't. They do nothing different for these students than they do for any other student. They do not have a system for positive behavioral management. (PBIS) and no true intervention system for tier II and tier III students. They simply group them with a small group teacher during their time. That is not intervention. IEPs are not written correctly; goals are not benchmarked with objectives. The coordinators usually lack experience and knowledge to understand how to help students. Most students in my school had speech and language disorders and I can tell you right now that some of those students should not have been labeled as such. The CEO (Doug) believes that if you just push them hard enough you can "graduate from special services." I believe this is a horrible and disgusting attitude to take and am deeply, DEEPLY offended by this belief especially coming from a founder of a network of schools.
There is much more I could say, but I leave it at this to say that you have been warned. These schools are a volatile environment for (real) teachers.
