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Tilden Preparatory

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Tilden Preparatory reviews

2.7

35% would recommend to a friend

(64 total reviews)

Shary Nunan, Karen Hobbs

42% approve of CEO

30% positive business outlook

Tilden Preparatory has an employee rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, based on 64 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Tilden Preparatory employee rating is 28% below average for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

64 reviews
1.0
Jan 25, 2022

A Regretful place to work

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Slightly above average pay, but not compared to cost of living.

Cons

Do not work here if you have any value for yourself. There are so many negatives with this job. Management is beyond horrific. Do you need anything? The answer is always no. Not feeling well, or need a day off? You get guilted that you are hurting your students and a bad person. They ride an extremely fine line between legal and illegal labor practices. If you question it, you are on the chopping block. There are barely any benefits, some of which can be taken away at a moment's notice. The teaching material provided is not up to date or simply nonexistent. If you ask for updating, they won't do it, but you still need to cover it. That means you are now left to make it yourself with no pay. There is zero room to grow. Once you hit the pay cap (most come in at the cap), you could work there for one year or 50; you will never see a raise. They have a teacher turnover rate of ~ 50% a year. Either you leave willingly, or they force you because you try and challenge them. I highly recommend avoiding Tilden preparatory at all costs.

avatar
Tilden Preparatory Response
4y
We appreciate teacher reviews, however, we do want reviews to accurately reflect our program and compensation. We have always paid significantly more than comparable programs (you probably noticed–approximately 30% more). This is one of many ways to show how much we value our teachers. Tilden does have a ceiling to its salary range, but it raises the range regularly -- the range was raised in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and Tilden has promised to raise at least two more times in the next three years. In addition, all teachers receive an annual 3% raise up to the ceiling, so it's untrue that anyone has worked or will work at Tilden without having raises occur over a reasonable period of time. Our compensation benefits package is also higher than most comparable programs. It has only increased over the years, nothing has ever been taken away. We offer double the usable sick pay than what is required (including taking mental health days), vacation pay, and a significant contribution to health care for those teachers who give us 30 hours of availability. We are proud that during the pandemic we offered our staff an Employee Assistance Plan that included mental health benefits during a critical time and highly stressful time in education. We have curriculum and resources as required for our UC-approved and WASC accredited courses. Our administrative staff is second to none. We are proud to have an administrative staff who are fully invested in helping teachers be successful with Tilden students, and who are highly skilled and some of the kindest and most caring people in the world. If you ask administrators for anything–supplies, help with a student, etc, they are always eager to fulfill your request. The founders of Tilden both have Ph.D.'s in psychology with a specialty in child psychology. They started the school because they saw a need in the community. Both are still actively involved on a daily basis in preserving the mission of Tilden. We welcome prospective teachers to ask us any questions about day-to-day life at Tilden. We hope you consider a job with us, many teachers have told us that it is the best job they ever had!
1.0
Jan 20, 2022

Overworked and Underpaid

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great co-workers and nice to work 1-1

Cons

As a full time teacher I was teaching 10 different subjects at different paces working 35-40 hours a week on 3 hours of prep time year round and was barely making $45,000. Management style here is very authoritarian. There is a union but management takes little to no input from teachers. Teachers are currently considering going on strike. That gave me a clue as to how dissatisfied they are. The main concerns are: 1. consistently flexing schedule where you are not sure what each paycheck will look like or what classes you will teach 2. no paid federal holidays (although the union was able to negotiate pay for winter and spring break but this only pays out for teachers who have been there long enough because they calculate your winter/spring break pay based on hours worked over 1 year) 3. High micromanagement from administration they send disciplinary action for the smallest things like logging an hour mistakenly 4. Bare minimum curriculum - they'll claim that having a textbook, study guides, and test is enough curriculum for a course and you shouldn't need prep with those materials 5. Low prep time and tons of control over how/when you use it 6. High teacher turnover

avatar
Tilden Preparatory Response
4y
Thank you for your review. If you worked at Tilden for 3 years, your salary would currently be somewhere between $35-37/hr for teaching regular classes and $5/hr more for teaching AP classes. If you provided 40 hours of availability, the average hours you would be paid for is 36.9 hours for every week of the 52 weeks in the year. This past year, the average salary for teachers providing this amount of availability for a year was $65,000. The teacher writing this review was likely providing 35 hours per week and didn't work in the summer. Tilden has no control over how teachers use prep time -- teachers are welcome to use their prep hours in whatever way they want. Tilden does sometimes schedule subbing or other work assignments during hours when a student has cancelled the class, since teachers are always paid in full for all cancellations. Regardless of whether other work is scheduled, some cancellations will likely be for teachers to use as they wish and some will be scheduled with subbing or other work. Tilden administrators have no desire to micromanage. We are all really busy working to meet the needs of students and teachers on campus. We encourage new teachers to talk to their Head of School or our Special Education Director whenever they want -- we love to collaborate with you! It's only in an effort to be consistent with everyone that we send out "friendly reminders" (which are not discipline) and it's only when a persistent pattern occurs of not following policies that progressive discipline occurs.
3.0
Dec 29, 2021

When its Good it is Great

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fantastic place to work if you are between jobs. Uncertain hours are matched by good wage and a great support staff who support you as well as the kids. Some of my best teaching experiences were in these one-to-one sessions with students facing everything from drug addiction recovery to gender reassignment. So long as you do not drop the standard of excellence in class you'll be good.

Cons

Erratic hours, especially in summer.

Viewing 28 - 30 of 64 Reviews

Glassdoor has 64 Tilden Preparatory reviews submitted anonymously by Tilden Preparatory employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Tilden Preparatory is right for you.