Uncommon Schools reviews

- first year of teaching breaks many teachers, 60 hour work weeks plus work on weekends plus teaching certification at the mediocre RELAY GSE, where most will acknowledge they learned absolutely nothing. - You will watch teachers bully children into submission, daily. Screaming, coercing, shaming, humiliating, whatever it takes to get kids to sit and learn and pass that test. What's worse, you'll do it yourself in order to get results. Kids don't deserve this. Black kids don't deserve to be disciplined in order to "succeed". This isn't success. This isn't closing the gap. This is putting black children and future black kids in line so that we let them participate in middle class society. - test scores are subject to various amounts of cheating. Teachers will walk around and coach kids on their math exams and shame them for putting wrong answers mid-exam, then do presentations on authenticity of data. -it's all about the data. your data takes on an identity of its own. The children become data producers, not individuals to be reasoned with or understood. Empathy is applied in the interest of getting good data. -they will disrespect teachers in front of other teachers, mid-meeting, etcetera. Authoritative structure is not to be questioned - and administration will lie to you about decisions. -overworked teachers are forced to have their lives in class. will sit on cell phones and take selfies with students, but not others, showing explicit favoritism. -dean's office is a closed noise proof door. disciplinary problems are handled at the loudest volume possible, and students are often isolated to get them to conform.

While the mission of Uncommon initially drew me to the organization, the way the schools are going about "closing the achievement gap" is dubious at best. The 1 month "professional development" left me realizing Uncommon's methods truly are rooted in behavior control and little else. The strict behavior systems mirror a military school, and I for one believe it is ultimately disgraceful to treat children of color like liabilities that need to be "controlled" so rigidly (i.e. teaching kids procedures on how to sit, stand, walk, speak etc and. no recess, no talking during mealtime). It was disturbing to watch/be a part of. If you believe children should be given a quality education and be able to express themselves as individuals stay away. The Professional development is all about "standardizing" all of the staff to essentially act, speak, and give the same exact commands. They try to get you on board by giving you free stuff, making you feel like you're saving the world, presenting skewed statistics on success rates, but try to see it for what it is. Additionally, I was struck by the fact that we had an insane blow out party for hundreds of staff where everyone was put up in hotels etc. when the schools themselves still only have one slide projector in the actual classroom. Are you kidding? Invest that money back into the schools and get SMARTboards. As I was deciding whether or not to take this position I read glassdoor and thought the negative reviews were just from some random disgruntled employees who couldn't cut it. I realize now I should have listened. From day 1 I realized things were sketchy considered more than 4/5th of all staff at the Professional Development were new...The extremely high turn-over says everything about the organization. You were warned.