school teacher

teacher

english teacher

assistant principal

special education teacher

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools

If you're considering teaching at a charter school, then it is only as a stepping stone. As someone with no prior experience with charter schools, it was a real shocker to begin working in one.

Our "campus," if you can even call it that, was basically a 2-story hallway and, for some reason, the school would always hire one extra teacher who didn't have a classroom, but would need to use 5 different classrooms during the respective teacher's prep period. I was that roving teacher my first year.

The environment is not normal. The school is so small, with only about 600 students, and for each grade level, every kid would end up dating just about every other kid due to how small the school is. No gym, no cafeteria. None of it is normal.

The grading policy forced upon ALL teachers was to split grades into 5 categories: Homework, Classwork, Quizzes, Assessments, and Culminating Tasks, each worth a certain percentage. This, combined with the fact that 50% is a C- and 67% is a B-, made it extremely hard to fail a student who deserved to. And if the student had an IEP, ridiculous amounts of work samples and paperwork was needed to fail that student. So every time you hear someone say that their Alliance school is "top-performing," it's because of grade inflation. And the school had a weird fascination with testing kids using iReady, and forcing kids to do IXL and Achieve3000 practice sets every month to prepare for this iReady.

The quality of the educators here is not in question. They are all top-level, deserving, and talented teachers who choose to stay for one reason or another, and they are who will help you get through the rough days. The admin? Questionable.

For a first-year teacher in Los Angeles, you'd have a hard time finding any other district that would hire you on the spot, much less even give you an interview, and an even harder time finding one that pays as well as Alliance does. But the annual pay raise for Alliance teachers is only $2K a year. Good starting pay, terrible annual raise. It would take you 18 years to start making 6 figures at Alliance vs. other districts where you could get there in about 10 years.

I worked here for 5+ years in multiple roles.

The money, benefits, and time off allocated at this company is great, but you have to part with your personal life and personality in general to gain further compensation and advance. Work days extend beyond eight hours regularly, you have to spend 10-15 hours a week or more working at home, and are expected to communicate regularly outside of work hours, adding onto outside-of-work-hours responsibilities. You are constantly expected to sacrifice more, and are criticized for "not caring" if you do not give more hours in your day to your work. 

Because the pay structure is merit based, if you work hard, you can quickly climb the salary ladder. However, once you cap out, it is difficult to increase your salary without promotions or working 60-80 work weeks. It seems that providing feedback is a significant deterrent for advancement, at least partially attributed to lack of teacher unionization and an actively oppositional voice from the top-down discouraging unionization.

Constructive criticism is interpreted as a personal attack, and you are treated like a heretic if you try to contribute suggestions for improvement that are intended to help students. The students in this network have so much potential. If you look at our graduates' college diploma rate, it is clear we are working at achieving numbers on state assessments that do not translate into long term success for our graduates because we do not uphold high enough expectations for them. 

The mission is good. The students they are serving definitely need their support. There's a house at this company, but the foundation is shaky.

Alliance is a workplace undergoing a facelift. There is a HUGE turnover rate and lots of issues with lack of upward mobility. This has prompted work on diversity, equity and inclusion at the main office. There is a feeling of distrust between employees in various lower levels and leadership. While the shift to DEI is positive and offers those currently working there some hope about culture issue resolution, it does not yet change the fact that many are overworked and that there is an unnecessary amount of "urgency" to the work - to the point where back-breaking work/self-sacrifice is celebrated and encouraged. There is discussion of work-life balance but no real strategies are being implemented to ensure this is happening. And above all - the leadership currently there does not know how to invest in their staff. Upward mobility is stagnant and many find it hard to grow, especially when limited capacity means others pick up the slack when teams are hemorrhaging employees. The mission is what keeps many there - service to our students. But the workload isn't realistic and lack of prioritization makes burnout almost inevitable. The job is good for 2-3 years but after that, it's time to move on.

Upper management works from home and is clueless about education, does not care about employees and is actually in a legal battle with teachers who want to unionize. Spending money to suppress  teachers right to unionize. Meanwhile, teachers are spending their own money on classroom supplies to do the work the alliance company markets to parents, help students who are below grade level catch up and be prepared to enter college. Great business model if you have the stomach for exploiting workers and making false promises to underserved communities. 

Alliance College-Ready is an absolutely great place to work. The management (home office) is absolutely committed to the idea of providing a quality education to low-income, underserved communities. 

Between reporting periods, my typical day at work consists of diving through data and playing with data-visualization programs to discover new ways of presenting findings to a department that is not otherwise tech savy. In addition, I do help staff (at the home office and at school sites) trouble shoot any errors they find in their reporting and perform data analysis upon request, 

Work place culture is phenomenal. There are numerous opportunities to connect, at a social and professional level, with fellow members of your organization.

This is a great place for new teachers to start a career. Alliance is a charter school district that focuses on under-served areas of Los Angeles. There are no unions here so salaries are below average. There are more freedoms for the schools to serve the specific neighborhoods. So this attracts many new teachers. If you are a more traditional public school teacher this may not be the place for you. The hours are longer for less pay, but there are opportunities to do more for the students. Alliance is growing larger by the year. It is beginning to resemble a typical public school district with disparities among the schools.

It was a good laid back place to work at first but overtime became more stressful and micromanagement got worse overtime. Left finally. Did not enjoy working in such an environment. Overall your experience will vary based on the school you work in

The PTO is pretty good and the pay is okay although not worth all the bs someone has to go thru to earn it.

Just beware most Alliance schools have one school tech so you will be responsible for everything tech related mostly.

I truly enjoyed my time working at Alliance. The culture was welcoming, supportive, and centered around students. I had the opportunity to grow professionally, build meaningful relationships with amazing coworkers, and make a positive impact on the school community. Leadership encouraged collaboration, and there was always a strong sense of teamwork. The most challenging part of the job was balancing multiple priorities during busy times, but it also helped me develop strong organizational and problem-solving skills. The most rewarding part was knowing that my work made a difference for students and families. Alliance will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am grateful for the many years I spent there

The pay was decent, but the amount of work placed on us was ridiculous. We had to take home work everyday and work another 4-5 hours. Admin micro-manages incredibly; they make you feel as if you can't breathe when they're around, unfortunately. There are definitely some narcissistic managers here. It's as if they forget you are human or simply don't care. There is absolutelt no support for teachers, even when verbally offered. The students are great; building wonderful rapports with them and teaching them effectively was the best. I wouldn't reccomend working here though. . .

I would not recommend working here until the Alliance embraces their teachers' wishes to form a union. Currently, the amount of illegal, manipulative behavior is sickening and overshadows any good intentions this organization once had for opening up quality schools.

These schools work fine for students, we are statistically on par with the district and other public charters in the area - but they do not respect their educators.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
School teacher 3 salaries reported	$69,235 per year
Teacher 9 salaries reported	$74,039 per year
English teacher 7 salaries reported	$71,229 per year
Assistant principal 4 salaries reported	$126,625 per year
Special education teacher 4 salaries reported	$72,664 per year

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