(1) Most urgently, many teachers are woefully unprepared and untrained. Lots of us (including myself) went into the job having no background in education at all. Great Hearts does offer a few weeks of in-house training, but it does not suffice. I was lucky to assist a unprepared teacher who was talented and effective, but several of my assistant teacher colleagues had horrible experiences with lead teachers who could not handle their classrooms. The Teaching Assistant job was billed to me as a mentorship/training program, but we received very little continuing training throughout the year and my lead teacher was too inexperienced herself to mentor me well. (2) The curriculum is too narrowly Western. I actually agree that students should be primarily formed in the tradition from which liberal democratic institutions are derived, but schools should join that with a thoughtful study of the rest of the world. Non-Western history and literature is minimized in elementary school (despite being a large part of the Core Knowledge E. D. Hirsch standards they theoretically espouse) and apparently ignored in high school. (3) The faculty lacks racial and religious diversity. (Nearly everyone is Christian and white.) (4) Pay is low, though given my lack of experience and teacher education I do feel fortunate to earn a living this way. (5) Administrative transparency is lacking -- no published budget! -- and teachers seem to have little control over administrative decisions. (6) Their programs for kids with special needs seem terribly understaffed. I'm not sure how that compares with other schools in the state, though.
