Goal Academy Reviews

The majority of staff in leadership are not qualified to run a school. Nepotism abounds. Most of the employees working with students do not have an educational background and have poor boundaries with kids, spending their day stalking students' Facebook accounts and using Facebook and text as the primary form of communication. Less than 20% of students pass their classes at GOAL. Students will fail year after year, enroll again in the Fall to increase numbers for "count", shortly thereafter "exited" when they don't check in with staff on a regular basis. Principals and APs focus their time and energy on passer rates and attendance but not so much about learning outcomes. Plagiarism runs rampant with most turning a blind eye. Teachers do not have the flexibility to do their jobs well. Licensed teachers and counselors are treated poorly causing a high level of turnover among the highly qualified staff. The ones who stay typically could not get a job in any other type of educational setting due to lack of credentials.

Big on profit. Will push enrollment before count to get the $$$ then exit them without thinking twice. Kids check in for attendance by just sending a para an emoji text with no school work expectation attached. Students allowed to be disrespectful and rude to teachers and teachers are expected to smile and take it without consequence. Teachers are supposed to design their own curriculum but when they do they get marked down on their reviews. TOSA create the curriculum but it's crap and haphazardly put together. The focus is on making it look pretty with pictures and color instead of content. There is little to no rigor and when there is rigor the students don't respond and then leadership blames the teacher for making the class too difficult when the TOSA put the thing together. Paraprofessionals "academic coaches" are intended to get attendance AND make students work in class but they focus so much on attendance that students actually think if they check in every day that's good enough and don't have to do any work. This makes the teacher's job all the more difficult because they have to convince someone who has been lied to to do the right thing. There is only 1 licensed counselor in most regions and the rest are all counseling assistants. It's impossible to get a straight answer out of the counselor but the assistants will tell you things and then another will tell you something different. The intervention team is waaaaay too small for the population of students served. There needs to be as many intervention personnel as there are pods because when it hits the fan it hits hard and 2 people can't keep up with it all. This means paras and teachers have to play crisis counselors as well. The CCE program is crap. The students are expected to perform at college level but their high school classes are basically middle-school rigor and requirements so when they take a college class it's major culture shock and most wash out and no longer want to go to college. Then they get hit with a huge bill. And that's just the students. When it comes to employees they tell you to only work 9-5 and shut off your phone and computer but that's impossible and get everything done they expect you to do. Then when you do work at home they write you up for having a conversation with a student out of work hours. They don't follow the handbook as far as discipline...one person gets a write up for something another person was put on administrative leave and fired for. Many paraprofessionals are still in school and do their school work instead of doing their job on the work computer during work hours. I've even heard students talking about drugs and guns in the sites and the paraprofessionals and teachers never stopped the conversation...even encouraged it!