SAGA Education reviews

- Limited upward mobility - There are constant layoffs and reduction in workforce -Incomplete data systems to the point programs staff have to do a lot of backup administrative tasks -No performance based financial incentives -Extremely glitched virtual platform that causes disruptions to student learning on a weekly basis

Too many to list. Biggest issues: 1) Far too high expectations for a dead-end, poverty wages job. Saga is trying to turn tutors into teachers without licenses so the company can justify paying tutors in many cases less than the kids they tutor earn per hour in retail. The endless and repetitive data collection drove me crazy. You have forms for attendance. You have forms for "grades." You have other forms for grades, because the teachers want their own forms. And you don't even get forms for your own kids. No, you have to wade through pages and pages of giant spreadsheets til you go cross-eyed trying to find your own kids. You can just use control-F you say? No. That requires the names to have been entered into master documents correctly. But they're not. So you also have to figure out which names apply to which students. I could spend a whole day just dealing with the forms. 2) Creepy surveillance. They record everything you say and do. You can't opt out. What makes it especially bad is they operate under this "customer service" education model where the tutor is basically a customer service agent. Don't believe me? Check out their job apps page. The requirement to become a tutor is "high school diploma." But they demand you act like you're a teacher. But you have none of the authority of a teacher. Everything you do is micromanaged. How you speak. Your tone of voice. Even, no joke, your facial expression. Can't tell you how many times my teammates and I were yelled at for not sounding accommodating enough or not having friendly enough facial expressions. 3) No equity. You have to go through this long, boring summer training. Part of it is about equity and diversity. And what it means to treat others fairly. Summer training is cult-like. You have to act constantly happy, smiling, saying the right things. But once the school year starts, kids can mouth off to you, curse at you, try to get you in trouble by lying about you. They know they're the "customers" and you're just the "customer service agent." To keep the kids happy, Saga lets them pick and choose their tutors, hopping from one to another. Most of them skip class a lot. Or if they arrive, they get there when half or more of the class is over. But then you are held responsible because they aren't getting good grades or passing state math tests. I've been present when kids used super-inappropriate language to tutors or even assaulted tutors. One of the senior managers who was also present called one of these kids "sweetheart" to appease him. He was back in the same class with the same tutor the same day. That's how much Saga cares for tutors' mental health and physical safety. 4) Another issue with Saga is rampant hypocrisy among staff. When one of my teammates cried to my manager about the way kids were treating her, my manager said, "That's just their culture." What? I'd get fired for saying that but senior staff get away with doing exactly what we're trained not to do during summer training. And the managers are biased towards the students they like. In major ways. I can't be too specific, but managers frequently during mandatory team meetings make it clear that certain kinds of kids are their priority. So much for education equity. 5) No certification or license you could use to get another job. For all the effort and constant headaches Saga puts tutors through, they could at least offer a subsidized career-changer path to teaching certification. No other tutoring company knows or cares about Saga so adding Saga to your resume doesn't help getting another tutoring job. What other companies respect is a teaching license. 6) NO PAY WHEN SCHOOL IS OUT! Hope you have another job because during any school holiday, like Veteran's Day or Christmas break, if you're not meeting with kids you're not getting paid. Except for rare "professional development" day maybe once every other month. But again, there's no certification for those professional development days so they shouldn't call them that. Other than those rare days without kids, if school's closed you're earning $0. Happy holidays. Hope you could pay your bills before the holidays with your low pay because it's going to be a long while before you get paid again. 7) Professional development should lead to employment upward mobility. With few exceptions, Saga is a dead-end job. That's understandable since it's a small company. But that's why tutors should be getting teaching licenses so after their tour of duty in US public education they could at least go somewhere else and have a good shot at getting a real job. Did you know that most US states operate under what's called "right to work" laws? That means companies can fire you for nearly any reason (except illegal discrimination). Connect the dots. 8) For an ed-tech company, Saga has way too many tech issues. Every single day something important is down. It just distracts from tutoring. Again, you're responsible when the kids fail. They don't come to school? They don't come to class? They fool around in class so aren't learning? They openly refuse to do any work? Tech issues distracting them? Too bad. Your fault. PS. 9) Condescending staff attitudes. We have much older people working as tutors at Saga. Most of us are recent college grads but there are people at Saga with graduate degrees. Some even taught in universities or had careers in engineering or other math-heavy careers. But the Saga staff talks down to all tutors as if we were third graders. It's actually shocking to hear. Maybe they've been teachers too long so that they treat everyone, including other adults, like young children. 10) I saved the best for last. The pay at Saga is so low that many of the tutors are forced to move back home because they can't afford even a studio apartment on what Saga pays. Some people are married and their partners earn a lot of money so Saga's pay isn't an issue. But lots of people like me need the paycheck to stay alive. It's very hard to focus on becoming a star unlicensed teacher when you can't afford groceries or rent. In the past Saga partnered with Americorps so tutors could qualify for SNAP to help offset grocery costs. But Saga ended the Americorps relationship so most tutors won't qualify for SNAP benefits anymore despite about the same pay. And you can forget about raises just to keep up with inflation! So for doing more and more and more work, Saga rewards you with an inflation-adjusted pay cut. Yay! I worked in an Amazon warehouse before moving home to care for my dying dad and work with Saga so I could always be near my dad. But Amazon paid better, I got paid for holidays, I got more time off, and no one yelled at me for not constantly smiling and sounding like a kids' cartoon character. My advice to anyone like me, a few years out of college, is NOT to waste your time with Saga Education. If after everything you've learned about US public education you're still set on becoming a teacher, you can get a teacher's license in just one year with many career change opportunities while earning a full teacher's salary. If you're willing to accept the stress Saga puts on its tutors anyway, you might as well earn twice as much and get an internationally recognized teaching license you can use anywhere for the rest of your life. Saga is just repeating many of the very problems in education that are driving out record numbers of teachers in the first place. But then Saga will pay you much less, with no job security, for the privilege.