Firing of all teachers at a "low performing" Rhode Island school is atrocity

Firing of all teachers at a "low performing" Rhode Island school is atrocity

re: article at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011171663_apusentireschoolfired.html

Plan to fire all its teachers roils poor RI city


\yr\10\doc\web\2010\02\firing-of-all-teachers-at-low.html The blue-and-white banner exclaiming "anticipation" on the front of Central Falls High School seems like a cruel joke for an institution so chronically troubled that its leaders decided to fire every teacher by year's end.
By RAY HENRY
Associated Press Writer
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. —

The blue-and-white banner exclaiming "anticipation" on the front of Central Falls High School seems like a cruel joke for an institution so chronically troubled that its leaders decided to fire every teacher by year's end.

No more than half those instructors would be hired back under a federal option that has enraged the state's powerful teachers union, earned criticism from students, and brought praise from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and some parents.

The mass firings were approved by the school district's board of trustees Tuesday night after talks failed between Superintendent Frances Gallo and the local teachers union over implementing changes, including offering more tutoring and a longer school day. The teachers say they want more pay for the additional work.

"If it's only an hour or two a week, I think teachers can afford to do that," said Robert Rivera, 40, who worries about sending his 13-year-old daughter to the troubled high school next year. He dropped out of school as a teenager and works more than 60 hours a week as an appliance repairman.




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This an absolute atrocity. If they were truly serious about turning around an "underperforming" school, then they would not just fire the teachers but also replace the students and parents as well. This could never happen in a "top performing" community such as Mercer Island with high incomes, highly educated parents with two parent if not two-income familiews, and kids who were high performing even before they got in to preschool. Take the kids in a "low peforming" school and put them in Mercer Island, and take Mercer Island kids and put them in Rainier Beach, and it won't matter a bit who is teaching.


It is NOT the job of public schools to produce workers who meet anybody's definition of "proficiency", or who are equal in grades, test scores, income or anything as XYZ nation or PDQ ethnic/economic/racial/cultural group. It is the job to provide a BASIC education, and they learn whatever they learn unless it it an "outcomes-based" education, which has always, and continues to fail, whether it is called "standards-based", "performance-based" or "anything-based" nonsense.

The schizo ed-reform-think that on the one hand prohibits tracking or ranking on the one hand, then on the other hand insists that all must perform at "high levels" as defined by the top 10 percent or punish all who are guilty (parents, students, teachers) was the destructive "performance-based" thinking that leads to the disastrous WASL, which used an arbitrary measure to be able to declare up to 90% of students to be "below standard" in math.

A similarly arbitrary ranking of workers and mandatory firing of the "bottom" 10 percent no matter how good a job they may be doing is the Dilbert-boss workplace equivalent.

It is absolutely scary how many people will line up to take a good sounding excuse of "it's for the children" to justify ruining real people's lives. Wake up America.

By one of the first guys to declare the WASL and fuzzy no-math mathematics to be an atrocity.