On Tuesday night, the Board of Education of Central Falls School District fired teachers, administrators, and other personnel at the High School. A total of 93 people were fired in a 5-2 vote.
The scores in this district in Rhode Island are extremely low with as little as 48 percent of the students actually graduating from the high school. Half the students are failing every subject. That is a lot of students. These numbers are showing that something is going wrong somewhere. Students should not be given a 50/50 chance to graduate high school. That doesn’t even mention if they go on to any avenue of higher education.
The school district wanted teachers to start working a seven hour school day, tutor students once a week for an hour outside of class time, eat lunch with students and set aside two weeks in the summer for additional training that they would be compensated for. The union at the school wanted to work on more compensation for the extra hours that would be spent at school. The teachers there are making an average of $70,000 a year. That is at the higher end of the teacher’s salary scale. The union was asking for more money to help the students to better their coursework.
Honestly, I think this was an extreme response for talks for compensation but I liked the thought behind it. I like the idea of “cleaning house.” Many teachers now have tenure after the first three of years of teaching so basically they can’t be fired unless there are extreme circumstances. This act shakes up the system. I don’t think teachers should become comfortable in their situations. I think they should have to continue to prove themselves to their bosses, most other professions operate this way. This also ensures that students receive the best education from teachers who don’t become complacent in their teaching methods because they no longer have to worry about keeping their position.
This massive firing of an entire school to start anew in the fall is revolutionary in a district. I have to give them credit for actually going through with it. Though it is a lot of jobs people just lost and they might not be the culprits of the lack of quality teaching. There could be teachers that are working extremely hard to help their students achieve success and are now out of a job come September. But this event definitely says something about the education system. It needs to be changed. Tenure needs to be eliminated and teachers should be held accountable for their lessons each year. Though this is not on just the teachers. The people who support them and society are also at fault. It is the mentality of going to school and how students should participate. The expectations or lack there of that administrators have for their students, all contribute to the low test scores and high drop out rate. The education system needs to be overhauled so that all students are set on the road to success and this event definitely shook things up in the education world.
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D Underwood
February 26, 2010 at 15:52
Fire the School board and Parents. Teachers have O O O authority to get the kids to work in class. I don’t know for sure but I’llguess there is little support from the childrens home. Thanks you school board for blaiming the teacher and staff even though you are most likely the weak link along with the parents/gaurdians.
L. Shaw
February 28, 2010 at 10:52
This is a high school. Students by this age either have the initiative to succeed or they don’t. A student unwilling to learn can not be taught. This school is also located in a poor area. Statistics have shown that children from poor areas lack the benefit of a stable environment, and family support. I think many other circumstances surrounding a child should be considered rather than basing their needs strictly on test scores, especially when the loss of teaching jobs are involved. Maybe community programs, and volunteers(parents/guardians) should try to help the teachers and staff to improve test scors.
Art
March 03, 2010 at 09:41
How many of these students are immigrants who’s parents can’t read or speak English? I would wager if you took Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, Sen. Bunning or any other right wing, globalist blow hard know it alls and put them on a fast jet to China and had them take a 5th graders standardized test in Mandarin or even Cantonese all of them would fail. They couldn’t even spell their names in Chinese. Now we’re talking the creme de le creme of the know it alls, not the children of poor uneducated Brazilian, Haitian and Cambodian parents. Good luck finding replacement teachers for those Public schools next fall. Give the parents a voucher for a Catholic school as see how well they do there. We’ll all be praying for them. What good is graduating to most of these kids anywaywith an unemployment rate of 50%, the only math they’ll be likely need is; “Do you want to buy a nickel bag or a dime bag of smack” ?