Comments about ‘Firing of all teachers at Rhode Island school roils students’

Teachers will not have any choice but to abandon low income schools now. Anyone that wants to keep their job will have to move to a higher performing neighborhood. One where parents can afford to take their own kids to visit colleges.

Fire the parents and replace them with parents that care. EVERY teacher knows that a parent in the home that cares is the answer to academic failure.

Too much blame the teachers and not enough blame the parents ... and the students themselves.

Intervention in a child's life needs to come early, 1st and 2nd grade, it's too late for most of them if you wait until they are in high school.

And how can you blame the high school teachers for the faults of those who have the most impact when the student was first forming their study habits?

And by the way, I'm sick and tired of the FEDS sticking their noses into State's issues. If they want to help, find a way to help those schools which need the financial support to change for the better.

Firing everyone should not be an option, if it was then we should start with Congress and the President.

The comments of What, retiredschoolteacher and rvalens2 are on the mark. I've seen parents agonize over children who would rather play video games than get an education. Students have to accept responsibility for their behavior. The greatest teacher in the world can't motivate an individual who won't be motivated.
That said, I've seen some downright terrible teachers also.
And there are downright terrible parents that are too self-absorbed to care about their kids. Parents, students and teachers are a team, and they all have to get up and play ball. The bad thing is the government is like big business- if it doesn't work, don't figure out why, just fire somebody.

Schools similar to this have turned things around. Yeah, the parents are probably horrible parents, and yeah, theses are low income kids....but if the school has the right leadership, a positive culture, and effective teachers, good things can happen and the majority of students can succeed even though the school might have these marks against it.

Firing ALL the teachers is not the answer, because I'll bet that 30-40% of the teachers are pretty good, and another 10-20% of them are OK. But the other 50-60% are probably dead weight. Of course I'm just guessing, when it comes to these numbers, but I'd dare say they are typical of this type of school. Getting rid of the dead weight is a good idea. Unfortunately the dead weight is protected by the NEA. Administrators cannot simply fire an ineffective teacher. It takes a lot of documentation, effort, money, and time to oust a loser teacher.

Also, there needs to be some motivation to get good teachers to stick it out in such schools. As a teacher/administrator myself, I can honestly say that it's much more pleasant working "better" students.

You guys are right on the mark. It is a team approach. Some teachers need to be fired but the teachers unions make it impossible. If we want to improve education we have to come up with a way to get rid of the poor teachers.

I'm wondering why President Obama will support an entire school staff to be fired by saying we need to hold failing schools accountable when he will bail out failing businesses and won't hold them accountable. Just wondering.

These teacher that got fired were asked to do a little more to help the kids.

They said NO!

They got fired.


What a shame.

They were asked to do more without pay. So...let's say your boss said you need to come in an hour earlier and stay an hour later every day without pay. Should you be fired if you don't want to?

get a lunch break but these teachers were asked to give up theirs to help students.

Bottom line, when it's all said and done, the test scores of this school won't improve drastically, if at all. Like many of the posters alluded to above, firing the entire staff of teachers won't change the overall culture of unmotivated students and uninvolved parents. Unless there is an increased cultural change in views of the the importance of education in the community at large, don't expect anything to change.

There is no law that prevents bad teachers from being fired! Why would the teachers association want bad teachers in the profession? It makes the whole profession look bad. The truth of the matter is that typically administrators want to fire a teacher without due process, and the association is required to step in and protect the rights of the teacher under school district policy. Why should teachers be afforded due process? So that one or two angry parents or an administrator who may want to bring in their buddy cannot simply dismiss a teacher. Dismissal should be based on poor performance. This requires some effort from the administrator to remediate and document the performance issues. Sadly many administrators are unwilling to try and help a teacher get better at their trade, they would rather just get rid of them and start over with a different face in the classroom who may or may not be any better than the one who just left.

My first two years of teaching, I taught in a very challenging school. I was young, energetic, healthy, and full of new teacher idealism.

The year I was hired, my school qualified for a $100,000 grant (the school had never passed UPASS or NCLB) and hired reading and math specialists. Furthermore, the OCR sent in ESL and bilingual ed specialists.

It was the most exhausting year of my life. I can't put into words the effort, time, and personal sacrifices made by every member of that faculty and staff. When testing time came, the school actually chartered a van and went around picking up absent students. By the end of the year, one teacher had suffered a heart attack, one had quit early after 27 years in education, two marriages were on the rocks, and one staff member later went on disability because of meth exposure (from the frequent home visits). But--the school had passed NCLB (failed UPASS) for the first time ever.

The following year, with the money spent and a huge loss of staff, the school was once again on the "failing" lists.

I now teach Gifted/Talented classes and count my blessings everyday.