<p>All</a> teachers fired at Rhode Island school - CNN.com</p>
<p>Pretty gutsy move...</p>
<p>Seems pretty short-sighted to me. Obviously, the demographics and transient nature of the student population have a lot to due with the situation at this school. Given the fact that significant progress is being made (3x as many students accepted into colleges as 5 yrs ago), this seems like a bullying tactic by the superintendent and school board. Pretty sad situation. Unfortunately, we have seen similar situations in our state. My friend teaches at a school in a similar situation and is facing possible firing at the end of this school year.</p>
<p>Don’t even get me started on this.</p>
<p>There must have been some good teachers at that school, as well as some mediocre and some incompetent ones. But they have all been scapegoated.</p>
<p>Will any good teacher who has any other choice want to apply for a job at that school in the near future? I doubt it.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I imagine that a good teacher at the school can reapply. Think about it…fire all, and make each one justify why he/she should be rehired.</p>
<p>I have thought about it. It is totally inhumane and unjust and makes me sick. </p>
<p>Sure they can reapply. But why would they want to if they can go to a school where the administration has not demonstrated its eagerness to throw the staff to the wolves?</p>
<p>If I was a great teacher at a school where many were ineffective, I would have no problem re-applying. If I got hired, the point would be obvious.</p>
<p>Seems like a hardball move to get the teachers’ union to back down, as opposed to a genuine belief that all the teachers are bad.</p>
<p>According to the article, teachers can reapply, but no more than 50% can be rehired.</p>
<p>Improvement in school is a three legged stool–teachers, students and parents all have a part to play. Focusing solely on teachers won’t work.</p>
<p>Unless you can “cure” the poverty that exists in that area, I really doubt that any new group of teachers will show much improvement next year.</p>
<p>Yeah, and if you didn’t get rehired the reason might well be not that you weren’t a good teacher, but that you were at the top of the pay scale. </p>
<p>I can’t be so sanguine about throwing people out of work arbitrarily. It disprupts and destroys lives. It’s vicious.</p>
<p>Every teacher in that school has to be collecting recommendations and putting out resumes right now.</p>
<p>Do note, BTW, that they HAD achieved significant improvement in scores in the last few years. And of course no one is admitting that they have to work with what they get from the elementary and middle schools–and even more importantly, as Ellenemope points out, there are other parties involved in the process.</p>
<p>They did the same thing here, only it was the elementary school (our poverty rate is much higher than the R.I. school), where I had volunteered for many years. Principal and vice principal were included. The secretary quit, as she could see what was coming and so could I. I quit. So what happened? They hired a few of the teachers back, but most were new teachers. It’s been total chaos since that point. Scores haven’t increased at all. The new principal, who claimed she could turn everything around, is now complaining that she can’t, because they didn’t let her hire the teachers she wanted. What teacher, in their right mind, would want to step into a situation like that?</p>
<p>You’d have to get into the guts of this to really evaluate, but one version of this story is that the school district wanted to institute changes that would “transform” the school, and the union balked at some of changes. When they reached an impasse, the district took the next step. It remains to be seen what the union will do.</p>
<p>You can transform the school all you want, but if the students and parents don’t buy into it…it will be hard to transform anything.
Small eg. from my spouse who teaches in a large (3000+), diverse,somewhat urban high school: student walks out of his class earlier this week & never returns. Writes up student & as required contacts parents/guardian by phone. Grandmother says, “I haven’t seen her since Thursday(last week), don’t know where she was this weekend…I’m surprised she went to school at all.”
Many, many students there come from similar backgrounds. What is the grandmother supposed to do? What is the teacher/school supposed to do? No easy answers when you are dealing with students from that kind of background.</p>
<p>Teachers unions make it difficult to get rid of the bad teachers. They are held accountable through test scores but when the scores aren’t high enough, the admin isn’t given the freedom to make necessary changes - training or replacing poor teachers. We have that very same problem in our high school. Ineffective teachers, low test scores.</p>
<p>In our district, the families that can, send their kids to private schools or transfer them to neighboring districts. How has the home district addressed this exodus? By refusing to sign “interdistrict transfer requests.” If the school were a business, would you lock the customers in? Ridiculous.</p>
<p>My wife is a teacher and she’s all for it. If the school is under 50% proficient, teachers should have no room to ask for more money.</p>
<p>School districts can lose good people with this “Off with their heads!” attitude. We had a wonderful principal at one of the high achieving middle schools in the school district. Moved him to a low performing school and then fired him after 2 years when the low performing school hadn’t improved enough. </p>
<p>This guy went from “golden” to “incompetent” in 2 short years?</p>
<p>Yes, this is very hard on the teachers. And yes, the students “failure to perform” isn’t entirely the teachers’ fault. BUT it is the teachers’ responsibility to teach the kids. The teachers’ unions’ refusal to acknowledge that responsibility works against their position … here in the northeast at least, where teachers typically make more than the families that pay their salaries … and city graduation rates are abysmal.</p>
<p>
While it’s far from the only problem, I think it’s a problem that the good people protect the bad people.</p>
<p>The 50% solution sounds arbitrary. While it may well be that there are incompetent teachers at this school, has it been shown that 50% are incompetent? But that’s the policy. Only 50% will be re-hired.
If the problem is that the majority opposed the introduction of a new curriculum, it would be better to work with the teachers.
I agree with post #14 by Irishbird. You can transform all you want but you need buy-in from teachers and families. We went through this in our school. A new principal, anticipating opposition from teachers, instituted major reforms by fiat and with as little preparation as possible so that opposition could not become organized. The school was transformed indeed–into chaos, upsetting teachers, families and students. The principal quit after two years. Order was eventually restored. A new principal learned the lesson that for change to happen, she needed buy-in from teachers and good communication with families. A huge amount of time was spent on professional development, but it was time and money well spent.</p>