Off With Their Heads! {added edit}

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

I will be working (at home) today providing an assist to my Teacher (Musician) husband as he prepares to start what he refers to as his “War Room”… i.e. job hunting. He is still employed, but, word is getting around and all the staff at his school are brushing up their resumes.

When I read this headline (& story) at Common Dreams, I just guffawed. I admit I don’t really quite know how to guffaw but I think I just did.

Obama’s Idea of Education Reform? Fire All the Teachers

Central Falls {Rhode Island} Thrust into School Reform Forefront

snip snip snip to the end:

As of Wednesday morning, 88 teachers, along with the high school’s administrative team, faced their own uncertainty. All 93 were sent letters of termination.

This is the only high school in a small Rhode Island town apparently. Here’s some more from a local RI source.

Supt. Frances Gallo had just recommended that the district’s Board of Trustees fire the entire teaching staff of the city’s only high school, effective at the end of the school year.

Then, as the board’s vice chairwoman, Sonia Rodrigues, read each name aloud, a teacher stood. Some stood in silence, others held back tears.

“Look up, Gallo! Look at us!”

Gallo was sitting on the stage with the seven trustees and a small group of administrators. She rose and looked out at the audience in the packed high school auditorium. She remained standing until the last of 93 names – a history teacher, a reading specialist, physical education, music and art teachers, a social worker, a nurse, the school psychologist, even the principal – was called.

More point of view from the AFL-CIO blog:

In all, 93 persons were put in the street-74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals. Negotiations over ways to improve the school between teachers and the school superintendent broke down when school officials insisted that teachers add new duties, some without any extra pay at all.

In a rally before the trustees meeting, some 500 union members and community supporters called on the board to reconsider its decision. Rhode Island AFL-CIO President George Nee told the crowd:

 

This is immoral, illegal, unjust, irresponsible, disgraceful and disrespectful. What is happening here tonight is the wrong thing and we’re not going to put up with it.

snip

AFT (American Fed of Teachers) President Randi Weingarten criticized Central Falls Superintendent Frances Gallo, who has been at the helm for three years, for not accepting any responsibility for the situation at the school. She said in “their rush to make judgments and cast blame,” school officials ignored positive steps toward improvement that have been made, such as a rise in reading scores of 21 percent. Read Weingarten’s statement here.

Weingarten adds:

Central Falls High School faces tremendous academic and economic challenges, but firing all of the teachers is a failed approach and will not result in the kinds of changes necessary to improve instruction and learning.

Gawd this is so despicable. Im sorry I dont have time to elaborate or explore more. Some of those articles have hundreds of comments, as you might imagine. I really need to get back to work on that resume thing. We are not in Rhode Island nor a small town and lots of other details are not a match, but…. there are enough similarities to my DH’s school (students’ low test scores) for me to be, uhm, a little freaked out by this.

You’d think I’d be paying attention to Education Reform “issues” and all but, alas, I do not. I do know what I hear nearly every day, when DH comes home from work and talks about the utter nonsense that goes on. I don’t even want to get into it, but… suffice it to say… this whole ridiculous concept of assessing an individual teacher’s performance, or a school’s status based on these absurd Test Scores… with no attention to all the “mitigating circumstances” (low income families, lots of ESL kids here etc etc etc) is just so banal, so … Im at a loss for words here. Ignorant. It’s just plain ignorant.

Gah.

10:30a.m. EDIT: h/t taoskier for noticing!: also per the Common Dreams piece, the Hopey McChange Administration seems to think this is a swell approach:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has taken notice.

“I applaud Commissioner Gist and Superintendent Gallo for showing courage and doing the right thing for kids,” Duncan said Tuesday night.

Governor Carcieri also praised Gallo and the trustees for their “action to reform Central Falls High School.”

As both Gallo and Gist fielded calls from the national media Wednesday, the commissioner of education said she recognized the gravity of their actions.

“These are the lives of young people – more than 50 percent of whom are not finishing high school, which completely changes the course of their lives,” Gist said.

“And this choice that Dr. Gallo made, and that we support, also affects the lives of people who have chosen to be teachers and have dedicated their lives to education. So this is an extremely serious situation,” she said. “But we have to do the right thing, and I do commend Dr. Gallo for her courageous steps.”

and crossposted to Wild Wild Left