Cincinnati School Firings??

[Lex1775]

I caught the last half of a broadcast on CNN this morning, something about an entire school staff in Cincinnati being fired for failing to raise their test scores. My google-fu is weak and I can't find anything about it, did I not hear the newscast correctly?

[kwassa]

1. here it is

Entire staff of underperforming Cincinnati school to be replaced
ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080123/UPDATES/80123009

CINCINNATI — The entire teaching staff of an underperforming elementary school in Cincinnati is being replaced, along with the school's principal.

Officials say Taft Elementary has not met standards for nine years, and students score about 20 points below the district average on standardized tests.


Taft Elementary is one of the smaller public schools in Cincinnati, with about 240 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

The school's principal and 11 teachers will finish out the school year.

Officials say several measures short of housecleaning have been tried to improve performance at the school. But the president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers says nothing has worked.

[skorpo]

2. articles at this google link

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1126779783

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Ah, great.

Now can we fire the weathermen because the weather's too cold?

[skorpo]

4. Chicago Public Schools do this

They call it reconstituting. It's the same and has been happening for several years.

[originalpckelly]

5. If someone fails to do their job in other areas of our economy, they get fired...

Why not fire teachers if they cannot do their jobs?

[SoCalDem]

6. Teaching school is a bit different from other jobs..

I'd be willing to bet that this school is in an area where MOST of the kids are poor and underprivileged..

Property tax- financing of schools is a piss poor way to make sure every kid gets a decent education.

In inner city/poor areas, there can NEVER be enough money to adequately provide a good education.

This is the dirty little secret of integration & white flight.. People who could get away to the suburbs..did..and the ones who were too poor to leave, stayed behind and the povery clusters only intensified..

Every parent wants the BEST schools for their kids, but when schools are financed by property taxes and boundaries are enforced, guess where the poor kids all end up?? They end up in nasty, old underfunded schools....

Teachers can only do so much..

[slor]

8. It is a poor area...

I lived not far from the school, and I was a teaching asst. at a Montessori school not more than a 50 yards away.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. because kids aren't widgets

and they come to school with attitudes and experiences which shape their ability to learn. When parents are absent, TV is the babysitter, there are no books in the house, no quiet place to study, no value placed on education, then those kids start out way behind. I worked in an inner city school in Texas. There were crack houses across the street. We had duck and cover drills for when there were armed confrontations. At the Christmas concert, the parents who came mingled around and wouldn't be quiet to listen to their children sing. Kids would bring Kool Aid in bags and pretend to be selling cocaine on the playground. Most of the families who were interested in having their kids learn didn't have the time or resources to help them--and, sadly, many of the minority kids who strived to learn were looked down upon.

[NorCalDem]

9. Wow, how progressive of you... n/t