Firing the entire faculty of a school? As long as we're putting schools under the microscope, let's put one in particular a little more under that microscope.
President Obama has supported firing all the teachers in a Rhode Island school, partly because of low test scores. The apparent assumption is that every single teacher in that school is at fault.
I can't pretend to know all that was involved, but are there absolutely zero exceptions among the teachers? Everybody out with the bathwater?
What aren't they telling us?
One other reason for the firings that we have been told, and that gets little publicity, is the teachers' refusing to eat lunch with the students without any compensation. That may not seem like a big deal to people who have never taught in a school with poorly performing high school students. However, it shouldn't take much to imagine the potentially vulnerable environment in that lunchroom.
Besides, lunchtime is an opportunity for teachers to spend time with other adults, so they can refresh themselves, so they can perform during the second half of the day, and so they can perhaps share some ideas that may help enhance service to those students.
In the meantime, there are just too many unanswered questions that the media hasn't investigated or reported.
We're waiting.
