1. CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.
2. Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.
3. The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.
4. Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement.
a. Following months of negotiations, the teachers were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day, undergo more rigorous evaluations and provide more after-school tutoring. At the time, Gist said the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."
5. Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students.
6. "We don't have a sense of clarity from our leadership. We don't have a clear sense of their mission or their vision. Communication has been, again, awful," Kinslow said. "If I'm going to be thrown into the bus by my supposed leaders every day, where is my hope? Where is my sense of team? Why would I be working?" Troubled RI school hits bumps on road to reform - Yahoo! News
This, in microcosm, represents the problems of many of the nations' schools.
Anybody see a solution?
2. Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.
3. The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.
4. Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.President Barack Obama appeared to endorse the firings, saying drastic action may be warranted when schools show no signs of improvement.
a. Following months of negotiations, the teachers were rehired after agreeing to work a longer school day, undergo more rigorous evaluations and provide more after-school tutoring. At the time, Gist said the changes would result in "dramatic achievement."
5. Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students.
6. "We don't have a sense of clarity from our leadership. We don't have a clear sense of their mission or their vision. Communication has been, again, awful," Kinslow said. "If I'm going to be thrown into the bus by my supposed leaders every day, where is my hope? Where is my sense of team? Why would I be working?" Troubled RI school hits bumps on road to reform - Yahoo! News
This, in microcosm, represents the problems of many of the nations' schools.
Anybody see a solution?