Ninety career educators on the street

By Larry Greene
The public schools of America were seen as failing by the Bush Administration, and now they are seen as failing by President Obama. The nature of this crisis is illustrated by a current unfortunate episode in a small school district in Central Falls, Rhode Island. The local schools chief arbitrarily fired all teaching personnel as well as administrative and support employees, leaving about 90 career educators to face being on the street at the end of this school year. This was done, not on the basis of unsatisfactory classroom performance by the teachers, but because in their schools – many serving minority and disadvantaged and immigrant neighborhoods – only about 10% of students were able to pass a nationally mandated math test.

The Rhode Island teachers union was, of course, outraged. It has commenced Federal unfair labor practice charges and is challenging the city’s action through the state’s teacher tenure appeal procedures.

In citizen meetings recorded by The Providence Journal, the state’s main newspaper, State Schools Chief Deborah Gist defended the dismissals as consistent with what she called “optional turnaround models.” These have been adopted by the state under U.S. Department of Education guidance, with President Obama’s support, to allow school districts to “turn around” so-called failing schools. When asked, the President said he thought wholesale dismissal of teachers in failing schools was a good idea.

The school district could have chosen other, more positive improvement plans to help the children cope with the Bush “No Child Left Behind” testing system. Instead they chose to blame the teachers for the failure of the schools. This smacks of union-busting. And in Gist’s public meetings, a good deal of general hostility toward teachers’ unions was expressed. The district school superintendent now says she intends to recruit better-qualified replacements.

This flies in the face of what every knowledgeable educator understands about the obstacles to learning faced by children from neighborhoods and families that lack safety and support. Children who get no support at home for learning and are not properly nourished or cared for will not achieve academically. Blaming this situation on hard-working classroom teachers is a bankrupt, unfair approach. In the end, this will only give support to the enemies of public schools in their drive, supported by the Republican Party, to divert children to charter schools. The answer for children in failing schools lies in public programming to support the families served by those schools.

There should be public housing programs, day care for the children of low-income mothers, and employment programs. There should be public social services and counseling to assure that children are being nurtured, mentally, physically and socially. No child should be left behind to grow up in a family and community where life outside the school is abusive, or which fails to meet basic needs.