Central Falls Kids Deserve Better

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. -- A school district that gained the support of President Barack Obama for promoting accountability after it fired all its teachers from a struggling school announced on Sunday it had reached an agreement with the union to return the current staffers to their jobs.

The two sides said a transformation plan for Central Falls High School for the coming school year would allow the roughly 87 teachers, guidance counselors, librarians and other staffers who were to lose their jobs at the end of this year to return without having to reapply. More than 700 people had already applied for the positions.

The President's plan, in fact, represents a fundamental and devastating shift away from the mission of ensuring educational equity for all students. It proposes measures such as transfering federal resources to charter operators and awarding funds through competitive grants rather than a needs-based system. Compounding the problem is the administration's intent on continuing the worst elements of No Child Left Behind Act -- including its focus on poorly designed, one-size-fits-all testing and the punitive strategies of improving low-performing schools through unproven, even radical, models.

Case in point is the drastic step taken by the school board in Central Falls, R.I., which fired the high school's entire teaching staff.