When everything goes wrong, it is human nature to find one person or thing and use it as the scapegoat.
At Central Falls High School, when students were not performing well, the school district found a scapegoat: the teachers and administrators.
The school is one of the worst in the state according to the Providence Journal, with a graduation rate of only 47 percent, reading proficiency rate of 55 percent and only 7 percent proficiency in math.
So now Central Falls is going to replace 93 employees with a new staff that is supposed to magically turn around a school that has 96 percent of its students below the poverty line, according to the Providence Journal.
Everyone knows that there are bad teachers at every level of education. When a teacher does not know his or her material and puts on a video every day for class, they should get fired.
But for Central Falls High School to completely blame the teachers and administration by firing every single one of them is wrong.
What is even worse is that President Obama has publicly supported the move, saying that teachers need to be accountable for their students, according to the Washington Post.
While teachers must do a better job, there is enough blame to go around at the school.
The problem with the firing of all the teachers at Central Falls High School is that they can only do so much. The students, parents and community have to do their part to help the youth become successful.
Teenagers are devoting too much time to activities that do not stimulate their mind.
According to a recent study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, teenagers on average spend seven and a half hours on electronics including the Internet, video games and television.
With teens spending so much of their free-time on electronics when they get home, it is not surprising that half of the students at Central Falls High School cannot read at their grade level.
A teacher can be a great teacher in the classroom, but if students don’t do their part once they leave the gates of their school, teachers cannot get blamed.
That responsibility falls on the shoulders of the parents of the Central Falls area.
If you want your kids to do their homework so that they can be part of the 7 percent of the students at their school to be proficient in math, disconnect the Internet and get them to do their homework.
If you want them to be able to read, cut down on the five hours of American Idol your family watches and read to your children.
This generation has already lost its health, seeing as its the first generation that’s life expectancy is less than their parents.
Let’s not lose our minds as well.
Because, as Whitney Houston sang in “Greatest Love of All,” “I believe the children are our are future, teach them well and let them lead the way.”