To qualify for government funds, Central Falls High School in Rhode Island will have to do better than graduate less than half its students. So when the Rhode Island teachers' union refused to accept a 25-minute longer teaching day and requests to occasionally sit with students at lunch, the school superintendent fired all of them. The teachers, who were making between $70,000 and $78,000 in a community where the average income is $22,000, have the support of their national union and are protesting. Arne Duncan, our education secretary, however, supports the Rhode Island teacher firings.

State and local education officials received some high-powered support of their own, when U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan weighed in, saying he "applauded" them for "showing courage and doing the right thing for kids." Source: Every Central Falls teacher fired, labor outraged, Providence Journal

Although I support firing ineffective teachers, it is hard to believe that only the teachers, and nobody else in the school's administration, are responsible for such appalling student performances. The good news is that this teacher firings clear the way for a complete "turnaround" of Central Falls High School's educational program.

The state's tiniest, poorest city has become the center of a national battle over dramatic school reform. On the one side, federal and state education officials say they must take painful and dramatic steps to transform the nation's lowest-performing schools. On the other side, teachers' unions say such efforts undermine hard-won protections in their contracts.

"This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education," Education Secretary Duncan said, "and when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action."

Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools - those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates - and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation, which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and "turnaround" which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall. Source: Every Central Falls teacher fired, labor outraged, Providence Journal

Drastic times call for drastic measures. It's time for the American public to demand accountability for what happens in our public school classrooms. I believe good teachers should be some of the highest paid professionals in our country, while bad, ineffective teachers should be fired quickly and without union interference.