Governor eyes plan to fire teachers
The Boston Globe
Megan Tench
May 2, 2003
Governor Mitt Romney yesterday proposed giving principals of struggling public schools the power to eliminate up to 10 percent of their faculty and create ''summer schools'' for poorly performing teachers.
Romney's proposal, which immediately raised the ire of union officials, is an attempt to make teachers more accountable for their students' MCAS scores, according to his aides.
''I know a lot of people don't feel it's appropriate to ever have the principal be able to remove the faculty,'' said the governor, who talked about the proposal at an education forum celebrating the 10th anniversary of the state's landmark 1993 Education Reform Act. ''I believe it's an essential element of having our education system recognize that our kids come first, and that if a student has a teacher who is not able to fulfill that, they should find another occupation where they would be more successful.''
But officials from the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers and the Massachusetts Teachers Assocation, the state's largest teacher union, called the governor's proposal ''nonsense.''
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Yesterday's forum was sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, a Boston think tank. Signed by Governor William F. Weld, the Education Reform Act gave birth to the MCAS exam, stiffer teacher certification standards, a revamped school-financing formula, and other changes.
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By raising the bar for teachers, Romney said he hopes to assure families that the quality of public school staff reflects the same higher standards that students are expected to meet.
''I would like to make sure that once we have the right principals in place, that they're able to manage their teachers,'' said the governor, who also suggested that poorly performing teachers should attend summer school.
But Wass and other educators say using the MCAS exam as the sole tool to measure the quality of instruction unfairly targets teachers. ''The governor's proposal suggests that when a school is underperforming, the cause is that at least 10 percent of the teachers are incompetent, but that may not be the case at all,'' she said.
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