Less is Better? West Palm Beach Teacher Fired for Expecting More Out of Student’s Performance

On Tuesday’s Gill Report – Tennessee Star Political Editor Steve Gill was baffled by a recent firing of a West Palm Beach, Florida elementary teacher who refused to give a fifty percent score to students who chose to ‘do nothing’ in class.

The school’s “lowest grade possible-50% policy”  encourages students to do less than the bare minimum.

“A teacher in West Palm Beach was fired because she refused to follow the school’s direction that the worst grade a student could get, even if they did not turn in anything in terms of their homework or their assignment was a zero. She said you get a zero if you don’t turn anything in. The school said, ‘No, you have to give them at a least a fifty percent because that’s the rules of our school,” Gill reported.  He went on to talk about the education epidemic that is rising across the country through faulty, over-funded school systems and how it will fail graduating students when they enter the work force.

“Doing nothing gets you fifty percent according to West Palm Beach; she refused to do it and she was fired,” Gill said; adding, “I can’t wait to see these kids out in the real world – where they realize that if you don’t show up for work you don’t get half pay. You’ve got to actually show up and produce the work. And yet these students are being taught in this school system and I’m sure it’s the same standard that’s being applied in other places. That the lowest grade you can give a student is fifty percent because we don’t want to hurt their self-esteem.”

Gill continued:

So, if I don’t turn in anything. I don’t turn in my assignment. I don’t produce any work product I get a half score. (Chuckles) Again, it’s like these students are going to show up thinking they get a half pay of work even if they don’t show up for work. Oh boy the real world’s going to be tough on them won’t it?

You wonder why Johnny can read? You wonder why Mary can’t do math? This is the school system approach that we’re seeing all over the country. Where students feeling good about themselves matters more than students doing well, students learning, students progressing. It’s the everybody gets a trophy approach. And how’s that been working out for us?

We’re not going to see better results in our education system were’ going to continue to see schools like in Nashville. Twenty-one schools are now below the failing grade. Twenty-one schools, it was just six a few years ago. The same things happening all over the country. Schools are failing and failing miserably despite us putting hundreds and hundreds of thousand of dollars into the worst schools to try and bump them up. Putting millions across the country.

Some of the highest per student expenditures that we have in the country are in the worst schools. So, it’s not just how you spend. It not just how much you spend. It’s what you spend on. And until we start elevating what students are expected to do. Elevating what teachers are expected to do. Elevating what our school systems are expected to produce.

We’re going to continue to get bad results and throw more money for more bad results into a bad system. And it all starts with giving students credit when they don’t do the work. And then firing teachers who expect them to do a little bit better than nothing.

Listen to the full segment:

 

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