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Your Voices: School Grades

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 16, 2008

Last week's report card for Florida schools showed that there were two failing schools in Hillsborough County - neither of which were in South Shore.

Among high schools, 10 in the county got A grades - Alonso, Hillsborough, Newsome, Riverview, Plant, Bloomingdale, Sickles, Tampa Bay Tech, Freedom and Gaither. Only three high schools got A grades in 2007.

Last year, 137 county schools earned an A or B. This year, 143 Hillsborough schools got an A or B.

TBO.com" rel="nofollow">class="bold">TBO.com readers weighed in about the two failing schools - Broward and Sulphur Springs elementaries.

Any possibility that some of the teachers in the failing schools are actually very poor teachers and should be fired? In the private sector, if you do not produce results you know the drill. Hold administrators and teachers to the same accountability and let's publicly hold the parents to the same standards.

Posted by RRR

Let's start raising the education standard at home. The parents don't care or take any time to help educate their kids, therefore, the kids don't care. Teachers can be great and catch a few kids and change their lives, but it's not enough if it isn't happening at home.

Posted by Bloorain

Bet a lot of parents of the kids in those schools couldn't pass the same tests. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Posted by Petepuked

To those who say teachers at failing schools should be fired, I dare one of you to try working there. Does anyone know where Sulphur Springs Elementary is? Anyone who chooses to work there and try to make a difference is a saint. Do you have any idea what kind of background and what kind of homes those children come from? I am a school teacher and my husband is a police officer who has worked that area of town. I could not imagine teaching children who come to school in the morning after their parents went to jail or they saw someone get shot or worse. Some of you need to put yourselves in the shoes of teachers and some of you need to find out how school grades are calculated before you start making rude, insulting, smart remarks. It is very hard for a high school to receive an "A." The county went from 3 A's in high schools to 10 A's, and no one has anything positive to say about it? It's amazing what some of you expect from the education system when you do not educate yourselves before speaking. Lastly, teachers do not teach to the test. Either we are not hard enough and we let everyone pass or the test we give is not good enough and we teach to the test. Don't lawyers take the bar before they can practice law? Don't doctors take the MCATs before they can enter med school? Don't you have to take a test before you can drive a car? What's wrong with giving a test? It's amazing. If everyone passes then we teach to the test. If everyone fails then teachers are horrible.

Posted by Mrj3814

I am trying to figure this out. Parents fuss because the Florida school system is subpar and then when teachers raise the bar and actually make students work and use their brain, the parents fuss because we "make it too hard." It is a no-win situation. For example, I had a parent the last couple weeks of school state that her daughter deserved an "A" on a project because "she worked really hard on it." It didn't matter that she did not follow the directions or that her information was either not there or incorrect. There's a huge double standard - raise the bar on education, but make sure my child gets an A regardless of whether they earned it or not. Parents, take a look at the grading scale. A "C" is not failing or doing poorly, it is average and an "A" is outstanding.

Posted by Mkmomm

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