By ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.
Many teachers aren’t showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.
The progress that the city’s school board – and the Obama administration – had hoped for seems increasingly, and alarmingly, elusive.