"One of every 300 teachers in the Houston school district was fired for poor performance last year — a number likely to rise under a new policy to hold them more liable for student achievement.
The district's superintendent, Terry Grier, said there's no “magic number” of teachers who should be ousted in a given year, but suggested that the school district's rate seems low given some academic shortcomings.
Last school year, 36 teachers out of nearly 12,000 — about 0.3 percent — were fired for performance reasons, according to data from the Houston Independent School District.
“Quite frankly, if we were that good, why do 100,000 of our kids read below grade level?” Grier said.
The school board on Thursday gave initial approval to a policy that allows the district to dismiss teachers whose students consistently perform below expectations on standardized tests. The change represents a move to make personnel decisions based more on student learning instead of relying solely on principals' classroom observations of teachers."