Teacher Fired For Grading Student ‘0’ In School With ‘No Zero’ Policy

Diane Tirado left a note on the class’s whiteboard, which was surprising to the eighth graders during their history class. Their teacher won’t be teaching in their class anymore and has been fired.

Diane Tirado reveals why she was let go on the board: ‘I have been fired for refusing to give you a 50% for not handing anything in.’

Exactly as she wrote, the school has indeed deemed the woman unfit to teach in their school after she was unable to heed to their ‘no zero’ policy. West Gate K-8 School had only employed Diane for two months as staff in their school.

Diane explained that, similar to other teachers, she left marks on the names of students who haven’t turned in their works just in case they are late. “Every teacher does it. We don’t want kids to fail. We want kids to succeed,” she added.

However, the school’s handbook describes the grading policy that specifically says ‘no zero.’ It appears that Diane cannot completely agree with this, but she just had to sign in compliance with the school’s policy.

But when speaking to Newsweek, Diane said that she was never explicitly told about the policy.

She said how this policy is really influencing the world to raise people who feel entitled to earn something from not doing anything. The teacher with 17 years of experience said, “Why should they work hard when they know they’re going to pass? A kid looks me in the eye and says, ‘I don’t have to do anything and you have to give me a 50.'”

She said she was getting called to the office to top it off because the parents complained about the workload. However, the school later released a statement that explains Diane Tirado was let go “because her performance was deemed substandard and her interactions with students, staff and parents lacked professionalism and created a toxic culture on the school’s campus.”

She was not left with many legal options because she was still in her probationary period. She wrote together with the Facebook post of the writing she left on the board, “Teaching should not be this hard. Teachers teach content; children do the assignments to the best of their ability, and teachers grade that work based on a grading scale that has been around a very long time.”