Teacher Fired For Not Giving Unearned Grades, Running For School Board
Following a legal victory against her former employer for wrongful termination, former teacher Sheri Mimbs has launched a campaign for the school board.
Mimbs was fired in 2017 from Cotton Indian Elementary School in Henry County, Georgia, after she refused to participate in the further degradation of the American school system — as she would not give passing grades to students who did not earn them.
According to the former teacher, she received a note from the assistant principal back in 2017 that ordered her not to give any students a grade lower than 60, even if they neglected to turn in their work.
“I went to the assistant principal and she was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to change those grades. Kids can’t have less than a 60,’” Mimbs explained to a local news outlet.
After Mimbs complained about the order, her contract was not renewed. Following that firing, Mimbs spent six years in a legal battle against the school district, which ultimately resulted in her winning a six-figure settlement from the school.
“I knew I was being retaliated against,” she said.
The court decided that the school district must pay Mimbs monetary damages for retaliation, as well as cover her attorney’s fees and reverse her non-renewal, which was keeping her from getting new teaching jobs.
However, Mimbs is now taking her mission to protect the integrity of the school system one step further — announcing a run for the local school board. After winning in the court system, the former teacher now hopes to win in the court of public opinion, securing a school board seat at the ballot box.
Mimbs defended her actions by pointing out that “Nobody can make me believe just giving out grades is helping any student.”
Her ordeal has only served to further highlight the fact that the American school system is crumbling — as many teachers at public schools, especially those in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities, are regularly pressured to give unearned grades to students as part of a desperate attempt to inflate the school’s numbers. Despite these efforts to pad the numbers, the data shows that a significant majority of American students are far behind in learning.
Beyond the padded numbers, it is clear that the move to artificially inflate students’ grades does not set them up for success.
One Arizona teacher-turned-whistleblower, Donna Telles, has reported that the grades of approximately 50 students from the Casa Grande Union High School district were changed to ‘P’ for passing after the administration pressured teachers to give passing grades to students simply to save them from not graduating.
“There’s been a request made by our administrators of our teachers to go back into historically archived grades of seniors who would otherwise not pass and change their grades,” Telles reported.
“Teachers are being required to do things that they know are not right. They’re afraid of not doing it for fear of being termed insubordinate and terminated,” she explained.
Telles’ whistleblowing further confirms that Mimbs is not alone in facing pressure to prop up failing students and essentially destroy their future prospects by not allowing them to become properly educated. Mimbs’ decision to run for school board highlights a potential solution to the problem — that Americans who value education need to step up and take key positions that will allow them to affect change.
Meanwhile, another important solution is also being pushed amid declining grades at public schools: School Choice. If schools were forced to compete for resources in the free market by giving parents the power and money to choose which school their child attends based on actual performance metrics, schools with the best teachers and student outcomes would thrive. Teachers like Mimbs would be allowed to give their students the best education possible thanks to the funds coming in and the ability to grade correctly without fear of repercussions.
