The beatings will continue until morale improves

Or as a commenter on a NYT article about how Joel Klein has failed his avowed goal of expediting the teacher-removal process puts it:

There’s an old joke about a man who planned to have a cat pull a piano up four flights of stairs. “How can you make that tiny animal do a job like that?” he was asked. “Easy”, he replied, “I’ll use a whip.”

Because staff at the only high school serving the small, poor community of Central Falls RI did not comply with the superintendant's demand to do more work for no more pay, she fired them all.

Our dimwitted US Secretary of Education commended the board for “showing courage and doing the right thing for kids.”

“This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education,” he is quoted as saying. 

Uh, yeah, that makes sense.  The way to give them a great education is to fire all their teachers.  Brilliant.

Valerie Strauss has the best and most pithy analysis.