All teachers fired at Rhode Island school

(CNN) -- A school board in Rhode Island has voted to fire all teachers at a struggling high school, a dramatic and controversial plan aimed at shoring up education in a poverty-ridden school district.

In a 5-2 vote Tuesday night, the board approved the plan by Frances Gallo, superintendent at Central Falls School District, to discharge the 88 teachers at Central Falls High School.

The Obama administration released a proposal that would tighten for-profit colleges’ access to federal student aid, threatening growth in the industry that received $26.5 billion in U.S. funds last year.

The proposed rules released today by the U.S. Department of Education would link U.S. student aid eligibility at Apollo Group Inc., ITT Educational Services Inc., Career Education Corp. and other education companies to former students’ salaries and debt repayment rates. The rules may cut off access to federal student grants and loans at about 5 percent of all for- profit education programs, Secretary Arne Duncan said in a telephone call with reporters yesterday.

Students earning two-year associates’ degrees at for-profit colleges had an average student-loan debt of $14,000 in 2007- 2008, about twice that of students at nonprofit colleges, the department said in a statement. While most education companies provide valuable training and skills, high-cost education programs that lead to low-wage jobs are harming students, leaving them with hard-to-pay debts, Duncan said.

If the rules were in effect today, programs enrolling about 8 percent of the students at for-profit colleges nationwide would lose eligibility, the Education Department said. There were about 1.8 million students enrolled in education companies’ programs in 2008, according to a June 24 report from Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.