working on the post office.

except Obama threw a few hundred million in the stimulus that could only be used to keep teachers and their aides employed. Can you imagine if twice as many teachers were laid off? Dang.....

attached which pushed teacher firings and layoffs.

Truth.

The state's had to either borrow the money or raise it from somewhere else.

From CBS

Summoned back from summer break, the House on Tuesday pushed through an emergency $26 billion jobs bill that Democrats said would save 300,000 teachers, police and others from election-year layoffs. President Barack Obama immediately signed it into law.

CBS News Correspondent Chip Reid reports that both parties were happy the president signed the bill: Democrats because it gives them a jobs bill to brag about back home and Republicans because it helps them argue that Democrats are leading the nation to financial ruin.

Lawmakers streamed back to Washington for a one-day session as Democrats declared a need to act before children return to classrooms minus teachers laid off because of budgetary crises in states that have been hard-hit by the recession.

Republicans saw it differently, calling the bill a giveaway to teachers' unions and an example of wasteful Washington spending that voters will punish the Democrats for in this fall's elections. The legislation was approved mainly along party lines by a vote of 247-161.

The aid for the states is to be paid for mostly by closing a tax loophole used by multinational corporations and by

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-signs-bill-to-save-teacher-jobs/

He's fought to keep teachers from being laid off:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77229.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/teacher-layoffs/

Yes, a lot of teachers have been laid off, but the reason isn't Obama. The initial stimulus bill only covered the current budget, once the republicans took control in 2010 there wasn't a renewal of the funds. That is a state level issue so truthfully, it's the state's causing problems to begin with. Obama and congress halted the layoffs with federal dollars, but haven't been able to do much since the end of 2010.

Secretary Duncan at his side, President Obama introduced Race To The Top, drawn up by the Bill & Melinda Gates, the Eli Broad, Boeing, Walton Family and other foundations. Under Race To The Top states and school districts are forced to bid against each other for many of the same education dollars they used to receive as a matter of course. The winning districts are those who apply Race To The Top's four official solutions to their so-called “failing schools.”


Race To The Top's four federally mandated “solutions,” which are never spelled out by corporate media news outlets, are “school transformations,” “school turnarounds,” “school restarts,” and “school closures.”

Race to the Top defines a “school transformation,” its first remedy, as firing the principal and up to 50% of teachers, replacing them with temps and newbies, hiring expensive consultants, often the same folks who drafted Race To The Top guidelines or their cronies, to redesign curriculum and personnel policies. “Transformed” schools tie teachers jobs to test scores (that’s what caused the national epidemic of cheating scandals) lengthening school days with no extra pay, cutting wages & benefits and of course lots more costly and useless tests.

Race To The Top calls its second remedy “school turnaround.” Turnarounds are exactly the same as school transformations, with high priced “run the school like a business” consultants, increased reliance on standardized tests, sanctions for teachers and all new hires sourced from Teach For America type agencies, except that transformations fire up to 50% of school staff, but to be called a turnaround schools must fire at least 50% of school staff.

“School restarts,” are the third Race To The Top solution. In a “restart” you close the public school and reopen a new school with new staff and the same connected consultants used for transformations and turnarounds, but all under the management of a private corporation. In other words, you close the public school and open a charter school in the same building. Charters of course can use public money to hire even less qualified teachers, pick and choose the students it serves, and often to generate handsome private profits.

Race To The Top's fourth remedy is “school closure.” You fire the staff, padlock the school doors and let families take their chances on the free market, or find another public school if they can.

The states and school districts quickest to carry out the most transformations, turnarounds, restarts and school closings are the ones who get to keep or increase their levels of federal funding. Those who drag their feet lose federal education dollars. That's why it's a race, but not exactly to the top.

http://blackagendareport.com/content/obamas-race-top-drives-nationwide-wave-school-closings-teacher-firings

the truth about the percentage of black teachers: In Chicago, the home town of the president and his Secretary of Education, the percentage of black teachers has dropped from 45% in 1995 to 19% today.

From the Chicago Public School Website: Numbers as of Oct 1, 2013

Teachers total: 22,519
African-American: 24.3%
Asian: 3.4%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Hispanic: 18.6%
Native American: 0.4%
White: 49.7%
Multi-Racial: 1.8%
Unknown: 1.8%

http://www.cps.edu/about_cps/at-a-glance/pages/stats_and_facts.aspx

From 1989 Chicago Tribune:
Of the 106,684 Illinois public school teachers in 1986-87, only 4 percent of the 83,754 teachers in school districts other than Chicago and East St. Louis were minority.

In Chicago, then with an 87 percent minority enrollment, 45 percent of the 21,968 teachers were minority. In St. Louis, with a 98 percent minority student body, 88 percent of the 962 teachers were minority.

Statewide, minorities comprised 15 percent of the Illinois teaching force, while 33 percent of the 1,825,185 students were minority.

The state school board projects minority enrollment in Illinois will rise to at least 40 percent by the year 2000, while the percentage of minority teachers will decline.

Minorities accounted for 11 percent of students in teacher education programs in Illinois colleges and universities in 1986-87. Of those, 7 percent were black, 3 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian-American.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-02-20/news/8903060818_1_teacher-supply-and-demand-minority-enrollment-illinois-schools

So there are several issues to address, namely, if in the 80's there were 45% of the black teachers in Chicago public schools but only 4% of black teachers elsewhere in the state, if the percentage of black Chicago teachers has declined but they have mvoed to the suburbs to teach and the 4% number has gone up, are there less black teachers?
Also, the Chicago Tribune noted in the 80's that there would be fewer black teachers in the future. I assume because they were moving into other fields, so can we really blame it on Obama.

I hope you'll spend some time looking at other information. Namely, that there is no requirement for closed schools or anyone else to bring in for-profit consultants.

Race to the Top.


Of the 1,022 teachers at closing schools, about half (51 percent) of the 507 who were laid off because they had poor ratings or did not have tenure were black, according to a Catalyst Chicago analysis of CPS data provided to the Chicago Teachers Union this summer. The remaining 515 teachers were eligible to follow their students to the designated welcoming school because they had superior or excellent ratings.

Among eligible white teachers, 75 percent received transfers, compared to only about 67 percent of black teachers.

Some of those teachers who did not get transfers in July eventually were hired within the district, but CPS has not yet shared information about those hires with the CTU.

Black teachers were hit harder for one main reason: They tend to be concentrated in schools that enroll the largest numbers of black students, and 40 of the 48 schools that closed had primarily African-American student bodies.

In the 2001-2002 school year, about half of CPS students and 40 percent of CPS teachers were black. That is no longer the case. Now, 40 percent of CPS students are black, compared to roughly 25 percent of teachers, according to the 2012 Illinois State Board of Education teacher service records.

http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/2013/10/07/63630/structured-out-job


Today, just 19 percent of the teaching force in Chicago is African American, down from 45 percent in 1995, the union says; organizers fear that shift means fewer teachers have deep roots in and passion for the communities where they work.

About 42 percent of the city's 400,000 public school students are black and 87 percent are low-income, according to district figures.

"This is fight for the soul of public education," said Brandon Johnson, an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/10/us-usa-chicago-schools-analysis-idUSBRE8890VS20120910

Hannah using BAR.



Sid

Plus it supports the RW talking point of how Gov't can't do anything right. One reason gov't has so much trouble doing anything right is the overwork of those left in the stripped down offices.