I was forwarded this entry by colleague Bruce Dixon out of Atlanta, managing editor of Black Agenda Report. Dixon writes about unrest in Chicago regarding fired black teachers. Here is a large portion of the entry, but please read Dixon's article Chicago Teachers File Racial Discrimination Suit it its entirety.
BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
"The fired teachers are disproportionately African American, and the newly hired teachers are not."
In May, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared the Obama administration's intent to close and "turn around" 5,000 "underperforming" public schools in poorer neighborhoods across the country. Duncan's last job was CEO of Chicago's public schools where he shut down dozens of neighborhood schools, practically all in lower income areas, and dismissed thousands of committed and experienced teachers, the vast majority of them African American women.
When the Chicago Teachers Union made no effort to reach out to parents, students or their communities, refused to organize teachers to oppose the wave of school shutdowns and privatizations, teachers organized what they call CORE, the Coalition of Rank & File Educators. CORE has now filed suit against the Chicago Board of Education, charging that the mass dismissal of hundreds of mostly black veteran teachers and their ...
