Teachers of a Rhode Island School District were recently fired en masse by the superintendent for failing to achieve higher test scores. Arne Duncan praised the mass firings and Barack Obama claimed them to be justified. However hours later it was discovered that the reason for the poor scores is that the teachers had lost all of the school’s money, along with money they convinced their students’ families to give them, in the derivatives market and were now over three billion dollars in debt. Their financial dealings also put all other school districts in Rhode Island in desperate condition and in need of a government bailout. The superintendant immediately rehired all the teachers and gave them large bonuses saying that this represents the type of creative thinking that is necessary to make the American educational great. In tears Arne Duncan said that he had been mistaken, these teachers were actually doing God’s work. Ben Bernanke has promised that the Fed will infuse billions of dollars into the Rhode Island school district in order to avoid its collapse.
Obama immediately left for the school district in question when he heard that they had piled up billions of dollars in debt. He said that the massive bonuses that the superintendant was now offering were absolutely justified because the loss of money showed that these teachers absolutely were the best at what they were doing. When asked why the earlier issue of lower test scores were no longer important Obama was heard to say, "Look, originally I thought these teachers were small players, you know just some mopes in a classroom trying to figure out how to get a child with a difficult home life to read. People like this need to be fired when they can’t get students to do better on arbitrary tests. But when I heard about their forays into the derivatives markets I realized that these teachers were actually All-Stars. Hey they pushed the envelope and they got burned. But we need to keep these teachers well compensated so that they don’t go somewhere else or go over to Europe and turn their education funding into a derivatives market. Hey, so their money games really didn’t help the kids in reading, baseball players make a lot of money and don’t always make it to the World Series."
Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan praised Obama’s about face on the teachers. "Now we understand that these are teachers who were really dealing with money not with children – which in anybody’s estimation completely changes their level of importance. Now that we see they are Players with a capital "P" we have to make sure they are well compensated." He warned that it would be a dramatic mistake to not give these teachers major bonuses. "It is basically saying that teachers who actually devote themselves to the classroom and the lives of their students should take precedence of these Rhode Island teachers who as I said are Players with a capital P. It is jealousy from teachers who are stupid enough to spend extra hours with students and bring in their own chalk, when they could have been talking the families of students out of their life savings to invest in derivative markets. And let me tell you something, I am sick and tired of people taking all their anger out on these Rhode Island teachers who are obviously some of the smartest people around.
Arne Duncan said it was still important to raise test scores but of course education now had to be approached with patience until the troubles in the overseas markets worked themselves out. John McCain immediately declared himself in favor of the Rhode Island school district bailout and the bonuses, but on coming back to Arizona declared he had no idea the money was going towards teachers.
The very first part of the story is true, but the rest is snark - if just barely