education says it takes approximately 830 days or two years and three months to get through the process of firing a bad teacher. how can that be possible? well, first of all we have to acknowledge this. putting teachers last does not mean we re putting teachers first. when we look at the process that s in new york it s to protect those that are on the front line educating our children every day. tenure and the process that they have to go through only means a teacher and due process and can t be fired because of political or other reasons. are there not bad teachers who should be fired? i mean, is that what you re saying? there are evaluation processes, there are ways to remove teachers that aren t performing. before any teachers are given tenure there s a three year period where they are evaluated and trained to see how effective they are as teachers. if that three years isn t enough it can be extended even further before they are given the tenure. we have a huge education
states this weekend to maybe see their position on that switch. but the democrats you see coming out saying shinseki needs to go are the candidates. i think on their side, i think there are political reasons for people saying both opinions for staying with the line and going with what the administration is saying, which is that we re going to stand by him right now. and going with the thing that may appeal to people. and for the candidates trying to get an upper hand one someone like mitch mcconnell, they say, we think he should go as well. opposing political reasons for doing that. and it s always easier when you re the candidate and you didn t vote for obamacare or you weren t in congress when some of this other stuff went down with the v.a. there s some confusion about the bill that was passed in the house that would allow shinseki given more power to fire people. who knew it was tough to get rid of people who aren t performing? that s stalled in the senate. why? it s interestin
livestock production skyrocketed 55% to more than $7.5 billion. now, earlier, my colleague luke russert spoke to south dakota republican senator john thune and asked him why the agriculture industry has been so successful. i think part of it, luke, is just there s really strong global demand for american agricultural products, and it s raised commodity prices in this country, and when commodity prices are good, more people want to farm. our state of south dakota is the $21 billion industry in our state. and so, it s the number-one driver of our economy. we pay close attention to it. it has put a floor under our economy. and i think it s helped the national economy in the same way. when you have a really strong agricultural sector, it helps sort of prop up some of the other areas of the economy that aren t performing so well. and that s now allowed you to keep your unemployment rate so low? it has. you are our unemployment rate is
is a slippery slope. if you start talking about, well, why do these workers need a pension, why are they being paid this much? we ve been down that road before and it always end up justifying, pushing people further and further down to accept and to accommodate themselves to less and less. what the refs were saying, it s basically about fairness. and i m not very excited about what the ultimate settlement was. yeah. we should point out it s very unclear who won this. precisely. there were three issues on the table, there was a salary increase which they got. there was converting a pension from a defined contribution defined benefit pension to defined contribution 401 k which they delayed implementation of by five years. there was a reserve group of full-time refs who can be used to swap in for refs they feel aren t performing at a high enough level. that fight was somewhat similar to the chicago teachers union strike about how management was
you get great teachers in the classroom and take experienced teachers and those who aren t performing, bring them along and new teachers. that s the focus. he doesn t want to talk about teachers because he doesn t want to employ them. it means money. you have to pay them. in 2011, 68% of schools said they had to eliminate teacher positions because they didn t have the budget money. this is a problem that actually requires checks. there s no money under romney s budget to do it. it seems to me romney doesn t understand what tutoring is all about. that one-on-one personal connection, focus on the student that needs to be catching up a little bit. he s making the case if you put more kids around this kid, he has a better chance of learning. here s one of romney s biggest solution for imf proving school performance. having two parents in the home makes an enormous difference. thinking of the kids of tomorrow, trying to help move