The Omaha, Neb. public school system spent $130,000 of its stimulus grant recently just to buy 8,000 copies of the book “The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change.”
That is one copy for every single employee, from principals to building custodians.
Alarmingly, wrote an Omaha World-Herald columnist, the book is “riddled with gobbledygook,” “endless graphs,” and such tedium as the “cultural proficiency continuum” and discussion of the “disequilibrium” arising “due to the struggle to disengage with past actions associated with unhealthy perspectives.”
Oh, they’re
excellent — at
keeping their jobs
Once hired, almost no federal employee ever leaves.
Turnover is so slight that, among the typical causes for workers leaving, “death by natural causes” is more likely the reason than “fired for poor job performance.”
According to a USA Today report, the federal rate of termination for poor performance is less than one-fifth the private sector’s.
And the annual retention rate for all federal employees was 99.4 percent (and for white collar and upper-income workers, more than 99.8 percent).
Government defenders said the numbers reflect excellence in initial recruitment.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)