Not a silver bullet

Recent local news articles have touted the Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Act as a means for unemployed workers to learn a new trade in the face of plant closures, diminished product demand and the transfer of jobs overseas.

A lesson learned from faraway Caldwell County, N.C. shows us that retraining and retooling isn't the only thing needed to correct unemployment. Caldwell County is to furniture what Youngstown was to steel. Furniture manufacturing was the main source of employment and revenue for County residents. When the Broyhill furniture factory and largest employer in town shifted operations to China several years ago, hundreds of former furniture makers went back to school.

NPR recently focused on two unemployed workers in Caldwell who used TAA and tried to make the leap from building couches and ottomans into the building and programming servers. The story of these two is representative of the struggles of many workers who go through job retraining programs. In the case of Bill Curtis and Margo Rice, once Google opened a server farm 200 yards from the closed furniture factory, they realized that three years of computer training wasn't enough to compete.

A three-part series from 'All Things Considered' first focused on how laid-off workers tried to retrain to enter a 21st century workforce. Part two focuses on the results of that effort and what they have done since. Tonight's segment will take a look at the Chinese labors who took over the furniture jobs.

* NPR: High-Tech Dreams Dissipate for Furniture Workers

“Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.”

CINCINNATI (AP) - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will provide more than seven million dollars to improve educational performance in some of Ohio's urban high schools.

The investment by the foundation set up by the Microsoft Corporation chairman and his wife will help continue funding for the next phase of the statewide Ohio High School Transformation Initiative.

KnowledgeWorks, the Gates foundation and the stat Department of Education will provide up to $20 million in resources for schools and districts involved in the initiative through June 2009.

Districts receiving the 3-year grants include Canton, Columbus, Cleveland Heights-University Heights, East Cleveland, Lima, Lorain, Toledo, and Youngstown. The Cleveland Municipal School District will receive a 1-year grant.