Do standardized tests seem
appropriate for kindergarteners? Doesn't matter, because it's policy in New York. As
Sarah Jaffe writes,
The image of 4- and 5-year-olds struggling to figure out how to take a multiple-choice test is heartbreaking enough, but the image that stuck with me was that of the children trying to help one another with the test and being told that they're not allowed to do so.
It's maybe not quite at the immediate outrage level of Florida making a boy
without a full brain take a test, or even New York's previous standout effort making a
hospitalized child take a test, but it also affects a whole lot more kids. It's not a stupid policy being applied in an even stupider way, as in those individual cases, it's a stupid policy being applied just as it's intended.
- California Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB 7, the law linking state funding for local construction projects to prevailing wage laws. This is a nice win that will prevent low-road construction contractors from taking their fight against prevailing wage from city to city.
- In Cleveland's building boom:
... while men are doing most of the building 19 Action News has found one woman who is proving she can do the work too.
Miss Fatima Ware is hammering her way to a good living.
She is taking advantage of a free apprenticeship program offered by the Sheet Metal Workers local #33.
She's getting paid during her training and she's one of the trail blazers in a male dominated career.
- Service workers aren't the only people the University of California is treating badly. In negotiations with graduate students, the UC Office of the President sent around a bargaining report which, students say
... significantly mischaracterizes important elements of the current bargaining dynamic including 1) wages: which are posed outside of the context of either criteria for livability or for salvaging the UCs quality of education as described by the Academic Senate, 2) timing: the report neglects to mention that UCOP’s failure to give the union information we were legally entitled to has significantly slowed the bargaining process, 3) social justice issues: like undocumented worker concerns, gendered discrimination against women graduate students, and gender neutral bathrooms which have been central to the bargaining process but mocked in the report , 4) and family friendly issues: where UC management’s limited proposed improvements are exaggerated and where legal requirements are posed as concessions.