Daily Kos Labor digest: Florida makes boy without a full brain take standardized test

We knew it was on the table, that Florida law says that because a 9-year-old boy who has only a brain stem and not a full brain gets two hours a week of work with a teacher, he had to take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But didn't it seem like once this story was on the news, someone would do something about it?

Nope.

State Representative Linda Stewart of Orlando told me she didn?t think that a young boy who can?t tell the difference between an apple and a peach should be taking any test, and tried to get officials in the Education Department to step in to stop the charade of Michael taking a test.

She said nobody did. ?Nobody wanted to take the responsibility of stopping it,? she said.

Rick Roach, an Orange County, Florida, school board member who was following Michael?s story, confirmed that Michael was in fact forced to take the test, meaning that a state employee sat down and read it to him, as if he could actually understand it.

I just, I can't even. Oh, and by the way, Michael's "score" on the test will count toward assessing the teacher who spends two hours a week with him.

And more:

• Why "unions don't like" Penny Pritzker. Sarah Jaffe offers lots of good reasons.
• You're done with a grueling 12-hour day of physical work. But before you can go home and eat or sleep or have a life, there's one more thing: you have to go through a security checkpoint, something that can add 25 minutes of waiting to your day. Warehouse workers are suing Amazon over that unpaid time added to their shifts.
• A group of California strawberry pickers was fired for leaving the fields due to a fire 11 miles away that was engulfing them in smoke and ash. The farm settled with the workers, represented by the United Farm Workers, but they didn't want to go back. Small wonder.
• F'ing Michigan Republicans strike again:
  

  Michigan Republicans are getting ready to inflict further catastrophic damage on our state?s schools with the passage of a package of bills designed to pay for road and bridge repair, a major priority of Governor Rick Snyder. The bills say nothing about education or the School Aid Fund but the impact is there to the tune of more than $770.1 million.

(Load) (Load) (Load) (Load) (Load) (Load) (Load)

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/09/1207782/-Daily-Kos-Labor-digest-Florida-makes-boy-without-a-full-brain-take-standardized-test

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