In our supposed meritocracy, it isn't a surprise that kids from high-income families are more likely to graduate from college than kids from low-income families. But, while test scores from eighth grade math are nowhere near the only measure of student merit, it does say a little something about that meritocracy that high-income kids with low eighth grade math scores graduate from college at the same rate as low-income kids with high eighth grade math scores.
And more:
- If you eat chicken you'll want to pay attention to this one: The Food Safety and Inspection Service is proposing a new inspection system for chicken plants, raising the line speed from 91 chickens per minute to 175 chickens per minute, reducing the number of inspectors, privatizing some current inspection jobs so that the poultry plants are inspecting their own work (do you want to trust them with that?), and spraying chickens with chemicals to kill salmonella and other nasties.
- Every teacher I know is sick of hearing about how their work days supposedly end at like 3:00 in the afternoon. It's a ludicrous thing to say—when do people imagine kids' work gets graded, or lessons get planned? A new survey of teachers offers a reality check: Teachers reported working 53 hours a week on average.
- Six things rich people need to stop saying.
- It's always a big scandal when an NCAA athlete takes a gift ... but the NCAA is raking in tons of money on those athletes' performances.