Daily Lumina News 031521

In 1987, Adrienne Bennett became the first and still only Black female master plumber in North America. Now running her own firm in Detroit, Bennett says it isn't just the stigma of dirty work or the emphasis on college that keeps people like her from getting a hands-on education for high-paying jobs in the understaffed trades.
On this episode of Work Shift, Bennett talks about the race and gender discrimination she experienced while pursuing a highly skilled career in plumbing—and what she did to succeed in an overwhelmingly white and male world.

Elaine Santiago, a single mom in her 50s, lost her job in July 2020 after 23 years at one of the nation’s largest accounting firms. Eight months later, Santiago hasn’t found a full-time position. To pay the bills, she pulled together a collection of consulting gigs in marketing and publicity. She’s also substitute teaching.
Workers like Santiago will welcome the short-term help included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. But there’s an important omission in the plan: the lack of new investment in job training and career help. For millions of Americans whose jobs may never return, the COVID package is a balm, not a cure.

For most of California's 10 million K-12 and college students, the month of March marks one year of learning online. For the education community, the last 12 months have been characterized by anxiety, disruption, reckoning, and uncertainty.
This interactive timeline looks at the defining moments of California's education landscape one year into the pandemic.

More than disrupting college for millions of Americans, the pandemic has cast a light on the need for reskilling and additional education. This reality means a renewed focus on short-term credentials, stackable pathways, learning portability, and other approaches that help students move seamlessly—and more quickly—through postsecondary education and into work.
But while states have been increasingly attuned to student mobility, the vast majority of their policies still focus on linear two-year to four-year transfer—potentially missing the 43 percent of students who transfer multiple times and others who accrue learning and credits in circuitous ways.