When Florida revamped its unemployment system two years ago, it demanded that people seeking benefits take an online test to identify their career strengths and weaknesses.
Instead, the agency in charge of unemployment implemented a reading and math quiz.
The 45-minute assessment includes questions many middle-schoolers could answer. And while it might measure your grasp of basic arithmetic and reading comprehension, it doesn’t shed much light on potential career paths — unless you’re looking for work as a seventh-grader.
The test has done the seemingly impossible: uniting the state’s opposing political parties.
State Sen. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, told me that lawmakers wanted a “skills review to steer people toward a job. This does not accomplish what we wanted.”
State Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, agreed, pointing out that the state is spending about $2 million this year on the test. Detert, who chairs the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee, worries that the test serves mostly as a nuisance to people already in a tight spot.
“Are we spending millions to help people,” Detert asked at a recent committee meeting, “or are we spending millions just to annoy unemployed people?”
The skills review was part of an unemployment reform package pushed by GOP lawmakers and Gov. Rick Scott in 2011. Completing the test — applicants don’t have to “pass” it — became a requirement for anyone seeking unemployment payments. The results are used to determine if a laid-off worker needs additional training in certain areas. So far, the test has been taken by more than 1 million Floridians.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at
via Florida lawmakers question skills test required for unemployment – Orlando Sentinel.
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