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California’s Class of 2016 scored lower than the national average on SAT reading and math tests, although state students outperformed their national peers in writing, just-released scores show. . . Latinos scored nearly 100 points lower than whites in both reading and math. When gender is factored in, Asian boys scored the highest in math — 590 — and white boys scored highest in reading — 548. The highest scores in writing were posted by girls in the “other” ethnic category — representing those not clearly in major ethnic groups — followed by white girls and Asian girls, who were 1 and 2 points lower, respectively.

The survey, commissioned by POLITICO and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, found that 51 percent of Americans expect the pace of growth to remain at about the current rate over the next 10 years. That’s a grim outlook at a time when year-over-year increases in gross domestic product have come in well below 2 percent in recent quarters.

More than 50 employees working inside Los Angeles County’s juvenile lockups received promotions despite a history of disciplinary problems or criminal arrests under a deal county leaders quietly cut earlier this year.

But unlike California, whose cities have refocused on elite priorities at the expense of middle-class occupations, Texas offers a complete spectrum of economic activities in its metros. Another key difference is that Texas cities have mostly embraced pro-development policies that have kept them affordable by allowing housing supply to expand with population, while California’s housing prices blasted into the stratosphere due to severe development restrictions. Texas cities also benefit from favorable state policies, such as the absence of a state income tax and a reasonable regulatory and litigation environment. These factors make Texas cities today what California’s used to be: places to go in search of the American dream.

But by grading schools that serve California’s 6-plus million K-12 students on “10 areas critical to student performance,” the system – whose precise details are yet to emerge – moves away from traditional academic standards into fuzzier areas. And that will likely make it more difficult for parents and the larger public to determine what’s really happening, or not, in the classroom.

Employers statewide added a robust 63,100 jobs during the month, the Employment Development Department reported Friday, although the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.5 percent. The job gains for August were a sharp contrast with a fairly weak showing of 18,600 the month before.

Retail sales declined last month for the first time since March and manufacturing production slipped, government data released Thursday showed. Meanwhile, prices businesses receive for their goods and services were unchanged last month, a sign of still-soft demand at home and abroad. Companies also remain cautious about building up too much inventory, new figures showed.

Whatever your view of the past several years, America’s economic growth is not what it used to be. Our real gross domestic product roared along from 1947 to 1974, growing an average of 3.8 percent per year, and slowed only slightly until 2004. But since then, it’s dropped by half. Today’s economy, growing at a sluggish 1.6 percent per year, has been described using an old term inherited from the 1930s, “secular stagnation.”

There is reason for business to be concerned about continuing the tax that applies to upper income taxpayers. Many business owners pay their business taxes through their personal income taxes. In a recent survey done by the Los Angeles County Business Federation, the personal income tax was ranked first among concerns of the organization’s members. In addition, business opponents of the tax cite a negative effect on the economy.

Business Roundtable today released its third quarter 2016 CEO Economic Outlook Survey, and the results continue to underwhelm. Over the next six months, CEOs report lower expectations for sales, roughly unchanged plans for hiring, and nearly flat plans for capital spending.

Facing strong resistance from teachers unions, she amended the measure again before its first hearing in the Senate Education Committee – and actually lost support. Unions objected to a change that would have simply extended the tenure evaluation period for all teachers to three years. With the expedited dismissal process now voluntary and the layoff provision removed entirely, education groups that previously supported the proposal rejected it as a “mere shell of its former self.”

Los Angeles has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs since 2007, casting a pall over the state’s economic recovery, according to a forecast released Tuesday by Chapman University.

California is one of only three states that requires employers to pay daily overtime after eight hours of work and weekly overtime after 40 hours of work. Even the other two states that impose daily overtime requirements allow the employer and employee to essentially waive the daily eight-hour overtime requirement through a written agreement.

Manufacturing has enjoyed something of a renaissance since 2009 — after 12 years of declines, it has gained back 828,000 jobs. . . No. 6 San Diego-Carlsbad, which, like most metro areas, has lost industrial employment over the past decade, has seen a bit of a rebound since 2010, with an 11.5% expansion to 106,700 jobs concentrated mostly in aerospace and nondurable goods. . . But if Chicago’s loss can be attributed to the overall decline of the old industrial base, Los Angeles’ steady losses have come from a more modern mix of aerospace, design and specialty manufacturing. Since 2010 — despite the rapid growth in many manufacturing areas — Los Angeles has managed to lose an additional 3.37% of its industrial jobs. Over the past 25 years, the Big Orange has seen its once thriving industrial base fall from 785,400 to 356,100 jobs—a decline of almost 55%. In both Chicago and Los Angeles, the decline of manufacturing has accompanied demographic stagnation, high rates of poverty and mediocre overall job growth.

But California is radically boosting pension spending instead. Legislation bailing out California’s teacher pension fund requires a doubling of spending on pensions to more than $10 billion per year, leaving that much less for preparing, hiring, paying and upgrading active teachers. $10 billion is nearly three times more than the state spends on California State University or the University of California. Needless to say, California cannot deploy a sufficient number of great teachers for six million students when so much of its education budget is being diverted to pensions.