The Washington Post

A family uses budget spreadsheets, checking accounts and other tools to help their children understand the value of money. The Pruett family of Bellingham, Wash., make a point of having constant talks about money with their children — something they started a few years ago by discussing the family budget. Like most parents, the Pruetts provide a weekly allowance to both children, with each getting an amount equal to half their age. But instead of doling out cash, they place the money in a checking account, which has the effect of ensuring it’s not spent right away. When the children don’t see the money, “it accumulates,” Alissa Pruett said. Read more below:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed a rule outlining steps employers must take to protect indoor and outdoor workers from the risk of heat illness, the first major regulation aimed at preventing heat-related deaths on the job. The rule, if finalized, could add protections for 35 million workers nationwide. But it will face opposition from industry groups and major hurdles beyond that, including the possibility that Donald Trump could win a second term and block the rule from becoming final.

Lois Lasher and Lori Hoots slept side-by-side in the same crib as babies. Nine decades later, the identical twin sisters still share a queen bed. The sisters have a four-bedroom house in McClusky, N.D., but said they prefer sleepovers. “It’s nice to always have company,” said Hoots. Lasher and Hoots — who celebrated their 90th birthday last week — have been inseparable most of their lives. Lasher is five minutes older, and often reminds Hoots, and others, of her elder status.

Do you ever think about why a word has multiple meanings? Consider the word second. It is 1/60th of a minute. It is also a chance to support another person’s opinion. And, as a standing, second can be frustrating for competitive types who wanted to be first. Business— and life inside a business— can be just as confusing. Many of the companies on this list have realized there are no absolutes in business, only many different ways of looking at a problem. First, second, or last, they are on the list, one that has grown to include 250 companies this year.

Analysis by Andrew Van Dam: If you guessed home health and personal care aide was the most common job in the country in 2023, you were correct! And honestly, if you guessed retail clerk or fast-food counter worker, we ought to give it to you anyway. The most common public-sector jobs are elementary school teachers, followed by teaching assistants and high school teachers. The most common state-government jobs are corrections officers and registered nurses. For the feds, it’s mail carriers.

The extent of the pandemic’s toll was laid bare when students took the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called “the nation’s report card,” in 2022. Average math scores on a 500-point scale fell by eight points for eighth-graders and by five points for fourth-grade test-takers — the steepest declines recorded in more than a half-century of testing. This quiz features some of the questions fourth- and eighth-grade students encountered on that exam. It includes questions they breezed by and stumbled over, from algebra to geometry, as well as the share of students who scored points. How do you stack up?

An invite-only White House summit is intended to give online content creators a chance to discuss their priorities with senior administration officials. But some creators say they will decline if asked, citing Biden’s policies. The President’s policies on the war in Gaza, climate change, and support of a potential ban on TikTok have prompted some Gen Z influencers who backed him in 2020 to say they don’t support his reelection campaign. Since joining TikTok in February, Biden has managed to amass only 390,000 followers on the app, a fraction of Donald Trump’s TikTok following of more than 7 million. A content creator who goes by the name Conscious Lee and has 2.6 million followers on TikTok said, “I don’t think that they value the creator economy because of how they criminalized content creation by banning TikTok,” adding that he disliked Democratic Party policies on Gaza.

Editors for the English version of Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites in the world, voted to consider the ADL “generally unreliable regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” That prompted a letter Monday to the Wikimedia Foundation expressing “concern and dismay by Wikipedia’s attack on ADL’s reliability on the topic of antisemitism.” In recent months, the ADL' pro-Israel stances have compromised its reputation, critics say. The organization has faced multiple controversies in recent months, with some criticizing the methodology it uses to quantify the number of antisemitic attacks, its college campus antisemitism report cards and even its definition of antisemitism.

 Children across the country returned from virtual learning much further behind in math — a subject where each skill builds on another and gaps in understanding can leave students lost — than they were in reading. Between fall 2019 and 2022, national test scores sank four points in reading and nine points in math for 13-year-olds — the largest drop in math in half a century. Educators worry they must turn things around fast, or else a big cohort of children will be ill-prepared for higher-level math courses, college and ultimately for the kinds of sought-after jobs in technology and science that could give them more financial stability and propel the economy.

Despite the economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic, President Biden has struggled to convince Americans that his policies are improving their finances. In polls, the majority of Americans still say they trust former president Donald Trump’s handling of the economy over Biden’s. Both presidents’ economic records have been defined by the pandemic and its aftershocks. The covid crisis upended the job market, stoked decades-high inflation and added trillions of dollars to the federal debt. Here are 12 charts showing the state of the economy now vs. under Trump.