Is there a way to fix sims getting pushed to use items that don't increase performance? The children in my schools are pushed to practice writing, but it just drops performance as though they aren't doing anything. The same happens with reading skill books.

The mod itself is as it is, since its not hosted on our site, the creator retired from S3 modding and didn't want to share the master-resources. Unfortunately you have to restrict to the objects for those careers listed on here: http://zerbu.blogspot.nl/p/ultimate-careers-v3.html.
Though the computer is used by the teachers (education career), you need to find a way to separate area's that is only teacher allowed and place a computer there. The Skill Books should though give children some gain, though it might be a glitch in the mod itself.

There is an alternative you can use and its a tuning file that works alongside with the Zerbu UC mod, what it does is that it stops the performance drop if an object is used that's not listed for its career or that the Sim is off the lot. More info and where to get it is here: <a class="wiki_link_ext" href="https://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/20 ... rs-tuning/" rel="nofollow">https://simsinthewoods.wordpress.com/20 ... tuning/</a>

I didn't know about this tuning file. I'll have to try it. Thanks!