Test-based retention policies require students to repeat a grade if they do not meet a minimum level of academic performance on, you guessed it, a test. These policies have been around a long time and continue to sow division, with some believing that repeating a grade allows students time to develop the skills needed for the subsequent grade while others posit that the potential costs (like heightened behavioral problems and higher dropout rates) are too high.

RAND lends some empirical fodder to the debate in their latest study on the topic. They examine the causal effects of retention that occurred in grades three through eight on student behavior and various other high school outcomes. Specifically, they use twelve years of student data from New York City, ending in 2011–12, to determine the effect of retention on suspensions, absenteeism, dropout rates, credit accumulation, and graduation. Their sample included nearly 93,000 students.

The district policy required that students who scored in the lowest performance category (Level 1) on either the math or English language arts state standardized test be assigned to mandatory summer school unless they demonstrated at least a Level 2 performance through a “portfolio” (unfortunately, we’re not told what that entails). At the end of summer school, students took a second test in the subjects on which they had scored at Level 1 in the spring. Students still scoring at Level 1 are retained unless a portfolio review of their summer work evidences Level 2 performance or they get a principal’s exemption. (Yes, all of this sounds quite squishy!)

Policy squishiness aside, RAND is able to use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that allowed them to compare students scoring at the Level 1/Level 2 cut-off on the end-of-summer test. In the RDD design, students are expected to be similar, save that their test scores fall just above or just below the cut-off to be eligible for retention. The study examines outcomes for both Level 1 and Level 2 students at the boundary. There were three key findings.

First, analysts found no systemic evidence that retention impacted suspensions (being suspended or the number of days suspended) for up to three years after retention. Similarly, no effects were found on school attendance or chronic absenteeism. When each grade was examined individually, a few isolated, temporary effects were found when students transitioned into and out of middle school, but they didn’t amount to much.

Second, retained students averaged fewer accumulated credits over their time in high school. Students retained in middle school (grades six through eight) were more negatively impacted than those retained in elementary school (grades three through five). Likewise, students retained in elementary schools were no more likely to drop out than were the promoted students; however, students retained in middle school were more likely than their promoted counterparts to drop out once they passed their on-time graduation year.

Last, retention did not improve the likelihood of graduating. There was no significant difference in the eventual graduation rates between retained and promoted students after the retained ones had the opportunity to also reach grade twelve.

Bottom line: If schools must retain kids, it’s better to do it in the elementary than secondary grades (other studies find benefits to third-grade retention). The seventeen states and numerous districts that now have retention policies should keep that in mind. But that also means that we need to figure out how to help older students who have fallen behind. Our current methods, like “alternative pathways” and credit recovery, clearly aren’t cutting it.

SOURCE: Louis T. Marian et al., “How Does Repeating a Grade Impact Students' High School Persistence and Behavior? The Case of New York City,” RAND Corporation (July 2018).

This summer, President Trump signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act into law. The legislation, often referred to as Perkins V, is the long-awaited reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006. It governs how states implement and expand access to career and technical education (CTE) programs and provides over a billion dollars in federal funding.

Perkins V included a variety of changes and additions to previous law. (Check out this brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education for a detailed overview.) These changes include new requirements regarding what must be included in state plans submitted to the feds for approval. Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education released for public comment its first official guidance on state plans. The public comment window closes on December 24, and finalized guidance will likely be released after the start of 2019.

Within his introduction to the guidance, Assistant Secretary Scott Stump shared his hope that states would use implementation of the new law as an opportunity to “rethink” CTE. He offered a variety of suggestions for doing so, including a call for states to examine “how to make work-based learning, including ‘earn and learn’ programs such as apprenticeships, be the rule and not the exception.”

This suggestion should come as no surprise. Secretary DeVos has expressed her admiration of the apprenticeship system in Switzerland, and the president signed an executive order for worker training that includes a focus on expanding apprenticeship programs. The apprenticeship model and CTE in general enjoy broadly bipartisan support. And most importantly, apprenticeships have value: A 2012 Mathematica study found that those who participated in registered apprenticeships had substantially higher earnings than nonparticipants, and that the social benefits were much larger than the costs.

But touting apprenticeships from the bully pulpit is different than creating, funding, and implementing high quality apprenticeship programs at the state and local level. And apprenticeships aren’t the only form of work-based learning out there. Perkins V defines work-based learning as “sustained interactions with industry or community professionals in real workplace settings...or simulated environments at an educational institution that foster in-depth, firsthand engagement with the tasks required in a given career field.” There are all kinds of models that fit this description.

Nevertheless, Assistant Secretary Stump is right that the new Perkins law is a great opportunity for states to invest in work-based learning programs. Here are a few ideas on how interested states could make it work.

Follow the lead of other states

There are plenty of states that have already invested considerable time, talent, and money into work-based learning programs. For instance, PrepareRI is an initiative of the Rhode Island state government that operates in partnership with businesses, schools, universities, and non-profits throughout the state. It is based on a strategic plan with eight priorities aimed at improving career readiness, and work-based learning is one of them. Specifically, PrepareRI calls for all high school students to have access to work-based learning at school by 2020. The state recognizes multiple varieties—including internships, service learning, and industry projects—and has published detailed guidance about each.

Another great example is Delaware, where the Delaware Pathways program provides high school and postsecondary students with work-based learning opportunities for in-demand careers. The program recently received a $3.25 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to, among other things, expand the Office of Work-Based Learning at Delaware Technical Community College.

Wisconsin is also doing good work. The Badger State has established a youth apprenticeship program as part of its statewide school-to-work initiative. It is designed specifically for high school students and integrates school-based and work-based learning within local programs in a variety of career fields.

Focus on partnerships and cross-sector collaboration

Perkins V allows states to use certain funds to establish statewide partnerships between middle and high schools, higher education institutions, employers, and other partners. In states like Rhode Island and Delaware, these partnerships already exist. But in places where they don’t, states should take advantage of the law’s flexibility and funding to establish them.

Take advantage of resources and tools

Whether states are looking to create new programs and frameworks or simply build on what already exists, there’s no need to start from scratch. Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit that focuses on reforming both education and the workforce, has created a work-based learning framework and has published reports and a host of other resources through its Center for Apprenticeship and Work-Based Learning. New America recently examined the link between college and work-based learning and published eight recommendations for how to more effectively tie together apprenticeships and higher education. And this summer, the American Enterprise Institute released a report that examines how community colleges could play a more active role in growing apprenticeship opportunities.

In 2017, the National Center for Innovation in Career and Technical Education created a Work-Based Learning Tool Kit for state and local program administrators. It’s a treasure trove of data and information, including summaries of how work-based learning fits into federal legislation like Perkins, ESSA, and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act; recommendations for engaging employers, collecting data, and scaling programs; and links and resources from states that are leading the charge in work-based learning, such as North Carolina and Tennessee.

Incentivize businesses to participate

It’s a no-brainer that to make work-based learning viable, businesses will have to be involved. There are plenty of business that will jump at the chance to partner with schools and programs, but others may need additional enticement. That’s why states should consider creating a tax-credit program that would allow employers to reduce their state tax liabilities based on the number of students who complete work-based learning opportunities with their organization. By doing so, states could recruit new business and corporations to participate and help employers bear the costs of training and supervision, as well as wages in the case of apprenticeships.

***

Obviously, the information outlined here is not exhaustive. There are plenty of other resources out there and plenty of programs and partnerships that are already doing great work. But the most important thing to keep in mind is why work-based learning deserves to be a priority in every state: It provides students with meaningful opportunities to develop academic and career skills, it unites a broad range of partners—businesses, secondary and postsecondary education institutions, and community partners—in achieving a shared goal, and it has the potential to improve the state’s bottom line, as well as those of participants. Sounds like a win-win to me.

The distinguished Stanford education historian David F. Labaree recently published a perceptive, provocative essay in the Kappan that I found myself nodding in agreement with about three-quarters of the time and shaking my head the other quarter. His thesis: Over time, American K–12 education has largely replaced its commitment to advancing the public good with a more selfish focus on securing private gains of various kinds.

His account of the need for a robust form of “common” education in the early days of the nation is compelling: “As the founders well knew, the survival of the American republic depended on its ability to form individuals into a republican community in which citizens were imbued with a commitment to the public good.” But as the “common school movement” evolved during the first half of the nineteenth century, it also had to contend with “the possessive individualism of the emerging free-market economy.”

As “public education” spread across the land, therefore, its mission “wasn’t just to teach young people to internalize democratic norms but also to make it possible for capitalism to coexist with republicanism.” (There is, of course, a very different historical narrative to be found in works such as Boston University professor Charles Glenn’s The Myth of the Common School.)

By the late nineteenth century, U.S. schooling—Roman Catholics were by then going off on their own—was still mostly portrayed as a “public good,” and in important ways still was, notably in the Americanization of immigrants. But, explains Labaree, the stability of the republic was no longer in much jeopardy, and education had taken on an important additional mission, which was preparing young people for productive roles in a modern industrial economy.

There’s a public element to that, too, of course, for as it equips individuals with skills and habits, it also builds human capital, strengthens the nation’s economic competitiveness, makes the next generation self-sufficient, and so on. But as it readies people for jobs and careers of their own, the “private good” aspect of schooling also comes into sharper relief. Which is why most economists, rather than agonize over whether education is exclusively a public or a private good, simply recognize that it’s both. The two, however, must remain in some sort of equilibrium if both missions are to be successfully conducted. And Labaree clearly thinks they’ve lost that balance.

“All but gone,” he writes, “is the assumption that the purpose of schooling is to benefit the community at large. Less and less often do Americans conceive of education as a cooperative effort in nation-building or a collective investment in workforce development.”

He’s surely correct that it isn’t much talked about in those terms nowadays. Indeed, schools are pummeled today from both sides of our schismatic polity, pushed to celebrate diversity (with the unum often buried under the pluribus), to be culturally sensitive, to individualize education, to give families more choices, to operate “portfolios” of schools rather than “school systems,” and much, much more.

All true, and in its way both good and bad.

But it’s not the whole story, and Labaree seems to ignore the other important chapter: the push for higher academic standards, for closing achievement gaps, for building a “common core” into the curriculum, and for holding schools—all schools, at least all schools that call themselves “public”—to account for their students’ achievement as measured on common statewide metrics. All of this is true, too, and yes it also has both good and bad elements. But it’s a powerful push toward the “common” side of schooling and toward an overall K–12 system that meets the larger society’s needs, not just those of self-absorbed individuals and helicopter parents.

The two great thrusts of education reform in my lifetime have been, on the one hand, the push for more choice, and on the other, the push for more rigorous and uniform standards and the higher levels of achievement—for all kids, not just some—that are intended to accompany them.

Yes, there’s tension between those endeavors. And yes, I’ve also come to think (and have written) that in important ways they’re interdependent, not antitheses, and that we need both—in some sort of equilibrium—if either is to succeed. That duality parallels, in just about every respect, the tension between private and public that Labaree correctly identifies. But from where I sit, we’ve still got both, they’re very much still in a state of tension, and that’s a good thing. What he’s plainly correct about is that we don’t talk much nowadays about “common schooling,” and most schools’ curriculum pays far too little heed to what should be its civic dimensions. And that, sadly, is vividly demonstrated in the words and actions of far too many of today’s so-called adults.

1. As all my loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers know (love to all six of you!), your humble clips compiler loathes politics. So, as you can imagine, it is a very fallow week for proper news clips. I’ll soldier on, of course, but if any of you wanted to drop your subscription after reading this pathetic edition, I couldn’t blame you. The “driver's education company” Aceable has for some inexplicable reason released a list of the 25 most beautiful high schools in Ohio. For an even more inexplicable reason, the Enquirer has chosen to make this into “education news”. Can’t hurt that the top two schools are in the Cincy area, I imagine. But seriously, school quality is more about what goes on inside, right? Are any of these schools on the whole list any good academically? Oh. Maybe this is not inexplicable after all. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 11/4/18)

2. Perhaps when the dust clears in Ohio’s ongoing War on Knowing Stuff, kids will get points toward a diploma based on the beauty of their high school building. That’d be cool. This piece—mainly just a bullet-point rundown of items discussed at the most recent meeting of the elected board of Canton City Schools—indicates that perhaps the war may be nearing an end. In it, we learn that nearly 40 percent of Canton’s Class of 2018 needed the alternative, non-academic pathways to earn a diploma. Currently, more than 47 percent of the Class of 2019 “need” those pathways to graduate. But, of course, those pathways are not available for the Class of 2019 at this time. That is why the board also passed a resolution urging state lawmakers to extend those pathways for 2019 and beyond. Might as well go ahead now because McKinley High School is not ever going to make it on anyone’s list of beautiful schools. (Canton Repository, 11/5/18)

NOTE: I’m going to leave off the subscription link joke today because of the extremely uninspiring content. If you want to subscribe, you know what to do. Hopefully things will improve soon.

Across the nation, urban public charter schools are posting impressive student achievement gains. Under pressure to achieve similar results, many traditional public districts have chosen to follow in charter schools’ footsteps and grant some of their schools more autonomy. These hybrid schools are still operated and supported by district officials but are permitted to opt out of certain district policies and practices in staffing, learning models, curriculum, budgeting, school calendar and schedule, and professional development.

But does giving traditional public schools more autonomy actually raise student achievement? A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute answers this question by analyzing state standardized test scores in four districts that operate autonomous schools: Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles. The authors control for race and ethnicity, language proficiency, socio-economic status, and special education status.

The data show that a positive relationship exists between school autonomy and student achievement. Students at some autonomous schools in Boston and Los Angeles were more likely to be proficient than their counterparts in traditional public schools, but independent charters outperformed all autonomous school models in Boston, Los Angeles, and Denver.

Memphis was the only exception. In 2010, the state of Tennessee created the Achievement School District (ASD), a state-run turnaround district made up of schools that scored in the bottom 5 percent on state exams. The same legislation that created the ASD permitted districts to create innovation zones, or iZones, for other low-performing schools that would remain under district control but be given increased flexibility and support in exchange for greater accountability. Results indicate that students at independent charters and Memphis’s iZone schools did as well as students at traditional public schools, and better than those at ASD charters. The authors suggest that these unique results may be due to an influx of funding, support, and talent at iZone schools.

To close the report, the authors offer five possible explanations for the findings, including that charters have true autonomy, are schools of choice, and are held accountable for student performance via closure or replacement, unlike their district counterparts. The report also offers recommendations for districts interested in implementing autonomous schools. 

SOURCE: David Osborne and Emily Langhorne, “Can urban districts get charter-like performance with charter-lite schools?” Progressive Policy Institute (August 2018).

1. In case you didn’t know it, the brilliance of Fordham’s Chad Aldis knows no bounds. Earlier this week, he was in Indianapolis to give expert testimony regarding online schools to the Indiana Board of Education. Aldis unleashed! (Chalkbeat Indiana, 8/28/18)
    
2. Missed this on Monday: an important commentary piece connected to Round Two of the Path Forward series in the Dayton Daily News. The author is a business owner who offers a radical suggestion to jump start big picture solutions, especially for minority students: countywide schools. (Dayton Daily News, 8/26/18)
    
3. It’s been super hot here in central Ohio this week. So much so that Columbus City Schools have sent kids home in the afternoons. That fact did not deter the school bus-powered tour conducted yesterday by State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria as he unleashed his new five-year strategic plan for education upon Ohioans. Mother Nature’s was the only heat he seemed likely to encounter because the plan was rapturously received. See today’s title for a preview. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/28/18)
    
4. That invite-only “community meeting” of parents in the Madison Local school district took place yesterday. It went down about how you think. But honestly, reading a couple of the quotes from the event’s ringmaster in this piece, I think maybe lack of STEM education is the least of the district’s worries. They should be looking at the effectivity of their English curriculum too. (Mansfield News Journal, 8/28/18)
    
5. Finally today, no less a light than Eric Hanushek has a commentary piece in the Plain Dealer today—opining that Ohio could take advantage of the growth in tech sector jobs if it just teaches its young people successfully. Oh well. Never mind. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/29/18)
    

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Research tells us what works to serve gifted and talented students, including how best to identify these students and how to use acceleration strategies appropriately. A new resource, Developing Academic Acceleration Policies: Whole Grade, Early Entrance, and Single Subject, offers direction and clarity to school districts on gifted education practices, guidance many practitioners lack today.

Gifted and talented children need and deserve appropriate levels of challenge and stimulation as they reach for their personal best. Unfortunately, far too many children experience low expectations in their classrooms. Recent research by Dr. Scott Peters and others reveals that up to 10 percent of children perform four or more grade levels above the grade level standards used in their classrooms.

Acceleration strategies—such as advancing students an entire grade level or in specific subjects—are one of the most effective approaches to help ensure all children who demonstrate readiness for more advanced instruction receive quality gifted and talented programming. They allow students to access curriculum content, skills, and understandings before their expected age or grade level. Rather than requiring gifted children to endure repetitive work with content they have already mastered, educators can use a variety of acceleration strategies to challenge these learners with more stimulating and enriched content.

NAGC is pleased to collaborate with the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa, the Council of State Directors of Programs for the Gifted (CSDPG), and the Association for the Gifted (TAG-CEC) on Developing Academic Acceleration Policies; and in promoting a well-researched practice with benefits to cognitive, social, and emotional development when used appropriately. As advocates, we continually seek and encourage use of strategies to help society understand the nature and needs of gifted children, to create supportive environments for their learning, and to implement research-based practices that help high-ability children from all backgrounds reach their full potential. Developing Academic Acceleration Policies supports these efforts and shines a light on a strategy that works!

As the authors note, Developing Academic Acceleration Policies “includes a brief discussion about policy, recommended elements of an acceleration policy, corresponding checklists, and an abbreviated summary of research supporting academic acceleration. It provides extensive information and support in the appendices, which are available on the Acceleration Institute website.”

Sally C. Krisel is board president, and M. René Islas is executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children.

The views expressed herein represent the opinions of the authors and not necessarily the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

A few weeks ago, officials at ACT released a report that breaks down the ACT test results of the 2018 graduating class. It examines participation and performance overall, as well as data based on college and career readiness benchmarks in English, reading, math, and science that indicate whether students are prepared to succeed in first-year college courses. 

At the national level, the results are disheartening. The data—which account for more than 1.9 million graduates, or 55 percent of students in the 2018 national graduating class—show that the average composite score dropped from 21 to 20.8. Average scores in all four subjects also slid compared to last year (though only between 0.1 and 0.3 points).

As for the benchmarks, readiness in both math and English has been steadily declining since 2014. This year was no exception: 40 percent of graduates met the math benchmark, the lowest percentage in fourteen years, and 60 percent met the benchmark in English, the lowest level since the benchmarks were first introduced. Reading and science readiness levels were both down by 1 percentage point compared to the year prior, but generally show flat long-term trends.

In Ohio, the declines were larger. The table below indicates that Ohio’s average composite score and the percentage of students meeting readiness benchmarks in all four subjects declined significantly compared to last year.  

It’s understandable that folks might see these sharp declines and start to worry. But in Ohio, the changes can be attributed largely to the increasing number of students taking the test. Among the class of 2017, ACT estimates that 75 percent took the test. But thanks to a change in state policy that required all juniors to take either the ACT or the SAT, this year’s percentage was much higher. Data provided by ACT estimate that 100 percent of the class of 2018 took the test at some point between grades 10 and 12.[1] With such a significant increase in the number of students taking the test—including academically struggling students who may not have taken it otherwise—it’s understandable that Ohio’s performance would drop.

In a previous piece, I explained why statewide administration is good policy even though it may lead to overall declines. Those reasons are worth revisiting now:

Opening doors to postsecondary options. According to ACT, many students who were not considering college have gone on to attend after earning an encouraging score as part of a statewide administration. Many of these students were from traditionally underrepresented groups—minority and low-income students. Data out of Kentucky corroborate ACT’s findings and show that college-going rates have improved since it became state law in 2008 to administer the ACT. Illinois has also experienced a similar increase in overall college enrollment after it began statewide administration.    

Providing useful and easily comparable information. ACT offers national and state-specific annual reports about results. In the past, these resources had limited usefulness because they included only students who chose to take the assessments. Now that all students are participating, the results could help identify achievement gaps, offer more details about progress (or lack thereof) over time, and serve as a comparison point for Ohio’s end-of-course exams and national exams like NAEP. Schools could also use these data to intervene with students in need of remediation before they graduate—which could save students and families both time and money.

Improving alignment to the state accountability system. Although the ACT isn’t included as part of the state’s proficiency and growth components, there is a state report card indicator that takes it into account: the Prepared for Success component. For this component, districts are graded on an A–F scale based on a point system comprised of a variety of measures, including points for each student who earns a remediation-free score on either the ACT or SAT. Previously, only students who chose to take these tests were accounted for; with full participation, we’ll now get a more complete view of how many students are being prepared for post-secondary education. 

***

The decline in Ohio’s composite score and readiness benchmark percentages should be a sobering reminder for Ohioans that there is still plenty of work to be done. But it should not cause panic: The decrease coincides with a significant increase in test-takers, and the results are a far more wide-ranging picture of students’ achievement. Statewide administration ensures that all students have the opportunity to take the exam at least once, including traditionally underrepresented groups and those that may doubt their potential—and that’s good policy.

[1] The methodology for how ACT calculated 100 percent participation is not totally clear, but with the new state law in place it is certain that the percentage of test-takers increased significantly.

Editor’s Note: As Ohioans prepare to elect a new governor this November, and as state leaders look to build upon past education successes, we at the Fordham Institute are developing a set of policy proposals that we believe can lead to increased achievement and greater opportunities for Ohio students. This is the seventh in our series, under the umbrella of supporting great educators. You can access all of the entries in the series to date here.

Proposal: Establish a competitive grant program that would provide funds to implement human-capital initiatives aimed at attracting and/or developing classroom talent. These grants could be used to support innovative compensation strategies, such as differential pay structures, signing or performance bonuses, or assistance with paying off student loans. They could also be used to implement mentoring, evaluation, retention, and development programs that ensure great teachers remain in classrooms and take on instructional leadership roles. The grants should be open to districts, charter and STEM schools, as well as to consortia of educational institutions.

Background: Attracting talented individuals to the teaching profession remains key to developing a high-performing K–12 system. But in an increasingly competitive job market, schools have had trouble drawing top talent into their classrooms. A 2010 McKinsey report found that just 23 percent of U.S. teachers came from the top third of their college graduating class, with only 14 percent of new teachers in high-poverty schools coming from that tier. Although we don’t have comparable statistics for Ohio, data and news reports suggest that a great many of the state’s schools struggle to fill teaching positions, especially in hard-to-staff subjects. A recent analysis, for example, indicates an oversupply of recent graduates in early education and ELA, alongside a shortage of those prepared to teach in the STEM fields. Schools in remote rural communities and inner cities also face challenges attracting top-notch talent into their classrooms. Ohio has undertaken efforts to bolster the teacher pipeline, including the introduction of Teach For America, a national nonprofit that recruits high-performing college graduates. But Ohio schools continue to face challenges recruiting and retaining the best and the brightest young people to work in education.

Proposal rationale: Ohio schools compete with other states and professions to draw talented, motivated individuals into their classrooms. A competitive grant program would encourage districts and schools to pursue new ways to do this.

Cost: The state should allocate $30 million to this program over two fiscal years, $10 million for the first year and $20 million for the second year. This relatively modest amount would support schools seeking to experiment or pilot human-capital initiatives, with the aim of full implementation using general operating funds after grants expire. A portion of state funding should be set aside to ensure rigorous evaluation of the grant-funded initiatives.

Resources: For an analysis on the college performance of U.S. teachers, see the 2010 McKinsey and Company report Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching by Brian Auguste and colleagues. For data on Ohio’s educator workforce, see the 2013 Ohio Research Center report Teacher Supply and Demand in Ohio by Jay Zagorsky and colleagues. For an overview of strategies for teacher recruitment and retention, see the 2016 Center for American Progress report To Attract Great Teachers, School Districts Must Improve Their Human Capital Systems by Annette Konoske-Graf and colleagues. And for examples of innovative staffing models, see Public Impact’s website “Opportunity Culture.”

1. Not much in the way of education news in recent days. Wonder what else reporters are talking about? Whatever it is, the pieces we do have were all posted today, which is a nice way to keep the Bites fresh. First up, Fordham is namechecked in this piece which states that a legislative panel has been named to “find a plan to pay [online] schools based on students’ course completion, for “competency” in subjects or for finishing units within a course” rather than basing payment on reported enrollment. Once they do that, I can’t wait until it gets rolled out to districts too. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 11/5/18)

2. Speaking of online schools, the elected board of Columbus City Schools has decided to make use of the former headquarters of ECOT, which they bought using nearly $4 million in loose change scrounged out of dilapidated couch cushions in various district properties. Other than having six people hang out in the vacant building to let reporters come in, the actual uses still seem to be up in the air. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/5/18)

3. Finally today, here is yet another piece about the “graduation crisis” in Springfield Local Schools. We covered this last week and the same mischaracterizations are included here, so nothing new. But amidst all of the bad news, however, is a ray of good news entirely unremarked upon. Somehow, the percentage of Springfield seniors not on track to graduate has gone down by almost 10 percent since the last report just one week ago. Sounds like great news to me! Why is everyone so up in arms? Keep up that pace and you’ll solve the problem before Christmas, guys. You can do it! I believe in you. (News5, Cleveland, 11/5/18)

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