Gadfly Bites 10/17/25—Possibly potentially perhaps

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1. In case you missed it, we here at Fordham released a new report examining Ohio’s current diploma requirements as well as recent trends in high school graduation and student achievement. As you might have guessed, author Aaron Churchill uncovers troubling discrepancies between graduation and proficiency rates, indicating that many students leave high school without the strong academic preparation they deserve from our schools. Kudos to several TV news outlets around the state who covered the release, including ABC 6 News in Columbus and Dayton 24/7/Now News. If you want kudos, you should read or download the full report from the link at the top of this clip.
   
   

2. The only other story of note today is ongoing confabulation among Columbus City Schools’ elected board members about all of the possible things they might maybe do to potentially perhaps help cut their budget before they most definitely and assuredly hit a fiscal wall. Make of all the hemming and hawing what you will (especially the prospective palaver about potentially conceivably limiting intradistrict school choice). Personally, I’m still waiting for them to actually and verifiably close, vacate, and sell the district’s valuable downtown headquarters property, which they indisputedly voted to do back in December. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/16/25)

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