Gadfly Bites 10/2/19 – Audacity

1. What is a curmudgeonly education news clips compiler to do when two of his most regular sources of questionable reasoning oppose one another on the pages of a major daily newspaper? To wit: the elected school board of Columbus City Schools is proposing to raise significantly the passing score for third grade reading in the district. The head of the local teachers union says that this is going to result in a ton of useless paperwork for his members, which will then take away from instructional time for all students. To further bolster their point, the union says that the administration is trying to game the K-3 literacy measure by this plan, to make the district look better. Out loud. In public! For its part, the administration touts an effort to raise the bar for students in the critical area of third grade literacy. You see my dilemma?! Surely one of them is right. Right? (Columbus Dispatch, 10/1/19)
2. Perrysburg Exempted Village Schools in Northwest Ohio is facing a projected budget shortfall. This triggered a performance audit by the state, the results of which are due soon and are being hotly anticipated by all. You know the drill: “we can’t possibly cut X, even if the savings are obvious”, “if only we had a new levy”, and “kids might DIE!!!!”. The usual rhetoric in these situations. (Bowling Green Sentinel-Tribune, 10/2/19)

3. A tale of two report cards: Wauseon Exempted Village Schools got an overall C this year, which its supe insists (say it along with me!) doesn’t accurately reflect the performance of the district’s students. Despite evidence to the contrary. He also says that he will “certainly dig into our data and see what areas we can improve upon.” Just like he’s supposed to. (Fulton County Expositor, 10/1/19) Very tiny New Miami Local Schools also got an overall C this year, and its superintendent seems really happy about it. She also will be “reaching for higher goals” by “looking at the data that represents our students.” Just like she’s supposed to. Oh, and something about football too. Go Vikings. (The Journal-News, 10/2/19)
4. “There aren’t that many public schools that have the audacity to promote their offerings to future students in the hope that they will choose them instead of attending area non-public and parochial schools.” So says the reporter writing about Lakewood High Schools beloved Showcase Night (the reporter!). With the report card that Lakewood just got, I’d say that the script is not the only thing being flipped around here. (Cleveland.com, 10/2/19)

5. Meanwhile, in East Cleveland City Schools—a.k.a. the Quietest Academic Distress Commission District There Ever Was—the CEO sounds like he’s already hard at work finding and fixing what ails his district (to the tune of another overall F). And those ills have been a long time developing. “We're going to get better,” he said. “We're going to do school better… We're enlisting our community allies, we're doing a lot of professional development with our teachers. We're going to get better. It's all about performance, our children have to perform better to get us out of the situation we're in.” Yep. Just like he’s supposed to. (WKYC-TV, Cleveland, 10/1/19)
6. “Teacher? What’s ‘phooey grass’?” (Dayton Daily News, 10/1/19)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox (in case you want to show your personal audacity and sign up for such a newsletter)? Subscribe by clicking here.