- Our own Jessica Poiner is cited in this high-level discussion of recently-released federal guidance on new Academic Enrichment Block Grants designed to fund a more varied curriculum, a more positive school environment and a more integrated use of technology in schools nationwide. Nice! (EdSource, 10/23/16)
- Closer to home, the media scrutiny of Ohio’s largest online school continues apace. Our own Chad Aldis is quoted on the necessity of fully owning one’s statistics – for good or ill. (Dispatch, 10/23/16)
- Last week, it was pointed out that Ohio’s new charter sponsor evaluation results showed the Ohio Department of Education was in the bottom tier of sponsor quality and therefore might have been in danger of losing all the schools they sponsor. Fear not – turns out the legislation creating the sponsor review process had a safe harbor provision for the department in regard to this. Whew! (Columbus Dispatch, 10/21/16) This is especially good news because all of the other low-rated sponsors’ schools are now scrambling to find new sponsors on the off-chance that their current ones (mostly school districts) are forced by the ratings to end their sponsorship work. This very scenario was on the minds of journalists in both Newark… (Newark Advocate, 10/21/16) …and in Marion last week. (Marion Star, 10/23/16)
- Take a moment to recall that a small band of journalists from some smallish Ohio papers, including the aforementioned Marion Star, are responsible for breaking the frankly awful story of META Solutions, a provider of tech services to hundreds of schools throughout Ohio which is now engulfed in state and federal investigations involving millions of dollars of public money allegedly misspent, misused, or simply missing. Here is an update on that story, in which we are reminded that the original wellspring of the META Solutions monolith was a single district-sponsored online school and warning us that both the school and that district’s impending levy request might be collateral damage in the fallout around META. This is not the outrage I had been asking about. (Marion Star, 10/23/16)
