- Gongwer noticed the release of Fordham’s report card analysis, released last week. Thanks! Love your spiffy new website too. (Gongwer Ohio, 9/30/16)
- The ongoing kerfuffle between Ohio’s largest online school and the Ohio Department of Education regarding an attendance audit took some sort of lurch on Friday when a judge rejected a preliminary injunction against the state agency sought by the school and some of its parents regarding the parameters of said audit. I can’t say that I understand it entirely, but I think it may go like this: the judge determined that a contract between the school and ODE dating from 2002/3 is not the guiding principal for the current attendance audit and that ODE's current/new definition of attendance is or should be. Unless that ruling is successfully appealed, the judge believes that all other lines of argument the school is currently using to stop the required payback (based on the audit results ODE released last week) will not succeed. Even if I’ve correctly summarized what happened, this ruling probably doesn’t mean that the kerfuffle is over. You can check out coverage of the ruling and what a handful of other, avidly interested, and probably better-informed folks than me think of this development in the Plain Dealer (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9/30/16) and in Gongwer. (Gongwer Ohio, 9/30/16)
- The current, old-style Academic Distress Commission in Lorain City Schools is in its waning days. Its most recent meeting will not, I think, go down as one of its highlights. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 10/2/16)
- One of the things that Lorain parents have to look forward to – and potentially take advantage of – under the new-style Academic Distress Commission coming down the pike is the fact that every student in the district will be eligible for the EdChoice Scholarship. That is, a voucher to attend a private school of their choice. No questions asked. Here is an interesting look at the only other district in Ohio under the aegis of a new-style ADC – Youngstown – in which it appears that despite the ubiquitous eligibility for vouchers, Catholic school enrollment is down this year. Could it be that families are still not being informed of their eligibility, despite it being universal? Could it be that the number of K-12 students remaining in the city is simply going down across the board? Or is it perhaps that Catholic schools are the only private schools taking vouchers. Just askin’. (Youngstown Vindicator, 10/2/16)
