Gadfly Bites 11/30/20 – “I had to wake up. I had to realize this is my future I’m talking about.”

NOTE: Gadfly Bites is back after a Thanksgiving break. Clips cover November 25 – 30. 

1. In case you missed it over the holiday weekend, Governor DeWine signed into law a bill that, among other things, makes fundamental changes to the EdChoice voucher program. (Hometown Stations, Lima, 11/29/20) Prior to the bill’s enactment, Cleveland Jewish News dug into the details. Interesting analysis; interesting tone. (Cleveland Jewish News, 11/27/20)
    
2. And speaking of legislation, the proposed school funding overhaul pending in the General Assembly got a big thumbs up from the education establishment, if this op-ed is anything to go by…and from Howard Fleeter too, it seems. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/30/20)
   
   

3. In other weekend/holiday break news: the planned 2021 administration of NAEP testing was postponed to 2022 due to coronavirus considerations. What does the Ohio Department of Education have to say about it? Spectrum News and about a million other Ohio news outlets are glad you asked. (Spectrum News 1, 11/26/20)
    
4. Sticking with pandemic-related news for a moment, this piece is about the state of mind of Columbus City Schools students as the rona continues to distort the shape of their school year with no normality in sight. There’s a lot here in a brief space, as seen through the eyes of high school junior Daizhon Cox, which makes a lot of sense given the situation. Check it out. (ABC6, Columbus, 11/26/20) Even more interesting: Here’s another place that’s not a school building but does seem to be much more like “normal” school than what Daizhon describes above. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/29/20)
   
   

5. In non-rona news, you will recall that 2019-2020 was the first year that all of Akron City Schools’ high schools became college or career academies. Obviously, things took an unexpected turn in March, but this piece apparently hails from just before that time. It is the first of three pieces looking at the current state of play in Akron and some additional changes coming to the district’s middle schools as feeders into that new system. At least one thing we didn’t know before March: the academy thing is borrowed wholesale from Nashville’s public school system. This piece, nearly eight months late in appearing, looks at how that system is performing. Super great, if Nashville hosts (and Akron visitors) say so themselves. And their word is nearly all that we the readers are given in terms of analysis. The only data provided is a boost in high school graduation rates (like literally every other high school in America over the same period), one example of a kid who was allowed to take his state tests on a different schedule, and how so-called “student-based” budgeting can be used to buy vans for kids to drive around in. (Tellingly, the phrase “It means the money follows the student wherever they go to school, and a building receives more if they have higher needs, like more English language learners” is buried at the bottom of the piece.) Sadly, Nashville school officials did not find a single student, current or former, who actually followed an academy pathway into a job after more than 15 years of implementation. Hopefully that issue might be addressed in future pieces. (Akron Beacon Journal, 11/29/20) Meanwhile, Galion City Schools just got a big grant to beef up its before- and after-school programs – apparently to teach kids a bunch of stuff they probably already should be learning in actual school. (And for whom some folks are already being paid, no doubt.) There’s no mention of rona-related considerations, thus I also assume this whole set up predates the pandemic. If so, it just reinforces my suspicions about how schools’ pre-pandemic quality has influenced the way they responded to it. (Crawford Source, 11/30/20) Speaking of repeating patterns: In 2017, Dayton City Schools lowered its GPA for sports eligibility to 1.0—a.k.a. “rock bottom”—with a set of requirements that students between 1.0 and 1.99 had to follow to maintain that eligibility, including regular attendance at “study tables”. At a meeting of the elected board of Dayton City Schools this week, members were told that those study table efforts “didn’t last very long.” In response, the elected board members voted unanimously to raise the GPA floor from 1.0 to 1.5, and to give the failed study table plan another go for students between 1.5 and 1.99. They also voted to buy more RTA passes for students to use whenever schools reopen, so they are at least consistent in doubling down on stuff that has proven not to work, rona realities be damned! (Dayton Daily News, 11/27/20)
    
6. Finally this week, Youngstown City Schools has a new strategic plan, as presented by the CEO and approved by the Academic Distress Commission. Unlike the last one, this version covers ten years (ten!) and is not the subject of any lawsuits. Yet. (Mahoning Matters, 11/26/20) 

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