- On Monday, the Enquirer printed an open letter to the Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati from a local Catholic-school grad, imploring him to drop Common Core from all the schools under his purview. The lad says Common Core will “remove parents from the education process, reduce teachers to paper-pushers, and concern learning with the vocational rather than the metaphysical.” As if you couldn’t tell from the letter and his avatar photo (or from his aggressive attempts to control the online discussion board in the Enquirer website), this young fellow is a political science major - at none other than Hillsdale College. Go figure. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- I wasn’t going to clip the above piece, but since the Superintendent of the Catholic Diocese of Cincinnati decided to pen a response, I thought they would make an excellent counterpoint to one another. He says that the Diocese is “adapting, not adopting” Common Core. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- Speaking of Common Core, the very first administration of PARCC’s performance-based assessments in English and Algebra 1 is occurring in Ohio this week. That is, tests that actually count. The folks in Bay Village schools seem confident that their teachers – and their students – have it in the bag thanks to helpful prep, sample questions, and guidance from PARCC. Nice. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- As predicted earlier, the effort to eliminate mandatory pay schedules for teachers from Ohio law died when the language was removed from HB 343 in the House Education Committee. Committee Chair Stebelton said the language was a drag on other more important provisions in the bill. With the “drag” removed, HB 343 later sailed through the full House on a vote of 84-2. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- Also up for a full House vote this week was HB 460, which authorizes any interested district to develop and implement its own version of the “community learning center” model, currently being piloted in Cincinnati. Auxiliary, “non-education” services are co-located at schools to provide easy access for families with the district acting as coordinator. The bill passed easily: 85-3. (Gongwer Ohio)
- Columbus City Schools’ board-level budget committee held its first meeting yesterday, having been reconstituted after nearly 10 years of “policy governance” that did not include budgetary guidance. After the introductory chit chat and happy talk about ice cream socials, what’s the number one issue these gurus want to tackle? “Understanding how charter-school funding affects the district’s finances”. Really? THAT’S first? (Columbus Dispatch)
- I’m no budgetary expert, but perhaps the pay and benefit levels for their own teachers might be something the CCS budget committee might want to get their heads around before deciding to look outside of the district for budgetary bogeymen. (Columbus Dispatch)
