- Who knew that Monday’s stinker of a story from Fairless Local Schools would come home to roost (still with the bird puns!) so soon? Here is the story of an already rather high-flying Fairless Falcon senior whose sneaker art is getting legit play in some very high places. Stop that this instant! You need to think smaller, dude, and not be embarrassed about it. Don’t you listen to your elders? (Canton Repository, 12/2/19)
- There was a conference call held at some point around Thanksgiving that I must have missed. (Like someone would invite little old me anyway.) How else to explain why every media outlet from Fairlawn to Forbes is currently echoing the same refrain: “good school districts in Ohio are now eligible for EdChoice”. (And including the words “suddenly” and “explosion” seemed to have been given as a helpful hint on the call as well.) Unfortunately, a lot of the details about what’s really happening are getting lost in the rush, as I have previously noted. This version of the story from a TV station in Youngstown (a place whose voucher eligibility levels should probably not be questioned with too much vigor) has a bit of wonky information in it, but it does get kudos for including comments from a number of local private school leaders. (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 12/2/19) Jeremy Kelly is not one for wonky information, and his piece on the new voucher eligibility list in the Dayton area is as thorough as it is possible to be. As a result, however, the conference call talking points and protestations of doom, disaster, and insanity—included because they are actual quotes from interviewees who know them—fall a little flat in my estimation. (Dayton Daily News, 12/4/19) And here is the aforementioned Forbes piece. The “national perspective”, I guess you could call it. Although parts of it do sound familiar. (Forbes, 12/3/19)
- Speaking of the Dayton area, EdWeek has a really good look at one second grade classroom in a Mad River Local Schools elementary school which has shown some strong academic gains by switching its reading instruction to comprehensive literacy. Why no, that school building is not on the EdChoice eligibility list. Why ever do you ask? (Education Week, 12/3/19)
- We end today with a detailed and interesting look at how two northeast Ohio county education service commissions (ESCs) are helping their member districts to connect education to business needs in the area. For some it’s STEM/drones/3D printing, for others it’s entrepreneurship projects, and for some districts it’s having teachers spend hours shadowing business leaders and laborers to find ways to connect in-class math instruction to the working world. Sounds good, right? (Youngstown Business Journal, 12/3/19)
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