- Quality in Adversity coverage, Round 2, includes some brief national notices on top of Ohio-based reportage:
- Public media reporter Andy Chow joined us in Columbus for the report release event on Tuesday. He took the time to interview the researchers, the panelists, and even an audience member. Take a listen. (WKSU-FM, 1/27/16)
- Marianne Lombardo, of Democrats for Ed Reform, was with us in Columbus on Tuesday as well. Here is her very personal take on the event as well as a rundown of the survey’s findings. (EdReform Now blog, 1/28/16)
- National coverage was….perfunctory. You can check out Ed Week’s blurb (Education Week, 1/27/16)
- Or Politico’s (Politico Education morning blog, 1/27/16). Thanks for taking notice guys!
- In other Ohio education survey news, nearly half (48 percent) of Ohio voters with children in K-12 public schools think that students do not have enough time to eat lunch at school. (PR Newswire, 1/28/16)
- And speaking of asking questions, someone is asking the right one in suburban Cincinnati: Are the local schools keeping people from moving to Hamilton? This question was asked of realtors and they said it is among the top two reasons why home buyers will avoid Hamilton. Real estate agents are the unsung warriors in many Ohio cities – working harder than mayors and councilmembers and tourist bureaus combined to sell their towns. Literally. So the city boosters were wise to ask, to listen, and as a result of the answer to make sure the local schools had a place at the economic development table for Hamilton going forward. They’re not throwing away their shot at growth. But realtors are also young, scrappy and hungry. The latter part of this piece shows how far they’ll go to make a sale if the “good schools” angle doesn’t materialize despite the efforts of city boosters. When you’re livin’ on your knees, you rise up. If you’re a realtor, yo. (Dayton Daily News, 1/27/16)
- As previewed last week, the judge unfortunate enough to have ended up with all the Youngstown Plan litigation on his docket ruled Wednesday on that pesky question: what is the definition of teacher? His decision (“teacher” means “current classroom instructor”) invalidated the Youngstown board president’s appointee to the new Academic Distress Commission. The judge gave her until today to choose a new appointee that fit the definition or to appeal. She chose, again, to appeal. (Youngstown Vindicator, 1/28/16)
- Some interesting nuts-and-bolts work being done to get Ohio’s new $25 million Community School Classroom Facilities grant program up and running. Check out this piece for information on application requirements. There’s also some interesting stuff going on with the Global Impact STEM Academy in Springfield and the Ohio School for the Blind and Deaf. Worth a read. (Gongwer Ohio, 1/28/16)
- We end with a trio of oddball pieces. First up, from the hotbed of Common Core opposition Hillsdale College, we have a guest commentary piece opposing…Common Core. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 1/28/16). Next up, a lengthy piece from public television looking at construction education for high school girls; especially the “Construction Pathway” at Woodward Technical High School in Cincinnati. This is, of course, awesome, but I don’t know why it seems so novel. My final high school GPA was a skosh lower than that of a young lady from the “vocational school” who I didn’t even know was competing with me. She got to make a speech on graduation day; I did not. I’m not bitter, because it was a long time ago. We’re talking geologic era ago. (PBS NewsHour, 1/28/16). Finally, we arrive at the one arena where (in Ohio at least) school choice is not usually a dirty word – high school sports. The Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) has long embraced educational options, especially if said “alternatives” can field a team of some sort. More games = more money = good. That goodwill was tested at the start of this school year when charter school students were expected to join the ranks of district teams, resulting in a shuffling of league membership based on putative class sizes in various schools. That got shelved, but another league shuffling is almost ready to go. The only hold up is what sounds to be some serious student-info-tracking software. After reading the brief description of “Deep Blue”, I am left with three questions: a) What would our Hillsdale lad and his mentors make of this data mining? b) Why don’t school districts (or charters or the state) have such sophisticated data on students’ movements? c) Can some entity get a license on that software in order to develop a central school choice application system? I’d even be OK if it assigned each kid to a sport along with the best possible school. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/28/16)
