Welcome back to our first edition of 2024. Sorry you didn’t have anything better to do on January 2 than this. Today, we cover Ohio education news clips from 12/22 – 12/31/23.
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- This is just the kind of story that would pique my colleague Aaron Churchill’s interest, I reckon: The treasurer of Girard City Schools just signed a new five-year contract that includes the curious provision that he get a cut of all federal, state, and local grants the district receives. His new deal is 2.5 percent, up from 1 percent in his previous two-year contract, but back to the same percentage in his last five-year deal. Reached for comment, Aaron said bluntly that to him it “seems like a lot of money.” One additional curiosity: The dude has been on the job for 26 years. That can’t be typical, either, but there may be an obvious explanation for that longevity buried somewhere in the article. (Tribune Chronicle, 12/24/23)
- This is yet another clearly-explained story regarding the benefits of implementing the science of reading in elementary classrooms, including the stark improvement seen in students as compared to previous instructional methods which had been used without question for years. And the thing which always sticks with me: The tone of remorse from veteran teachers who “just didn’t know” about the alternative to what they were taught in their ed schools, even when that received wisdom didn’t seem to work well at all. The quotes are all there—too many quotes to include in this clip—so you should just read it all. (Ashland Source, 12/28/23)
- There’s a lot of Ohio info in this Wall Street Journal story on homeschooling. Big questions are asked, such as: Are the current crop of homeschool families the same as the O.G.s from the 70s and 80s? Where does homeschooling fit among the panoply of modern school choice options like ESAs and universal vouchers? And what role can/should accountability (test-based or otherwise) play in homeschooling. The answer to each, by my reckoning, is “it depends on the homeschoolers”. (Wall Street Journal, 12/28/23)
- Your homework for the afternoon: Compare the earnestness and motivations evinced by the teachers quoted in the foregoing piece with the earnestness and motivations evinced by the legal filings quoted in this piece—which catches us up on the lawsuit against Ohio’s science of reading legislation—and see which you think might merit a raised eyebrow or two. (Cleveland.com, 12/29/23)
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