- Our own Aaron Churchill continues to be the go-to explainer of Ohio’s school and district report cards for media outlets across the state. Here he is on the radio early this morning in Columbus. (WTVN-AM, Columbus, 2/29/16) Here he is over the weekend in print in Dayton, where report card data looks particularly gloomy. (Dayton Daily News, 2/27/16) And here he is in print in Northern Ohio, where the mixed-bag of results has folks scratching their heads a bit. I am just glad, as always, that Aaron is there to explain. (Norwalk Reflector, 2/27/16)
- “You can’t have a computer plumb a house” is the theme of this piece looking at career tech education in Columbus City Schools through the lens of a new report from KidsOhio. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/29/16)
- You learn something new every day in this job. Today, it’s “overload pay”. That is, bonus pay for teachers whose classrooms are “oversize”. This story is about Cincinnati Public Schools, but reporter Hannah Sparling says other districts have this in their teacher contracts as well. How many? How much? No one keeps track of this statewide, but someone probably should. Cincy’s overload pay expenditures are large and growing: approximately $3.6 million from 2011 to present and $1.8 million in this school year alone so far. The district is growing again after a long period of stagnation, which we’ve reported on a couple of times here, and folks are wondering what will become of overload pay in the next union contract. Interesting to note that no class size ceiling is actually mentioned in the piece, although the very active message board adds some compelling details (if accurate) (Cincinnati Enquirer, 2/27/16)
- Last week it was beef school, this week it’s “goat college”. Somehow I don’t think the two final exams are the same. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/29/16)