- Some nice coverage of Fordham’s new state report card analysis “Facing Facts” in the Dispatch this morning. Definitely a case of good news/bad news for central Ohio. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/11/16)
- The ironies in this brief piece about yet another online school forced to pay back money for kids unable to be accounted for are so loud that the outrage is being drowned out. Surely that’s why I can’t hear it. (Newark Advocate, 3/8/16)
- Speaking of technology, the Dayton Daily News is really really excited about the start of a pilot program giving a small group of Dayton City Schools’ students Chromebooks. How excited? They even note in this brief “breaking news” piece the time that the distribution will happen: 9:45 am. No mention of what time the boys are going to have to give them back (3:15? 3:45?); also no mention of what they’re going to do when Ohio gives up on computers in schools and heads back to slide rules and abaci. Stay tuned. (Dayton Daily News, 3/11/16)
- Speaking of avid journalism, the Enquirer has been avidly following (perhaps even stoking) the furor over the School for Creative and Performing Arts in the Queen City. There were some highly-publicized (see what I did there?) troubles with the booster organization for the school and a subsequent turnover of leadership. Today’s brief Q&A with the school’s new executive director is mostly focused on updates on those issues. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/11/16) Of far more import is this story about SCPA’s admissions/placement situation. Stay with me here. To be offered a place in the school, students must audition in any one of a number of artistic areas and must “pass” that audition. However, that doesn’t happen until a student is a rising fourth grader. Before then, the school is simply a lottery school with arts intertwined with academics. It appears that long-standing past practice allowed many of those who did not “pass” their audition (or even those who didn’t show up for their audition) to stay in the school anyway. I’m not sure how SCPA managed to maintain their academic awesomeness this way, but that is beside the point. New ED (see above) tried to boot out more than 50 no-show/no-pass auditioners and was, apparently, overruled by the district. If you’ve followed me all the way through this train of thought, you can probably guess where this is headed. Read the online comments for some more-erudite-than-usual musings. Theatre people. Ugh! (Cincinnati Enquirer, 3/11/16)
- More chaos in Youngstown. No, not the high school chaos. The school board chaos. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/9/16)
