- We start our state government tour with the Controlling Board, the members of which voted earlier this week to approve an additional $1.2 million to [checks notes] help schools across the state battle chronic absenteeism. Specifically, the move would use some of the federal Covid-relief funding still sloshing around state coffers to expand an existing contract with a for-profit company called Graduation Alliance. GA has been working with Ohio school districts since the start of pandemic-related school disruptions, focusing a lot on credit recovery as well as the absenteeism stuff. If you’d like to see their rah-rah case study of work in Dayton City Schools in 2020, you can check it out here. Color me underwhelmed. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/27/23)
- This is more like it: “I am the person who sat there at first with her arms crossed and went, ‘you're crazy’. I believed in the three-cueing system.” This quote comes from an elementary reading teacher here in Ohio who is giddy that this failed system will be hitting the scrap heap in Ohio soon. Well, it will be if Governor DeWine’s plan to ban it and other curricula not aligned to the science of reading goes through. Our teacher tells the Dispatch that once she saw the light, she began thinking about former students that she could never reach because of the flawed curriculum she had been so passionate about. “I share that story with teachers,” she concludes. “I say, ‘I did what I thought was best at the time, but now I know better’.” Amen. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/28/23)
- In the state Senate yesterday, the Education Committee voted to send SB 1 to the Senate floor. That’s the bill which would, among other things, make significant changes in K-12 governance in Ohio. A few straggling grouchers got to put in their tuppence as well, although it sounded a lot like everyone else’s previous beefs. Meanwhile, the lower chamber’s companion bill, HB 12, saw a few amendments in committee yesterday. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/28/23)
- Also on the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee docket yesterday: HB 11. That’s the bill which would, among other things, provide state education funding directly to families in the form of an Education Savings Account. It was a first hearing, so only testimony from the bill’s sponsor. The fireworks, if there are any (!), will commence later. (Gongwer Ohio, 2/28/23)
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