Bom dia, y'all! Gadfly Bites is back from vacation and our first catch up edition covers important clips from March 3 through March 14.
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- As part of wide-ranging testimony on the multiple non-funding aspects of the state budget bill’s education provisions, Fordham’s Chad Aldis provided his take on such topics as direct certification of need for disadvantaged pupil aid, interdistrict open enrollment, teacher policies, and accountability. Gongwer covered his testimony briefly—and of course that’s subscriber-only content—but you can read the whole shebang here for free. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/6/25)
- Fordham is also namechecked in this Gongwer piece as being specifically supportive of the governor’s continued push for improved literacy and numeracy—also among the many policy initiatives in the budget. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/7/25)
- Also covering multiple topics at once is Signal Cleveland. This single piece covers gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s pitch for merit pay for teachers (including a brief affirmative response from our Aaron Churchill) and some extended weirdness about former congressman Tim Ryan and current Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel that devolved into college football talk. (Signal Cleveland, 3/6/25)
- Aaron is also quoted as one of several education researchers who feel that the Trump Administration’s job cuts at the U.S. DOE could have some negative impact on Ohio. However, Aaron’s natural pragmatism wins out over any possible doom and gloom predictions, saying that the situation, regardless of how it shakes out, “speaks to the need for state leadership and education.” The discussion is, he says, “just another important reminder of just how important state leadership is in education. If the Department of Education goes away—doesn’t want to have anything to do with education—that just means the ball is in the court for our leaders in Columbus and in our local school districts to take the lead.” So sensible. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/13/25)
- Speaking of research, analysts from Johns Hopkins University released a report last week that detailed findings from a survey of more than 400 K-3 teachers in Ohio, asking questions about their attitudes toward and experiences of the state’s recent push to make Science of Reading the law of the land—on paper and in the classroom. Gongwer noted the publication of the report, which was supported by Fordham and Ohio Excels, and briefly cited the findings…which are interesting and provide an important look at some minute details of implementation that would likely have been overlooked without it. Thanks a million, guys! You can read the full report (for free) on our website here. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/13/25)
- Speaking of SoR, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce recently released a report the number of public schools (district and charter) that were required to submit a reading improvement plan to the state last year due to low test scores in early grades. We learn from this coverage that 46 districts and 104 charter schools were required to submit such plans—described as blueprints for how those schools plan on raising student achievement in reading—which is a slight decrease from the numbers reported in the 2022-2023 school year. Obviously there is more work to be done, but this is helpful information to have publicly available. Link (Cleveland.com, 3/7/25) DEW also recently reported on the status of district transportation fails over the last two school years. That is, the daily fines levied against districts for failing to properly transport charter, private, and STEM school students to and from school. And there are some biggies. According to testimony provided to the Senate Education Committee, Columbus City Schools was fined $9.6 million and Youngstown City Schools was fined $1.9 million in the 2023-24 school year, for just two egregious examples. So far this school year, Columbus has racked up $1.9 million in fines already. Sounds like a lot of work remains to be done. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/6/25)
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