Gadfly Bites 3/22/24—Is it a WIN? I can’t even tell.

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

1. I have been assured by folks smarter about these things than me that this piece is good. It involves a status update of the rollout of new reading curricula in Medina City Schools as related in a recent school board meeting. I’m glad I had someone to interpret it and explain what it all means, because it sounds like nonsense to me: A whole lot of verbal busy-words that doesn’t appear to add up to anything. I reckon the average Medinan parent (Go Bees!) will fall in my lane rather than the other and I might humbly suggest for all their sakes that some lay language on this effort be utilized at some point. (Cleveland.com, 3/20/24)
   
   

2. Speaking of school families (were we?), here’s a look at Family Math Night at Ashland University. Sounds like a blast, especially if we go by the kids’ quoted enthusiasm for doing math generally and for doing over-the-top math specifically. However, I detect a bit of disconnect between the teachers/parents/college students and their young charges. For example: Little Emersyn is said to be sad when she doesn’t have math homework every day and fourth-grader Eva came to Math Night simply “to learn more math.” However, college student and future teacher Meredith says, “It’s important reading about math. It’s how kids learn best.” Sorry, Eva. No three-digit subtraction problems this weekend, but here’s a copy of Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy for you to dig into instead. See ya Monday! (Ashland Times-Gazette, 3/22/24)
   
   

3. Columbus City Schools released its building capacity data district-wide, to help the current facilities taskforce make decisions about consolidations, closures, and the like. Some interesting numbers there. Proud to see that my old elementary is near the top of the utilization list. Amazing how many kids you can cram in there when you convert the glass-walled “open classroom” design of the mid-70s to a more traditional structure. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/22/24)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.