Gadfly Bites 3/29/23—Untouchable monopolistic primacy, or yesterday’s sardines

1. We start today with yet more irresponsible commentary from a school district about state testing. “Testing can cause students anxiety,” Huber Heights City Schools posted on their website, which of course makes it true. “The best thing parents can do is encourage their students to do their best and believe in themselves.” And what do you suppose is the best thing that adults in charge of schools can do? In my humble opinion: Teach kids what they need to know to pass the tests in the first place and stop using rhetoric that causes anxiety in kids. (Dayton Daily News, 3/28/23)
   
   

2. This is a long national story in which we learn nothing we didn’t already know about the litigious school choice haters across the country with, apparently, bottomless funding for legal fees to obstruct vouchers, ESAs, charters, and everything else they fear will dent their previously-untouchable monopolistic primacy. Personally, I feel they could simply improve their product—for a whole lot less dough, BTW—and blunt the need for school choice almost entirely on their own. No lawyers required. (Education Next, 3/28/23)
   
   

3. Case in point: Zanesville City Schools. This story is mostly a nice look at some unique course offerings designed to help students learn about skills needed and careers available in wildlife management, agriculture, and the like, all while following an academic path to graduation. Biomedical sciences can replace traditional biology class; engineering can fulfill a math requirement. And so on. Nice, right? Why, then, the extended rant about the “inadequacy” of traditional diplomas and the enrollment losses Z’ville is experiencing due to interdistrict open enrollment? Seems to me there’s only one reason you care whether 200 kids are coming in to take advantage of your awesome fisheries classes but that 600 are leaving to go elsewhere: money. While district officials want to sell their innovations here as “thinking outside the box” of traditional education, I fear that the box is still fully situated, that it stinks like yesterday’s sardines, and that some families are smelling it clearly. (Zanesville Times Recorder, 3/26/23) On a similar note, I sure hope there isn’t a mass exodus of families from Lakewood City Schools following the adoption of a new schedule of specials classes for elementary school students. We talked about this last week: Literally everyone was on board with adding STEM and digital literacy courses while increasing visual arts time…except for the music teachers, whose monopolistic primacy in the schedules apparently had to give to allow for the update. And now it is a done deal…minus any repercussions from the wings. (See what I did there?) YMMV, but I personally was thrilled with less Von Trapp and more Von Braun in my kids’ schools. (Cleveland.com, 3/29/23)
   
   

4. Perhaps I am being too cynical, though, y’all. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions in thinking that everything comes down to money in our traditional district schools: the pianos and the fish and the open borders. All of it. Surely it can’t all be about the money, can it? Nope. Editors at Vindy.com opine about the Benjamins today, saying that not only should Governor DeWine shovel all the money into the so-called Fair School Funding plan in full right now but that there clearly needs to be even more money in that formula than originally planned. Just add money and don’t ask a lot of questions. (Vindy.com, 3/29/23) And just to reinforce that money is really akin to a blunt instrument of power and control in these stories, here’s a lengthy part one in a planned five part series from TV news in Youngstown which seems to want to blame former CEO (and current superintendent) Justin Jennings for “wasting” $5 million in Covid-relief funding. We covered this in the Bites back when it happened, and honestly, today’s story should stop after “The plan died that day in that meeting”. No further parts are required. Jennings was utilizing the CEO powers granted to him by the state and the Academic Distress Commission who was overseeing the district at that time, which included full control of the money. However, the elected school board—which had already driven one CEO out of town by 2020—was continuing its full court press to hound and obstruct any CEO’s ability to make changes on behalf of students…especially ones that involved spending “their” money. All with the ultimate goal of incepting the idea that “state takeovers don’t work” and thus necessitating the end of ADC control permanently. Reading this piece (and, I imagine, the future ones), the inception campaign seems to continue apace and also seems to be working just as intended. Trying to boost wi-fi accessibility for poor students in Youngstown, using additional funds allocated for that purpose, at the height of pandemic disruptions and extended remote learning, was entirely appropriate and within the CEO’s purview to attempt. To blame him now for having to pay for ultimately unused contracted equipment after a cadre of outside actors stopped the plan stone cold dead due to a “you didn’t ask us if we would let you put up your antennas on our buildings” snit fit is the ultimate in retroactive scapegoating. Infuriating. (WFMJ-TV, Youngstown, 3/28/23)
   
   

5. I am hopeful that Governor DeWine’s full bore effort to instill the science of reading into our schools (and, just as importantly, to get rid of the other loser reading curricula wherever it remains) will have more success than the ADC turnaround effort his predecessor initiated. However, it seems to me there’s some inception being attempted in this realm also. This story, about the governor’s visit to an elementary school in northwest Ohio using phonics to successfully boost students’ reading achievement, includes information on how the big switch came about there. The official version is that district teachers decided to implement the science of reading on their own back in 2018 “because of concerns the prior curriculum wasn’t reaching all students.” There was “some resistance among teachers”, DeWine was told, but more of them came on board as they saw “their tier of at-risk students in reading decrease during” right from the earliest phase-in of the curriculum. (“Phase-in”, in my estimation, here means “lots of teachers still using the old stuff while suck ups try out the new fad”.) “When you do things and you think you’re doing well, you wait to be told that you’re not,” reported a district reading specialist, without a hint of irony. “But also, as with teachers, they want to do what’s best for kids so when they see best practice and gold standard they got on board.” She concluded hopefully that, “You can’t deny the results and the research.” Sadly, it seems, you can; because while the district started “phase-in” in 2018, they apparently stopped during the three recent pandemic-disrupted school years but may even have gone backward because they told the gov that they are somehow “in year three of a five-year process” right now. History is so confusing. (Toledo Blade, 3/29/23)
   
   

6. Speaking of rewriting history (were we?), lots of folks loving on education savings accounts around here all of a sudden. Registration for a new round of Afterschool Child Enrichment (or ACE) ESA funding opens April 7. And this year, the amount available per child is doubled to $1,000. Nice! (Spectrum News 1, 3/27/23) While this Cleveland-based media outlet has written against tuition vouchers before, their discussion of the ACE program is not only nothing but sunshine and positivity, it also is written first-hand by someone who has utilized those vouchers for lots of cool educational stuff for her kids and explains step-by-step how others can do so as well. A very nice way to end today’s clips. (The Land, 3/29/23)

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