Gadfly Bites is taking a vacation break for a bit. Back with you on Monday, March 17; hopefully rested, refreshed, and ready to rumble once again.
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- Fordham’s Aaron Churchill is among the voices discussing (maybe a bit early, but who am I to quibble—we all remember the 2020 mini-Arnold Classic, don’t we?) the impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic five years after it began to shut down Ohio. Aaron calls remote learning “a very ineffective way” of doing school, which is true, and is at least partially responsible for the low student achievement we see now, five years on. The story is brief and covers a lot of other topics, but I sure wish that someone had been quoted as saying that the education part didn’t have to go that way, and asking the question of why students have not caught up from the learning losses after all of this time. But of course no one asked me. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/2/25)
- Northeast Ohio was up in arms about EdChoice this weekend. Not exactly sure why, nor am I sure their ambassadors did anyone any favors by speaking up the way they did. First up, this piece from TV news in Youngstown makes it sound like there are new districts continuing to join the voucher groucher lawsuit, but this seems like just rehashing the old list to me. Sure hope that ol’ trial happens soon. So much money from those districts being sent to the lawyers’ pockets with literally nothing to show for it…and none of us is getting any younger. (WFMJ-TV, Youngstown, 2/28/25) Cleveland.com commentator-in-chief Tom Suddes was born old and cranky, I reckon. So I guess it stands to reason that he would actually choose to shake his fist at suburbanites who dare to take advantage of their voucher eligibility, saying with no nuance whatsoever that “Ohio’s current statewide private school vouchers are political subsidies for voters – many in Republican suburbs – who can already afford private school tuition.” Yowch. (Cleveland.com, 3/2/25) Finally, Suddes’ colleague—editor Leila Atassi—says the same kind of stuff in her opinion piece, but not until after telling the story of how she moved to a bougie suburb (“I saved, scrounged, sacrificed, and borrowed…”) specifically to get access to the school she wanted for her children. Yep. That ol’ trial can’t get here quickly enough for me. The sooner it starts, the sooner it will be over. (Cleveland.com 3/3/25)
- Meanwhile, however, poor old Groucher-in-Chief Bill Phillis is having to play whack-a-mole against yet another plan to provide public support for families opting for private schools. Specifically, he was talking to local news in Columbus about his opposition to Senate Bill 68, now under discussion in the legislature. It proposes an Education Savings Account program to support families who choose non-chartered, non-tax-supported private schools for their kids. In a quote that I can just hear being delivered, Phillis said, “These schools that didn’t want to have any state regulations agreed not to take any state money. But now this clever device to give money to parents, and then they can give the money to the nonchartered, nonpublic schools, the totally unregulated schools.” (NBC4 News, Columbus, 2/28/25)
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