- In a leftover from late last week, our own Chad Aldis was talking to public media about the challenges facing e-schools in developing a system to take attendance and how he believes it can be done. Which is good, because they have to. (Statehouse News Bureau, others via public media, 3/4/16)
- Speaking of e-schools in Ohio, the D gave us tons more dirt on Provost Academy, an online school which – it was announced last week – was ordered to pay back something like 80% of the state funding it had received due to attendance discrepancy (see above for more on that “taking attendance” conundrum). And by “dirt”, I mean texts of emails and audio-recorded meetings. Ugh. Didn’t I see this on “The Good Wife”? (Columbus Dispatch, 3/6/16) Today, editors in Columbus put it all together for us re: the importance of not watering down e-school attendance tracking and reporting requirements. Helpful. (Columbus Dispatch, 3/7/16)
- In other news, Dayton City Schools is pushing back a bit on a couple of dings (yes, that is the technical term) in its most recent state audit. (Dayton Daily News, 3/6/16) Meanwhile, staffers from the Ohio Department of Education were in Youngstown City Schools last week and will be there again this week taking a look at the district’s treatment of students with special needs in the wake of complaints from parents, a board member, and the local chapter of the NAACP. The epicenter of concern is, again, East High School. (Youngstown Vindicator, 3/6/16)
- Bad news/good news in a story about PARCC testing, following up from last week. Bad = no one at the state level has studied the value added scores for schools taking PARCC tests on paper vs. online. Good = one district superintendent is taking on this challenge himself (props for the improved graphics in this second round). Good news/bad news in the results of this study. Good = the wealth or poverty of students did not create the value-added gap that Supe found. Bad = Supe says it was test mode only. Online = worse, paper = better. "Clearly,” says Supe, “the 2015 value added grades released by the Ohio Department of Education are unreliable and invalid." And should be thrown out. Oh Aaron… (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3/7/16)
