Gadfly Bites 3/8/19 – You have diagnose the right ailment first

1. Editors in Toledo opined this week against Ohio’s new(ish) academic distress paradigm, mainly because the city schools are one bad report card away from experiencing it firsthand. Their reasoning: “the state’s cure looks as if it would be worse than what ails” Toledo City Schools. Hmmm… Cute phrase. I should remember it. (Toledo Blade, 3/7/19)

2. Of course the ones who are really “ailing” in Toledo are the students and the families attending poor performing schools. Same same for students and families in Columbus City Schools. That district is two bad report cards away from a designation of academic distress (and all that goes along with it) and a new superintendent is riding into the storm. She will probably be hearing from a lot of folks about how “unfair” and “punitive” and “embarrassing” the academic distress paradigm would be for the district. But those folks are going to have to get in line behind district parents, some of whom want a reduction (right NOW) in the level of violence and disruption in their children’s classrooms…   (WSYX-TV, Columbus, 3/7/19) …and some of whom want a reduction in the apparently excessive amount of teacher absences across the district, a topic which seems to have expanded in scope since we last broached it. Talk about embarrassing. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 3/7/19)

3. Meanwhile, I think the development of college and career academies in Akron City Schools may have hit its limit…or perhaps jumped the shark. You see, I can understand an academy sponsored by Firestone that teaches auto repair and mechanics. I can understand an academy sponsored by the local hospital conglomerate teaching medical science and technology. But when the National Park Service sponsors an academy teaching media and marketing, I am reasonably certain you’ve either run out of partners, or useful academy themes, or both. (Akron Beacon Journal, 3/8/19)

4. We end today where we began: on Frogtown’s editorial page. Today, the associate editor opined on the topic of the city using sports gambling money—currently under consideration in the General Assembly for legalization—to fund pre-K in Toledo. I can’t tell if he’s for or against the idea, so craftily is his piece written, but if the local school district is seriously considering using the proceeds from pot sales to boost its own bottom line, I say why not let all the governing units get a hit off the sweet source of that vice money. Or perhaps that “cure” is worse than the “ailment”, eh? (Toledo Blade, 3/8/19)

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