- Literally every part of this story about Ohio’s generally abysmal 2020-2021 third grade reading test scores is heartbreaking (the intended response) and infuriating (my own personal response). As I’m sure you’ll recall, I have been needling—in vicious and hilarious fashion—the fact that district officials and teachers union flacks very quickly gave up on their narrative that said the “Covid learning slide” did not exist. But even in the face of ongoing abysmal test scores and scads of other alarming data, the question of why they dropped the pretense and decided to admit it (aside from the fact that the various flimsy alternatives put forward were ridiculous and obviously untrue) still eluded me. I think with this piece, however, those folks are at last airing the answer to my question in public: The problem existed long before anyone ever heard of SARS-CoV-2, but the pandemic now provides perfect cover to bury that previous failure. How else to explain the admission in today’s piece that “even before public schools moved to online classrooms to slow the spread of the coronavirus, teaching the basic building blocks of reading, such as understanding how sounds are put together to form words had been challenging” without any sort of admission that “we were getting closer” or “working real hard” or whatever? Nope. We didn’t follow the science of reading before and our teachers and students paid the price, but can’t we just forget about all that before stuff and focus on this after stuff? Since that seems to be where the narrative is going, especially in the media which is the province of these clips, let’s just say that the “after stuff” as described here seems as troubling to me as all the “before stuff” being swept under the rug with no mea culpa and no consequences. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/18/22)
- Meanwhile, in what sounds like news from another planet, a high schooler at St. John’s Jesuit School in suburban Toledo has turned the electronics recycling business he created (!) into a second project (!!) to refurbish hundreds of used laptops (courtesy of an online charter school) to be donated to a school in Vietnam. Why yes, northwest Ohio parents, St. John’s does accept students using vouchers. I can see why you might ask. (Toledo Blade, 4/17/22)
Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
Policy Priority:
Topics:
