- With apologies to Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, today’s clips all hail from Suburbia. First up, summer educational offerings in Pickerington Local Schools appear to be robust, comprehensive, decidedly academic, geared to specific courses and credits, open to all takers, free of charge, and primarily led by district teachers. The district plans to spend nearly four million dollars to execute them, starting June 1. In the words of the Pet Shop Boys: “Something special”. (ThisWeek News, 4/22/21)
- In South-Western City Schools, the district’s career academy moved heaven and earth to give their CTE students as much hands-on experience as possible during pandemic disruptions this year—many of them doing so in-person five days a week—even as their peers on the traditional academic track were fully remote for months on end. As the Boys might put it: “Winner”. (ThisWeek News, 4/22/21)
- At bougie suburban private school Wellington, the apiary club, like five-day-a-week in-person classes and concurrent remote teaching from those classrooms, has been going strong all year. “This used to be the future”, didn’t it? (ThisWeek News, 4/22/21)
- Finally today, while the dateline is Olmsted Falls, the true provenance of this piece has to be wherever the suburbs meet utopia. It is one acolyte discussing some evanescent fantasy called “True Accountability”. Supposedly it is an alternative means of determining how well schools are performing but sounds like a condescending pat on the head from those insiders who understand the confusing “technical” parts of school operations to we simpletons on the outside who will be provided instead with some simple—and entirely undefined—description of that performance that we with our tiny brains can understand. If the dude is accurate, this pie-in-the-sky, don’t-worry-your-pretty-little-heads-about-the-details idea is gaining some traction at the state school board level (shocker) and thus we should expect more discussion about its amorphous and not-at-all-suspect assertions in the near future. As the title of the old hit single goes: “How can you expect to be taken seriously?” (Cleveland.com, 4/22/21)
Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
Policy Priority:
Topics:
