Gadfly Bites 4/29/19 – Old news

1. There are several questions and a ton of out-of-date information in this piece looking at graduation requirement changes over the last few years in Ohio from the perspective of some small-town teachers and administrators. On the question front, why complain about changing requirements when it is you who has been insisting on the changes? You just don’t like tests, folks. Insisting that we shouldn’t use them because your kids can’t pass them is old thinking and beneath you as educators. As for old news, I think that many of those avenues for changing the grad requirements to your favored flavor became dead ends a good while ago. But shhhh…. Don’t tell ‘em. (The Tribune-Chronicle, 4/28/19)

2. Ditto for this commentary piece which conflates funding and academic distress in a flat word salad tossed with a stale old dressing of “local control” complaints. Icky. (Newark Advocate, 4/28/19)

3. But sometimes there’s old news that just begs to be repeated (such as, say, the fact that there is no chaos in Lorain City Schools), because it’s been overlooked (or outright hidden) and someone important might actually realize it’s true. (Elyria Chronicle, 4/27/19)

4. In somewhat newer news, there is no chaos in East Cleveland City Schools either. In fact, the new CEO there has gotten quickly and quietly down to work and has some great plans for turning around that district’s longstanding academic malaise. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 4/27/19) 
5. Finally today, and keeping with our theme, centralized career-tech education is way old news in Toledo City Schools, apparently. A plan put forward five years ago (which doesn’t even seem to have gotten its boots on in that time) to do just that is now dead, and the building originally targeted for it will be scrapped out and sold, according to the same district supe who proposed the plan. The new news is that he is spreading it around instead (career-tech opportunities, that is). I can’t quite tell if he’s talking about the numerous high school academies already coming online, but who cares? The news is apparently always new in Toledo. (Toledo Blade, 4/29/19)

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