- We start today with coverage of Chad’s testimony before the Senate Finance Education Subcommittee earlier this week. In which he urged Senators considering the new state budget to not let “safe harbor” considerations for schools extend to an EdChoice Scholarship voucher eligibility freeze. He was not alone in these sentiments. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/14/15)
- Editors in Cleveland opined favorably on Fordham’s most recent report – School Closure and Student Achievement. This is especially important because folks in Cleveland know only too well the difficulties of closing schools for even the soundest of reasons. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/14/15)
- You probably couldn’t have missed it yesterday, but just in case you did, Achieve released a report looking at the gaps between state proficiency scores and NAEP results in all 50 states. Ohio fared poorly indeed, indicative of a shaky definition of “proficiency” in the Buckeye State. Chad said this loudly and clearly and was included in coverage of the report in the Columbus Dispatch (5/14/15), the Bucyrus Telegraph (5/15/15) and other Gannett outlets, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer (5/14/15).
- The Beacon Journal’s coverage of the Achieve report didn’t include Chad, but it did include reference to another new report that they are inclined to see as rosy—Building a Grad Nation, which shows a steady upward climb in public school (and by that they mostly mean traditional districts, not including most charter schools) graduation rates nationwide. From the introduction to this report: “Some districts, including those with a majority of low-income and minority students, made big improvements, while others lost ground. This pattern indicates that high school graduation rates are not increasing because of broad national economic, demographic, and social trends. Rather, the constellation of leadership, reforms, and multi-sector efforts at state, district, and school levels drove this progress, and shows that with focus and concerted effort, graduation rates can be increased in every part of the country.” You can see why the Achieve report proved a bit more difficult for them to assimilate. (Akron Beacon Journal, 5/14/15)
- Back in the real world, the PD’s Brent Larkin has been doing a spot of reading—Robert Putnam’s book Our Kids. Larkin probably knows Port Clinton (“The Walleye Capital of the World”) just as well as Putnam does and opines favorably on Putnam’s look at the state of social mobility in Ohio today as compared to the 1950s. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/15/15)
- We end where we began today—testimony in committee earlier this week. In which a representative of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District argued strongly against the expansion of the Cleveland Scholarship Program to private schools outside CLE city limits. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/13/15)
