Gadfly Bites 5/23/22—Not so much between the lines as not in there at all

1. The outgoing head of Toledo School for the Arts gets some praise (and a little bit of side-eye) from the Blade in this career retrospective. (Toledo Blade, 5/22/22)
   
   

2. If the logic of the various commentators in this piece on the impact of Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee doesn’t seem to track for you, please form a line behind me. A reading teacher who says out loud and on the record that held back kiddos get the exact same instruction two years in a row is telling you one very important reason why the effort is not producing better outcomes. A parent and researcher who says that her own kids’ teacher didn’t follow the law is telling you another. Both comments are left in there without note or follow up. However, that’s only half the story. The main impetus of this piece is a new research report co-written by one of those questionable commentators. There is an even bigger disconnect between that report and this piece ostensibly about it. Because I read that report and the findings indicate that the passing score for the third grade reading test is too low. Large numbers of non-proficient kids are passed along to fourth grade and—lo and behold—are not ultimately proficient in fourth grade reading either. (Honestly, if you want to determine the effects of the TGRG, wouldn’t you try and examine the outcomes of the kids who were actually held back because of it, rather than those who were not? What do I know, though? I’m not a Ph.D.) Anywho, the whole point of this exercise is to get the untruth that the Third Grade Reading Guarantee didn’t work out in the public discourse so future “solutions” to this nonexistent “problem” can refer back to it. (c.f. Academic Distress Commissions and graduation requirements for recent historical precedent). Interestingly, the “proto-solutions” put forward in this piece are scattershot, contradictory, and unsupported by the research. But I’m sure their adherents won’t let such illogic get in their way. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/22/22)

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