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- Ohio’s student achievement in math was already starting to falter by 2019 and the pandemic’s disruption of K-12 education provision pulled the rug out. Can we climb out of the hole? The Dispatch has got a series of articles on the topic, all of which include Fordham data to help tell the story and quotes from Fordham’s Aaron Churchill to explain the issues. Part 1 lays out the scope of the problem. Scary stuff. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/4/25) Part 2 focuses on elementary math education and is even scarier. Why? Because we learn that many elementary school teachers have longstanding “math anxiety” of their own and that the ed school profs prepping them to lead classrooms are teaching them that “math is so much more than teaching kids to add and subtract”. And we all know from bitter experience around here that usually means “I’ll be teaching you everything except how to teach kids to add and subtract.” (Columbus Dispatch, 5/4/25) Part 3 focuses on middle school, where, the education experts say, math education changes from basic operations to more abstract math concepts. Aaron says that success in middle school is critical because it builds capacity for even more conceptual math in high school…which is vital for college and career success. Personally, I’m skeptical that districts have a handle on the middle school transition, if the talking heads included in this piece are any indication. For example, Hilliard City Schools’ fledgling math intervention program is said to be a big success, but we get literally no data at all on that. Even worse, the district’s first ever math intervention specialist (who is doing all the talking) says she is not a “math person”, but rather someone who loves communication. “What doesn’t excite me is, ‘Oh, the answer was 1,082,’ I don't find that exciting,” she says out loud and on the record. “What I find exciting is the ways in which you thought through the problem and the way you communicated it and represented that.” Yep. That sounds like anything but teaching math to me. No wonder they can’t give us any data. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/5/25) Apparently, though, there are some students—and even some teachers—capable of higher-level math in a handful of Ohio’s high schools. Mostly in the suburbs. There’s plenty of discussion here in Part 4 on how to expand access to advanced math courses for capable high schoolers—and bless Aaron and his optimistic pals for thinking about this lofty part of the problem—but the previous 3,800 words in this series lead me to believe that there are dangerous forest fires raging down below that will take down the whole system which must be extinguished first. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/5/25)
- Much closer to the ground is this look at what has happened to buildings closed by Cleveland Metropolitan School District in recent years. The answer is that the district has hung onto almost all of them—some as vacant lots; some with empty buildings still deteriorating on top of those lots. There is discussion of Ohio’s longstanding “right of first refusal” for charter schools to get dibs on unused district properties as well as the pending proposal to tighten up the rules and make schools actually abide by that law (the latter of which the CMSD communications flak amusingly refers to as a “giant unknown”). But it’s clear that very few charter school operators—and indeed very few other entities, including the City of Cleveland—have ever been interested in paying good money for the rotting hulks or grassy lots on offer. So they continue to sit on the district’s books, as do the dozens of active buildings that are half-full or less every day, many of which are likely in line for closure themselves soon. Personally, it feels like karmic justice that the district’s lowkey but persistent effort to keep their previous closed buildings from becoming charter schools (come on now, let’s not be naïve) might come back to bite them in their hour of greatest need…and also might serve to create the saddest Zillow listings ever. (Signal Cleveland, 5/5/25)
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