Gadfly Bites 6/11/25—The rigged game is still going badly

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1. Let’s start off with some sensible analysis from our own Aaron Churchill (because Lord knows we’ll be going fully off the rails soon enough). Aaron’s op-ed in the Dayton Daily News lays out the data on the sad state of math achievement among Ohio students in recent years. But he also includes three important policy initiatives that—if passed as part of the state budget—could start to turn the tide. (Dayton Daily News, 6/11/25)
   
   

2. A bit of good news, bad news in Youngstown City Schools this week. On the upside, it sounds like the administration is serious about merging Chaney and East High Schools into one building due to continuing enrollment losses at both—even though there doesn’t seem to be a rush to get it done. Additionally, the reasoning for the right-sizing is good: so that more resources will be available for all students once the district doesn’t have to duplicate services and extracurriculars for two half-full buildings. On the downside (and relatedly), the district still has only met five of the 24 benchmarks it set four years ago to try and get itself out of academic distress. Points still lagging include pre-K literacy, eighth grade and fifth grade science achievement (the latter of which has actually dropped since the start of the improvement plan), and chronic absenteeism. Reminder: These are benchmarks the district gamed up set for itself. (Vindy.com, 6/11/25)
   
   

3. Meanwhile (and related to the foregoing), Columbus City Schools’ four-year graduation rate has dropped by more than five percent from last year to this year—from 83.3 percent to 78.9 percent. And several individual high schools report much steeper declines. I’m not sure how you fumble “the most gameable statistic in education”, but I assume that accomplishing it means Very Bad Things are going on. (ABC6 News, Columbus, 6/9/25)
    
4. Apologies for including a clip that I (and you) cannot read the full content of, but it seems super important. What we learn from the available text: Tabor Ridge Christian School in Morgan County has officially been granted a charter by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, effective for the 2025-2026 academic year. What I have learned from a search of other available sources: Tabor has been operating as a non-chartered non-public school for many years, including childcare and a K-12 program. Campus. Curriculum. Teachers. Community. All fully established and well-known in the region. Thus the effect of it earning chartered non-public status is as if a new private school just materialized into fully-fledged existence, Brigadoon style, overnight. Wowza! I think this is a huge development for two reasons: First is that it is the quickest and easiest way I can imagine for the private school sector to meet growing demand for seats engendered by the expansion of EdChoice vouchers to near-universal status. Second: It is also the quickest and easiest way I can think of for any non-chartered non-public school in Ohio to access state funding if they so desire. Much easier (and cheerable) than attempting to move the legislative mountain as some seem to want to do. This is awesome. (Morgan County Herald, 6/11/25)
   
   

5. While new legislation proposed before Toledo City Council this week is decried as “regulation in search of a problem” by one local resident, the rest of us know categorically the “problem” being targeted: school choice. Specifically, this is an effort, spearheaded by the Toledo Federation of Teachers, to codify all the ad hoc zoning and permitting roadblocks that have been thrown up against competitors to Toledo City Schools over the years, be they charter schools or private providers. Not only that, it is fully retroactive such that existing schools, including many daycare centers and the beloved Toledo School for the Arts, will immediately be in violation the day it passes and need to either shut down, move, or spend millions of dollars none of them have to come into compliance. What more is there to say when your fully-subsidized, district-run, union-supported, city-wide pre-K (and K-12) program has so spectacularly failed to compete with a hodgepodge of tuition-charging mom-and-pop private providers (and charter schools) to the extent that you would rather run literally every one of them out of business in more than 84 square miles of town than actually provide some service that they actually want to use? Oh yeah, I know: “If you can’t beat ‘em, destroy ‘em.” Could be the City of Toledo’s new motto soon. (Toledo Blade, 6/10/25)

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