- Let’s start with unequivocal good news. Here’s a look at the first ever graduating class of KIPP Columbus. Congratulations to all of these amazing students and kudos to the teachers and staff of KIPP for helping their students succeed. Beautiful. (Columbus Dispatch, 6/1/20)
- We have heard a lot about the difficulties of remote learning for students with special needs. Here is a detailed look, with a distinctly positive tone, at how the teachers of Ohio’s School for the Deaf and Ohio’s School for the Blind have been working with their students. Of note: In normal times the two schools are largely residential, making the students’ new “remoteness” that bit more remote. I was struck by the use of multiple devices by both teachers and students (Chromebooks and iPads simultaneously!) and the comfort expressed by the teachers about their own and their students’ in using tech. Nice. (ThisWeek News, 5/30/20)
- For more on the prevailing version of this story – which says that remote learning sucks if you’re not rich or if you have students with special needs – check out this recently-released national survey of parents. (NPR, 5/27/20)
- Being in a high-dollar school district doesn’t apparently keep you from worrying about “summer slide” during a pandemic. Thus, Grandview Heights City Schools has rolled out a probably-more-extensive-than-usual set of online resources to help its students avoid just that. “Exercising their brain is just as important as staying physically active,” noted the district’s chief academic officer. You don’t say, sir. (ThisWeek News, 6/1/20) Folks in Toledo are talking about the use of tutors to help kids catch up and keep up over the summer. Now this is something of a sales pitch, of course, because the tutors doing the talking are employed by a chain of for-profit tutoring outlets. But that does help reinforce the original point. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 6/1/20)
- However, the Ohio House has got its head somewhere else. Last week, they passed a bill which would, among other things, prohibit schools from holding third-graders back this year if they don’t achieve the promotion score on the state’s third-grade reading test. The piece mentions that “the pendulum on testing has swung back and forth in recent years”, but I might suggest that this is less like swinging and more like someone grabbing it and holding it forcibly in place. Wonder who this move would benefit the most? (Dayton Daily News, 5/30/20)
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