- In case you missed it, the bill which would remove the retention requirement of the state’s (currently accurately-named) Third Grade Reading Guarantee passed the House on Wednesday evening. Chad Aldis’ testimony, as one of the very few to argue against the measure, is quoted extensively in this coverage. The bill moves on to the Senate. (Cleveland.com, 6/1/22)
- The same day, House Bill 583 (a.k.a. Education Christmas in June), gained final approval in the House and was sent to the Governor for his signature. (Gongwer Ohio, 6/1/22)
- First Jeremy Kelley and now Patrick O’Donnell in my clips this week? Permission to “squee”, please! There are a lot of great quotes from Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb in this piece about his leadership of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. To wit: “Having mayoral control of our schools is a special moral obligation for me.” And: “I will consider it a failure of mine as mayor, if in the next decade, we don’t improve the quality of learning in our school system.” He also tells Patrick that a better “quality of learning” means more schools highly-rated by the state, better test scores, and students who are better prepared for college or jobs. But it all takes a turn after about 264 words. The focus of this piece is that the mayor is “weighing” whether to replace district CEO Eric Gordon in order to kickstart the improvement he wants and the pros and cons to doing so. Unfortunately, it may be that so much effort has been spent over the years to illustrate that Gordon has already improved things quite a bit during his tenure—you know what I mean, don’t you, dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers?—that CEO replacement may not be as simple as it seems, even for a district under the control of a morally obligated and audibly motivated mayor. My version of the dilemma is that while the mayor says, “We have to actively accelerate the pace of change inside the district”—especially after years of Covid slide—he has named his effort “The Great Reset” and everyone seems to think that that indicates a quest for said improvement. With “reset” as your big objective, it might not even matter who is leading the charge. (The 74, 6/1/22)
- And speaking of Covid-disrupted education, here is a nice piece interviewing eight central Ohio members of the Class of 2022. Bucking the accepted wisdom of “everything sucked”, there is a great variety of responses as to how they all handled school closures and remote learning during the last three school years, some of them polar opposites. Remote learning was hard for some, too easy for others, and so right for another that she stuck with it even after in-person learning was available again. Some started businesses in their downtime, some formed associations, and on and on. Kids being kids, I reckon. (But that’s probably just me.) The only really common refrain: they missed extracurriculars when they were cancelled. (Columbus Dispatch, 6/3/22)
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