Gadfly Bites 7/10/26—Slow the presses a tiny bit

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1. Far less to cover today after Wednesday’s gargantuan catch-up post, and all three of these are follow-ups from previous stories. First is our own Chad Aldis with his sassy take on that Network for Public Education report that gave Ohio an F grade for the mere existence of laws supportive of charter and private schools. “It’s not a paper with strong analytics,” he tells State Affairs/Gongwer. “It’s a paper that gets to an ideological result that is consistent with that organization.” It’s funny because it’s true. (State Affairs/Gongwer Ohio, 7/6/26)
   
   

2. Next, we give props to NBC 4 News for continuing to dig into the story of invalidated end-of-course test results at two Columbus City Schools high schools. Once again: Every score for every student in every subject in both of those schools was tossed out due to unspecified “inconsistencies” in test administration. And kudos to OSU prof Winston Thompson, interviewed here, who points out that no matter what the source of the issue ends up being, the returning students who have to retake every test (along with the graduates whose transcripts will likely carry an asterisk forever) will be the ones bearing the brunt of both the damage done and any remediation required. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 7/7/26)
   
   

3. Finally today, haters continue to hate on the Success Sequence, the teaching of which will soon be required in Ohio’s middle and high schools thanks to a bill just signed into law by Gov. DeWine. (Cleveland.com, 7/7/26)

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