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- The main point of this story is that Dayton City Schools will be discontinuing its two-teachers-in-one-classroom model for next school year. It was an inevitable no-brainer that this would happen as soon as the federal Covid funding for it dried up, but that doesn’t stop district leaders from giving us lots of details around it to otherwise explain/justify the move…and more besides. Since we don’t have much else to talk about today, let’s dig in. A) Supposedly, preliminary test score results for this past school year show a lot of growth in lower elementary grades, which is good news if true, but is directly related to the teaching model being discontinued. The good old one-teacher, one-classroom model is what they will be embracing going forward, because it is the bedrock of education—“We’re rallying around the single-teacher model”—whether it works for their students or not. B) No money will actually be saved with the switch, since no teachers were let go. C) Preliminary test score results also show that middle school performance this year is really bad, especially in math. The reason for this, we are told, is that “multiple long-term substitute teachers who did not have licenses” were the ones teaching middle school classes, especially math. To combat this problem, we learn that district middle schoolers will be getting virtual math teachers next year (provenance unknown) to provide support for the long-term substitutes, who will remain. D) The district’s maniacal focus on keeping current families from leaving and attracting families away from other school options remains steadfast—“[middle school] is where we often see students transfer to other districts”—but at least they seem to recognize that providing a quality education might actually help them with their problem in this regard. Which is a nice change. Can’t wait to see how it all goes. (Dayton Daily News, 7/15/24)
- Meanwhile, expansion of the Dayton Regional STEM school—in both size and down into elementary grade levels—took a step forward this week with some help from the Dayton-Montgomery County Port Authority, which issued more than $21 million in bonds to kick their construction project into high gear. Seems like we’re hearing a lot these days about various port authorities in Ohio getting involved in school facilities projects, and perhaps a little odd. But it’s really nothing new. We are told here that the Dayton-Montgomery Port Authority was instrumental in helping the STEM school get started ten years ago in the very same way. To which this landlubber says, “Yo ho ho and shiver me timbers! Thank ye for the wise use o’ yer treasure chest, yer honors! Feel free to keep the booty a-comin’!” (Dayton Daily News, 7/16/24)
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