Gadfly Bites 8/22/25—Check

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1. Caught a fact check after Wednesday’s clips (in which I reckoned Cincinnati City Schools might be the only large urban district to be experiencing an enrollment boost this year). I was indeed wrong to even suggest such a thing without proof, and I’ll go one further in my mea culpa on this topic: Any district which is experiencing such a miraculous turnaround should say so loudly and on the record—with receipts. Not just for my benefit, but to relieve the suffering of their communities, whose members are constantly worried about the wealth health wealth of their districts based on the facts that are regularly released. I say all of this not just to ease my guilty conscience, but also as preface to this piece, in which ExcelinEd’s Matthew Joseph analyzes what I feel is some sobering data on Ohio’s public school enrollment numbers and trajectory writ large, as recently released by the National Center for Education Statistics. I’ll leave you to read the details here, but it ain’t pretty. What also isn’t pretty to me is the fact that the piece makes sure to note that Joseph is a proponent of school choice while covering his analysis of the data. I’m sure that fact is super relevant to someone, but not being an actual journalist myself, I have no idea who or why. I am always available for fact checking, though. (ABC 6 News, Columbus, 8/22/25)
   
   

2. Here’s a detailed look at all the transit pass usage rules for students for the current year, as recently approved by the elected board that runs Dayton City Schools. There are lots of them, given all the problems with their use in the past, intended to make travel safer and more orderly than it was in previous years. However, they come with a side order of sniping between the elected board and the CEO of the transit authority. (“If DPS Board members have such concerns [that RTA doesn’t actually want kids on their buses, among other things], they should concentrate their efforts on hiring drivers and providing direct transportation to their students.” Me-OW.) We also learn that there is a limited number of passes available for now—because these were actually purchased last year and couldn’t be used because of the new state law—and that there is no current plan to buy more when/if these run out. All of which raises the question for this non-journalist as to why the district wanted to spend tens of thousands more dollars in legal fees to sue the state just to reinstate this problematic program in the first place. Truly unfathomable. (Dayton Daily News, 8/20/25)
   
   

3. Here at the decidedly non-journalistic Bites, we take advantage of every opportunity to engineer our little comparisons among district, charter, and private schools when the published work of actual proper journalists allows. I love putting together those edifying juxtapositions for you when the various stories are there, especially because it is rarely possible to get direct comparisons between school types in a single source. But the journalistic fates are smiling on us today (no idea why, since I’m not a journalist, but let’s not quibble with serendipity), because here’s one for you right now: It details the first day of school for the new year at an Akron charter school, two Akron City Schools Community Learning Centers, and a Catholic high school. I sort of feel like the pictures alone tell as strong a story as the words, but you should definitely check out both and see what you think. (Signal Akron, 8/22/25)
   
   

4. Staying in Akron City Schools for one more back-to-school clip, here’s a look at the district’s new social studies and science curricula for grades K-2. The materials themselves seem fine to me, but I’ll leave the quality analysis to those better equipped to assess it. What I will comment on is the fact that teaching these new subjects will replace at least one reading and math lesson per week and that the stated goal is to improve kids’ vocabulary so they’ll do better on ELA tests. “On all standardized ELA…tests, grades three through 12 … over 55 percent of the content vocabulary on those standardized tests are social studies-related content, terminology and concepts,” says the district’s curriculum guru. “And of that 55 percent, some of them are only taught, or really only understood, with direct instruction of social studies.” That is: Students may test lower in reading just because they don't know social studies or science-related vocabulary words. The teachers interviewed here have lots of other goals in mind too (no K-2 science curriculum had been in place since the 90s; middle schoolers today don’t know social studies so we should start them way earlier, etc.), so I am definitely looking forward to all the data on implementation, effectiveness, and outcomes—for both ELA and math scores—to be shouted from the rooftops made public as soon as it is available…although I will not hold my breath. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/22/25)
   
   

5. Finally this week, here’s a look at the “origin stories” (adorable) of two long-serving teachers in private schools in Columbus. It’s fun and uplifting by itself, but it also provides another of those great, inadvertent juxtapositions of pieces we love here in Bites-land when it is read directly after the ABJ piece above. Don’t you think? (Columbus Jewish News, 8/21/25)

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