Gadfly Bites 8/24/26—Churchillmaxxing

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Fordham’s research guru Aaron Churchill is all over the news at the moment. Which is good news for anyone looking for clear-eyed and data-driven analysis of…well…anything First up: The latest long-term trends assessment from NAEP, which indicates that younger students—those who entered school after the main Covid closures/disruptions of 2020 and 2021—are faring better than their older brothers and sisters who are still trying to catch up in reading and math after the learning losses generated by poor-quality remote learning imposed on them. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/24/26)
In the preceding piece, Aaron discusses the implementation of science of reading as a positive response to Ohio’s early literacy malaise, and predicts that math education changes recently signed into law will have a similar favorable impacts in the realm of numeracy. This Daily Signal piece focuses on the math legislation exclusively, in some very nice detail. “What we’ve seen in the past is that too many students just keep scoring limited. And by the time they hopefully graduate high school, they just don’t have very strong math skills,” Aaron says. The new math provisions “put some responsibility and requirements on our schools to make sure that students don’t fall through the cracks and that they do get some help the next year, and remediating some of the deficiencies in that.” Love it! (Daily Signal, 8/21/26)
We’re back to early literacy in this piece, which cites the latest Annie E. Casey Foundation Kids Count report showing that more than two-thirds of Ohio fourth graders weren’t proficient in reading in 2024. Aaron is once again on point in his analysis. He describes Mississippi’s ongoing efforts to boost reading achievement thusly: “What they did with the Science of Reading there was they didn’t just put laws on paper. They really gave educators the hands-on supports they needed to implement it well.” And he believes that Ohio can make the same improvements…if policymakers stay the course with the more controversial aspects of science of reading and if educators implement SoR with fidelity, and for the long haul. (The Ohio Newsroom, 8/24/26)
Finally in today’s Churchill-palooza, Aaron is one of several voices discussing the amendment to Ohio’s ESSA plan, recently requested of the federal government. Specifically, expanded options for the state to intervene in chronically low-performing schools. His is the only voice in support of the change, with the usual suspects pointing to their success at stonewalling previous state interventions as proof that they don’t work (hmmm….) and that the state should just send more money instead. Aaron is on hand to point out that when a school has received bad report cards “for the better part of a decade, it’s pretty clear that local control has failed. The state then “has an obligation to help the kids in that school.” Not giving more money to the adults who ran it into the ground—improving the education of the kids who have suffered as a result of adult inaction. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/24/26)
Meanwhile, OSU professor (and Fordham senior research fellow) Vlad Kogan teamed up with Boston College/Hoover Institution’s Michael Hartney to build up—then dig into—a trove of data on teacher absenteeism in Ohio from pre-Covid times through spring of 2025. As suspected, teacher absenteeism rose in the 2021-22 school year. And while it has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels in most places (still probably too high, IMHO), teachers in Ohio’s large urban districts are still missing 2.5 days more now than in 2019. Have attendance norms been completely overthrown or has the job just gotten too hard for a mere mortal to do all day every day? The jury is still out. (National Review, 8/21/26)
Finally in today’s jumbo Bites: Here’s a ~~bothersome~~ fascinating piece from Signal Akron. It is pitched as helping families decide what school to attend this year by talking about all the options available in the area, including Akron City Schools, charters, and private schools. Wow. How nice, right? Wrong. The highly-detailed ACS section comes first and features names and phone numbers of important contacts, reassuring quotes from district personnel who are definitely there to help, and a bullet-pointed list of all the paperwork parents and guardians will need. The charter school section, by contrast, lists zero school names and no contact information, and quotes one individual from a charter sponsor mostly explaining how charter schools are different from districts. (The analogy of landlord and property manager used here is unsubtle and, I reckon, not one that the sponsor guy gave.) But even that mess is friendlier than the private school section which is a) only about vouchers, and b) makes sure to note that vouchers are “controversial” within the first 50 words. Even worse: This piece was posted today. Akron City Schools’ first day for students this year is not until Thursday, while every charter and private school I checked on in the area started last week. Diabolical. (Signal Akron, 8/24/26)