- I’m going to start today with some tiny rays of sunshine. The headline of this story gives you all the background: data scrubbing in Columbus City Schools has now been proven to have kept hundreds of children from being eligible for vouchers for the last several years. Wait, you say, that doesn’t sound like sunshine. What IS sunshine is that everyone – and I mean everyone – wants to fix this problem for families…if they can figure out how. “Whether you agree with vouchers or not, the fact is, it is law right now, and everyone should have equal access with the right criteria,” says Democratic state rep. Kevin Boyce. “That wasn’t the case, so folks were cheated out of it. I’d like to find a way to correct that.” This is a sea-change in attitude, putting students and families first and setting politics aside for just a few moments. I am hopeful that with bipartisan support from city hall to the school board to the statehouse, help can be found to get vouchers to families who should have had them all along. Fantastic. (Columbus Dispatch)
- I am perhaps less optimistic that whoever allowed that “scab” headline to be published in the Reynoldsburg News last week has changed her or his tune, but I am happy to say that the most recent update on the story is both calmer and more thorough, noting clearly that some significant progress was made in previous negotiations between teachers and administration. Additional negotiations, with the help of a federal mediator, are scheduled to begin on September 5. Hang in there everyone. (ThisWeek News/Reynoldsburg News)
- A calm tone also pervades this piece from StateImpact looking at this year’s corps of TFA recruits in Ohio, as the program enters year three. Honestly, the fact that they are talking about TFA at all is worth a little smile. (StateImpact Ohio)
- The number of third graders retained due to reading scores in Butler County districts is low, and this nice in-depth look at how and why is interesting and informative. This is probably my last clip on TGRG until at least the first test of current third graders later in the fall, unless some miracle should occur and some journalist actually writes about how charter school students did. (Middletown Journal News)
- Well, we avoided it as long as we could, but Common Core is still the biggest education story going in Ohio, so here goes. We start light, with Common Core being among the list of things that Winton Woods’ superintendent says will help improve the achievement of his students in this struggling district. Open enrollment, a focus on reading proficiency in early grades, and a higher bar for academic eligibility are other keys to improvement. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- Editors in Toledo opined strongly in favor of Common Core this weekend. They also wished that the political circus around repeal efforts would end in favor of some legislative efforts to help clean up Lake Erie. (Toledo Blade)
- We all know the words to “I’m Just a Bill”, and the folks at IdeaStream are taking them to heart, looking ahead to whatever the Ohio Senate might want to do with a Common Core repeal bill should it pass the House. The Senate president seems not to buy the “erosion of local control” argument for repeal and seems to have one main question on his mind: “What are they going to replace it with? We want to make sure we still have academic challenges in Ohio schools.” Nice. (IdeaStream)
- One of the sponsors of the current repeal bill is from Lima. I was hopeful that this fact would spur journalists there to really get their facts straight in talking about Common Core. It was a vain hope, as this piece attests with misstatements and oversimplifications abounding. But all is not lost. Some good insight from two local district administrators on the true amount of testing they see with PARCC (9.5 hours) and on the potential chaos to be created in schools by switching standards three times in four years as currently proposed. I fear another long week ahead. (Lima News)
- We end with a little portent of what we’ll be talking about after this Common Core kerfuffle has ended in the House: the Ohio Supreme Court will take up the case of who owns the assets of a charter school when public money goes to a private operator. The case will be heard beginning September 23. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal)
