Gadfly Bites 9/10/25—This ain’t right

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

Let’s start with some more great coverage of our recent CTE report. No idea why it’s hitting so big just now, but I love it! (Statehouse News Bureau, 9/3/25) Here’s another hit for that report, but quite a bit more peripheral than the others. (Dayton Daily News, 9/8/25)
Despite the fact that school districts in and around Athens County—an area that still has a lot fewer non-district of options than other parts of the state—have been experiencing steady enrollment declines for the last 10 years, voucher grouchers are still blaming EdChoice expansion for the latest decreases. Such ridiculous single-mindedness—fully disconnected from reality—almost makes me wish that vouchers would go away just to prove them and all their mindless, sheep-like followers disastrously wrong. Almost, but not quite. (Athens Messenger, 9/3/25)
Staying in Ohio’s bucolic countryside for another clip: Here’s a look at the Rural Teacher Corps operating out of Ohio University’s Eastern Branch campus. The program provides support specific to pre-service educators who are committed to teaching in rural schools once they graduate. What they get that other teacher prep programs don’t provide is a little unclear, but let’s hope it’s more about respect for local environment, culture, and history than it is about any “deficits” us country folks might need fillin’ via a soft-hearted carpetbagger with a fancy learnin’ degree. (Times Leader, 9/8/25)
Meanwhile, in another rural(ish) area of Ohio, administrators of Cloverleaf Local Schools (yep, I had to look it up too) will be asking the elected school board to reduce the amount of its three property tax levies by about 3.3 mills total, cutting how much funding it receives from residents by more than half. Supe points out that while they do have some additional money right now (from a gas pipeline and state construction funding) which helps them to be able to provide this particular round of tax relief, this is actually the fifth time the district has cut taxes in this way. Nice! And before you ask, my research indicates that Cloverleaf’s student enrollment has remained decently steady to slightly on the rise over the last few years. Just sayin’. (Ideastream Public Media, 9/8/25)
Not too far away from Cloverleaf, leaders of Akron City Schools recently gave a preview of their upcoming state report card—to be released with all the others officially next week. The big news is that they are predicting the district will level up from last year’s 2.5 stars (out of 5) to 3 stars this year. This despite the fact that all of their test scores will remain below pre-pandemic levels and that many of those—especially reading achievement (!?)—will show a decline from last year. As if that irony wasn’t hilarious enough for you, please be amused at the fact that the published piece from the ABJ is still posted with a blatant error in counting the number of takeaways they are discussing. Kind of like a big old neon sign clearly indicating “This Ain’t Right”. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/4/25)
In slightly better news, Willoughby-Eastlake City Schools is reporting that last year’s kindergarteners went from 30 percent readiness to 73 percent readiness in reading from the beginning to the end of the school year. Probably not a huge deal given the district’s overall quality and the fact that they were using a science-of-reading-fueled curriculum for some years before it was required of them. But it’s probably not nothing. (News 5 Cleveland, 9/3/25)
Here is a rare piece of coverage on one of my favorite topics: Cellphone policies in schools. No, not for students; for their teachers. And here in Ohio it boils down to exactly what ~~you think it is~~ I thought it was—do as we say, not as we do. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/5/25)
This piece is more like a game of telephone disguised as journalism. As in, a story with some grain of fact to it that becomes distorted—and less and less credible—with each retelling. The topic should not be surprising: Providing busing for charter and private school students in Ohio. Omitted for good this time is the vital point that no Ohio school district is required to transport any high school students at all (except those with IEPs that include bus service). Thus what Dayton was “forced to cancel” was something that they were not ever “forced to provide”. (To say nothing of the complete debacle their efforts had been for a decade). And while this omission is, I’m sure, just the result of journalists repeating what they’ve heard from others in their tribe (looking at you, Guardian), we all know that correcting the record would simply end the story. Then, those reporters—who are clearly working together to blast this increasingly error-riddled but also-increasingly-clickable story around the world—would have to hang up their conference line and actually move on to real news. And I’m sure we can’t have that. (Associated Press, 9/6/25)
Whew. Let us cleanse our palates now with a couple of lovely school profiles. First up: Veritas Classical Academy, a private school in Marietta…looked at a might jealously (if I do say so myself) from across the border in West Virginia. (WTAP-TV, Parkersburg WV, 9/6/25) Next up is the Academy for Urban Scholars, whose sixth Ohio charter school campus opened in Toledo last week. I’m pleased to see lots of hometown talent running and supporting the school, which will hopefully help AUS attract some of the quirky, only-in-Toledo appreciation that certain Glass City charters are lucky enough to get. (Toledo Blade, 9/8/25)
Finally today, here’s a look at some glow ups in schools across the state. First we catch up with Westwood Elementary in Dayton City Schools, which now boasts both a game room and a Virtual Reality room. The latter is supposed to help teach science and social studies. Well, I say “teach”, but what the district says is to “immerse [students] in science and social studies learning”. So, yeah, I could be wrong about the point of the VR. The game room, however, is being promised to help with lots of school stuff, including boosting attendance, motivating good behavior, and incentivizing higher grades. It will also allow staff members to connect with kids over the games, to be a safe space, and to let students “engage more with one another and work on some social skills.” How did video games get to be so beneficial? I’m ready to play! (Dayton Daily News, 9/8/25) The bougie Miami Valley School is probably about as far as you can get from an urban district elementary school, and nothing illustrates that more than a couple of photos of the private school’s swanky new cafeteria built to serve scratch-made meals in a convivial setting. Wowza. Why no, MVS still doesn’t take EdChoice vouchers. Why do you ask? (Dayton Daily News, 9/7/25) Not to be outdone, here’s a quick profile of Parma City Schools’ new farm-to-school coordinator. Among the trained chef’s responsibilities in her new position will be turning local produce into scratch-made recipes at the district’s elementary and secondary schools, overseeing the district’s gardens, and running the experiential learning program related to food science. Now I want a salad and to go play video games. (Cleveland.com, 9/10/25)