- The good news: Columbus City Schools appears able to find enough stuff on which to spend its full allotment of Covid-relief funding before the various deadlines, according to this piece. The bad news (which comes from Marguerite Roza, no less): The district’s public plans include millions spent on social and emotional learning and staff development and none for math or reading interventions. “That’s a concern,” she told the Dispatch, understatedly. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/10/22) Speaking of which, the Dispatch is back on the case of the supposed decrepitude of many Columbus City Schools’ buildings all across the city. It is a topic they were big on prior to the recent teacher strike and are banging the gong again. A) I personally am not sure that all these points of “decrepitude” are equal as listed (boxes stacked too high and stages without glowtape seem pretty minor to me and not something the entire city should be forced to be alarmed about). B) Why in the name of Philo T. Farnsworth do any schools still have big old TV carts in the year of our Lord Bezos 2022? Seems like the biggest danger for kids is irrelevancy.) (Columbus Dispatch, 9/12/22)
- But there is also a danger of moving on to the shiny new thing too quickly. (Honestly, we see this at about the same rate as the above-referenced Luddite stories.) Case in point: Middletown City Schools, which has wholeheartedly embraced a new “personalized learning” model after literally one day. From this brief piece, two thoughts arise for me. First: Did the students really do much of anything to create these off-site learning day schedules? Sounds like most of them just picked from a menu of activities the grown-ups put in front of them (for which the staff required three non-teaching PD days to engineer), even though there were some satisfied kid customers interviewed. Second: Perhaps you should determine via data whether you really have mastered the derisively-termed “sit and get” education model before you just declare victory and move on to the next thing. (WCPO-TV, Cincinnati, 9/12/22)
- This op-ed from an Akron citizen suggests that literally everyone other than the local school district is responsible for—and will succeed at—helping third graders read at grade level. This despite the fact that most folks in the education establishment are touting Akron City Schools’ fantastic Covid-slide “rebound” as having solved this issue already. Perhaps this dude just doesn’t read the ABJ. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/11/22)
Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
Policy Priority:
Topics:
