News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.
- First up today, our own Aaron Churchill was one of the guests on a podcast called The Narrative, which dropped on Friday. The topic was school choice in Ohio and included discussion of the voucher groucher lawsuit and a whole bunch of myth busting based on the claims in that lawsuit—both areas where Aaron excels. Good stuff. (Citizens for Christian Virtue, 9/13/24)
- Also dropping on Friday: School and district report cards. Coverage by a trio of Columbus Dispatch reporters focuses on all the positive info they can muster…mostly by most past Columbus City Schools’ data very quickly. Aaron is one of the analysts quoted toward the bottom of the piece, saying, “While there’s some signs pointing upward on literacy, the sobering part of this big statewide picture is with math. We are still way behind math relative to pre-pandemic.” he added. “There are way too many students in Ohio who are struggling in this area and just not making enough progress.” (Columbus Dispatch, 9/13/24) The Dayton Daily News is focused on the statewide numbers exclusively in their first piece. Aaron once again includes his sobering analysis of math outcomes. Interestingly, DDN thinks that math proficiency is the good news, noting that it was up statewide over last year, “improving from 53 percent in all grades and all students in the 2022-2023 school year to 53.5 percent.” Pop the champagne, right? (Wrong. Aaron said “sobering”, and I listen to him.) And, weirdly, DDN folks are down on ELA proficiency, noting that it “remained flat at 60.9 percent”. Weird. (Dayton Daily News, 9/13/24) Gongwer is non-committal in their own reporting, but give room for a number of quick takes (including Aaron’s) that appear to be a live-action reenactment of the blind men describing an elephant. (Gongwer Ohio, 9/13/24)
- Cleveland.com doesn’t have need of Aaron Churchill (or any other outside analyst) to present their charter school report card table. (Cleveland.com, 9/13/24) The ABJ doesn’t seem to need much in the way of outside analysis either, focusing on its own downbeat assessment of Summit County district performance. This despite the fact that Akron City Schools—as they teased a couple of weeks ago—substantially boosted student math performance in several areas, including a nearly 10-point increase in algebra 1 scores and an almost seven-point increase in fifth grade math. I don’t want to speak for him, but I reckon even Aaron would toast to that. (Akron Beacon Journal, 9/13/24)
- Without citing any data, the superintendent of the Allen County ESC declared victory over pandemic learning loss in his county on Friday. “The immediate impact” of $2 million in funding from the state, he says, was “to get the students back up to where they should be if the pandemic never occurred, and we think we’ve been very successful.” Having solved that pesky problem handily, bossman is sure that students are going to be ready “for jobs that don’t even exist in the marketplace yet.” By my reckoning, this dude is an expert in things that don’t exist yet. So he’s probably right. (WLIO-TV, Lima, 9/13/24)
- On the other hand, the interim superintendent of the lowest-performing district in the entire state is realistic and cautious in his assessment of (despite his clear and infectious optimism for) academic improvement. Rusty Clifford, interim supe of very very tiny—and very very academically-impoverished—Jefferson Twp. Local Schools (19 kids in last year’s graduating class), explains many of the changes he’s made in his few months on the job, expresses enthusiasm about a tiny uptick in student enrollment, and acknowledges the many challenges that remain. But he says the community is behind him, there will be no discussion of merging with another district, and there are brighter days just ahead. (Dayton Daily News, 9/15/24)
Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
Policy Priority:
Topics:
