- A little more on school report cards this morning if you can handle it. First up, Jeremy Kelley took a look at charter schools’ performance in the Dayton area as compared to each other and to local districts. Our own Aaron Churchill is there to help. Kudos to Jeremy for taking a comparative look at the Dayton Regional STEM School’s (pretty darn good) report card as well. (Dayton Daily News, 9/15/17) Speaking of Aaron, he is quoted a little more extensively in this updated Columbus public radio version of the Statehouse News Bureau story on report card data originally clipped on Friday. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 9/15/17)
- The PD’s Rich Exner today has a series of graphs comparing district report cards to median income for people living in those districts. “The wealthier a school district,” he writes, “the better the district tends to do.” But it does depend on what aspect of report card data is being compared. Pretty interesting stuff. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9/18/17) Like the Dayton Daily News, above, the Dispatch was also interested in some report cards other than traditional districts. To wit: here’s a look at central Ohio’s career tech school report cards. A few different indicators than district and charter schools, but again a mixed bag of results for these largely regional entities. There is also a brief look at the report cards of the state’s dropout recovery schools. Less mixed there. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/16/17)
- In non-report-card news, we begin with a deep dive into the Cristo Rey school network from the current edition of City Journal, a “quarterly magazine of urban affairs” published by the Manhattan Institute. It mentions Ohio as home to three Cristo Rey schools and notes that all three accept vouchers. Nice. (City Journal, Summer 2017 edition) Ohio’s Kindergarten Readiness Assessment was last week touted as being of some importance in helping our youngest students start out on the right foot. (Gongwer Ohio, 9/15/17) The online charter school run by the Marion City School District, you’ll recall, closed up shop somewhat abruptly just before the start of the school year – a victim of the same attendance audit finding and funding “claw back” effort that ECOT has been fighting. At the time, district officials suggested they might need to go door to door to alert some of the online school’s students. Despite my unfunny “IRL” joke at the time, that is exactly what they needed to do. They found empty, abandoned homes and families facing hardships unable to make the switch quickly enough. In fact, 19 of the online school’s students remain unenrolled elsewhere more than six weeks later. The district is to be commended for continuing to work with families to get the students back in school as quickly as possible. (Marion Star, 9/18/17) Finally today, here’s a look at the new “interactive lunch menu” in Plain Local Schools. It’s a web tool and app that is helping students with food allergies and diabetes – and the parents, nurses, and cafeteria workers who help them – navigate the district’s food service safely. (Canton Repository, 9/16/17)
Topics:
