Gadfly Bites 9/21/26—Honesty and integrity

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1. Many thanks to the good folks at State Affairs (FKA Gongwer Ohio) for this precise restatement of the arguments for and against third grade retention—particularly germane in the wake of the latest wave of report card data. While Fordham provides the only support for reinstating mandatory retention for students who don’t pass the third grade reading test included here, we have written and researched and analyzed so thoroughly on the topic that a) our “support” feels more like a bedrock foundation, and b) the handful of other lightweight protests against retention in the piece sound unserious by comparison. (State Affairs, 9/19/26)
   
   

2. Fordham’s fingerprints are all over this piece too, even if we don’t get any actual credit. It’s a look at how Columbus City Schools students have fared after graduation, as reveled by Ohio’s new postsecondary attainment database. Fordham has advocated (and analyzed and researched and blogged) about the need for Ohio to have this data compiled and available for years. The data are ugly (just 12 percent of 2018 grads had earned a bachelor’s degree after six years, and six district high schools did not produce a single college graduate in that time). But Fordham’s senior research fellow Vlad Kogan (again?!) is even more concerned by the 24 percent of grads who had started college only to drop out without a degree. “One thing worse than not getting college education is going out, taking on a lot of debts and not finishing,” he says. “Then you’re kind of in a worse-case-scenario where you don’t have the benefit of the degree but you have all the costs of attending”. Problematic indeed. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/19/26)
   
   

3. Finally today: This piece is an update of a two-week-old story about state testing anomalies in Dayton area charter schools. The update includes responses from two of the schools. “We are eager to assess the anomalies and resolve any concerns in full cooperation with the Department,” says Middletown Preparatory & Fitness Academy. “Student achievement and integrity are core tenets of our educational mission and testing protocols, and we have full confidence in the veracity of our quality student achievement results.” Meanwhile, Klepinger Community School says it has been asked “to provide additional information regarding its assessment procedures to address these anomalies, and we will cooperate fully with the Department throughout this process” and that it has “full confidence that its statewide assessment results accurately reflect its students’ achievement and are a product of its high standards for honesty and integrity.” (Dayton Daily News, 9/19/26)

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