Gadfly Bites 9/9/26—More anomalies than you can shake a stick at

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1. Because of the impending holiday, last Friday’s Bites came out pretty early. Thus we missed the big breaking news that hit later that day: Reports of widespread “anomalies” in last year’s state testing results for numerous charter and district schools. Huge mess, obvs, for which many details remain to be explained. Here, however, is a good first look from Cleveland.com, noting that there were different reasons for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to question the accuracy of test scores from different schools. Ugh. (Cleveland.com, 9/8/26) State report cards are due out next week. Schools whose test scores are under investigation—per the above—will receive provisional data, but Akron City Schools are not among those. Thus the superintendent was in the clear to discuss preliminary data at her “State of the District” speech last week. What she shared doesn’t sound all that great to me, but she can only discuss what is there, I guess. (Signal Akron, 9/8/26)
   
   

2. Apropos of the preceding clips, here’s a timely (and very long) discussion about what parents look for when visiting, evaluating, and choosing a private school. It is focused on independent (read: high-dollar) schools in northeast Ohio (you know the ones I mean), but the biggest lessons are generalizable, IMHO, to a school search of any kind at any level. (Cleveland Magazine, 9/6/26) For a nice—also timely and very long—comparison, check out this piece charting the expanding/changing public school options in the Cleveland area. This includes the new academic offerings in consolidated CMSD schools, the coordinated effort from organizations like Future Ready Cleveland to bring new and innovative charter schools to the area, and even the presence of independent STEM school Bio-Med Science Academy. The moral of this serendipitous juxtaposition of stories, per your humble clips compiler: We can still crib the free advice from the big money private school folks even if we only end up applying it to our search for zero-dollar public school options. Just sayin’. (Signal Cleveland, 9/7/26)
    
3. Unfortunately for anyone considering school choice, this piece makes it sounds like busing headaches have been widespread across Ohio in the first weeks of the school year—even for families who opt for schools in their district of residence. Even the minimal parent quotes provided here are infuriating to me. But even more rage-inducing is the schools’ response to the situation. “If Ohio did not have the Payment in Lieu of Transportation option available to districts, I believe the statewide driver shortage and its operational impact would be considerably more visible,” said Melody Congilio. Just in case that statement is too shrouded in insider jargon—Coniglio is president-elect of the National Association for Pupil Transportation and director of transpo at West Geauga Local Schools after all—please allow me to translate: “If we could exclude more students from transportation requirements, and palm them off with a token amount of money, everything would be fine…for us.” (Ohio Capital Journal, 9/8/26)

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