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Back to school news – the Good
Cincinnati Classical Academy’s school year starts next week, and here’s a great look at its lovely new Summit Park campus, where its expanded middle and upper school grades will be housed. The former corporate headquarters building has never looked so good following a $29 million renovation to make it ready for students. Kudos to Akron Signal’s Andrew Keiper for this piece on the first day of school this week at four buildings in the Rubber City, including Middlebury Academy, a charter school whose dean of students said, “All of our teachers, man, they’re hungry, they’re happy, they’re energized,” and whose principal said, “I want to bring a joy back for teachers and scholars.” Great thoughts for the new year. Here’s hoping for a good one for everybody!
Back to school news – the Bad
Last Friday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost renewed his legal action against Columbus City Schools, noting that a) last year’s case against the district’s determination of a large number of charter, private, and STEM school students as “impractical to transport” went dormant without resolution, and b) the district has done the same thing again just ahead of the new school year. Perhaps a different resolution will come to pass this time.
Back to school news – the Ugly
Dayton City Schools was successful in its legal effort to block a new state law and to allow them to give high school students transit passes for use in getting to and from school every day for the time being. Distribution began on Monday. While this new plan does include charter, private, and STEM school students, it feels like many choice-using (and indeed many district-using) families have already found a pretty good groove during the first week without them. For district families looking to use RTA, there are lots of new rules and bureaucracy supposedly designed to help their kids do so more safely and orderly than in the past. But there remains this truly off-putting public rancor between members of the elected school board and the leaders of RTA on this issue, with a very clear insinuation that no one believes this to be a final solution to the decade-long transportation troubles in the area, and a big question mark over why the district spent tens of thousands of dollars in their recent legal fight to make it happen. A truly ugly situation that puts students and families at the very bottom of the priority list.
More resources to improve early literacy
Not to dwell too much on the bad news, here is a look at the new round of grants to schools across the state intended to help continue their push for better early literacy instruction via the science of reading. The new grants total $45 million statewide, and this Cleveland.com coverage looks in depth at how two northeast Ohio districts and one charter school (Edge Academy in Akron) are going to spend the dollars to help their youngest readers reach proficiency. Worth a moment of your time.
Research of note
New research out of Tennessee shows that charter schools helped boost their students’ achievement more than traditional district schools did in the wake of Covid-era learning disruptions. This includes math and ELA test scores in schools all across the state, with the strongest effects concentrated in elementary and middle school grade levels. Data also indicate this occurred specifically because Tennessee charters upped their teaching game immediately after pandemic school closures ended, acting to mitigate learning loss before any data were even available to confirm such a loss. Great news!
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