Gadfly Bites 8/30/17 - Going to the dogs
Tis the season, apparently, for reinvention in Ohio’s charter school sector. One such reinvention has made big news (you know the one I’m talking about), but another has occurred under the radar until now.
Tis the season, apparently, for reinvention in Ohio’s charter school sector. One such reinvention has made big news (you know the one I’m talking about), but another has occurred under the radar until now.
Some dude was busted last week for receiving and selling public transit bus passes stolen from Columbus City Schools and intended for students in lieu of yellow bus transportation.
ECOT’s transformation from general online school to dropout recovery school drew some additional ink this week. First up, the Dispatch suggests this is an effort by the school to avoid certain areas of accountability.
Fordham is namechecked in this story noting the first day of school in Columbus. Specifically, the crack journalists at Columbus’s Fox affiliate discussed the new lowered graduation requirements for this year’s seniors.
Lots of folks in the Dayton area seem to be angst-ing over ongoing expansion of the EdChoice Scholarship program to give vouchers to more students from low-income families each year. Even the comments section is more lively than usual for the DDN.
Research continues to point to the correlation between socioeconomic status and educational outcomes. Three new initiatives in the Buckeye State are cause for cautious optimism that old methods of addressing poverty may be giving way to innovation and new promise, especially for our youngest citizens.
Fordham’s Chad Aldis is quoted as saying that online schools are “not going away” in this piece from earlier in the week in which Columbus editors opine in support of Auditor Yost’s (…) recent guidance regarding charter school funding claw backs. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/17/17)
Our own Chad Aldis, an expert in charter school policy if the press it to be believed, is quoted in this new piece regarding pending legislation designed to “return” money clawed back from charter schools to the district schools from which it was “taken”.
July and August might otherwise be sleepy months best reserved for recovering from Ohio’s biennial budget process, lounging beachside, and avoiding one’s smartphone and computer. The downtime also creates space to reflect.
As all my loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers know, your humble clips compiler is consistent in believing that, aside from you, very few others take this little news clips lark seriously (and that both of you should probably find additional hobbies; just sayin’).
In case you missed it, State Auditor Dave Yost (…) issued some guidance this week. What’s the big deal, I hear you ask. Doesn’t he do that literally every week? Well, probably.
But we do. Really.
Somewhere between the right and the left – between the un-nuanced mantras of personal responsibility and big government – lie most of the problems related to poverty, as well as most of the solutions. So said Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance in his opening remarks at a Columbus Metropolitan Club event in Columbus last week.
Contract talks in Dayton resume today with some distance still between the two sides. Folks seem upbeat but it will be a long day today and probably Wednesday too, the only other scheduled bargaining day. In between – a school board meeting.
Contract negotiations between the teachers union and district administration resumed in Dayton yesterday after nearly two months off. Those negotiations were to begin with the two sides sitting in separate rooms. That way nothing could go wrong. Nice.
Dayton school board members are not the only ones preparing for a possible teachers strike to start the school year: the union ratcheted up the tension to at least “triple dare” by voting this week to authorize a 10-day strike notice ahead of resumed contract negoti
There is a new superintendent in Youngstown City Schools. In a surprise to almost no one, it is not one of the out-of-towners recommended by the school board. It is instead, the current interim supe, a district veteran. (Youngstown Vindicator, 7/29/17)
Let’s start today with some statewide education news. To wit: this question.
Our own Chad Aldis is one of several Ohio sources quoted in this national piece looking at the state’s second-draft ESSA plan: how and why it’s changed, what its reception at USDOE might be, and what it means for accountability back home.
Not much education news to report on from the weekend. In fact, there’s very little in the following pieces that has to do with education. More about adult interests, as usual. How very sad.
We start to today with a clutch of stories from Lorain. The “realness” of the arrival of a CEO in the district seems to have caught up with the elected school board.
While many folks in the education realm here in Ohio are congratulating themselves on lowering the state’s graduation standards for the Class of 2018, some are still questioning the wisdom of the action (our own Aaron Churchill included) and some are worried about unintended consequences and/
We start today with something of a broad overview of education in Ohio, courtesy of state supe Paolo DeMaria. The supe presented his vision at the City Club of Cleveland last week, stressing the need for strategic planning and broad goals rather than what he calls “random acts of policy development”.
As originally noted in Wednesday’s clips, here is more on this week’s Ohio Supreme Court rulings against the state’s largest online charter school. And I do mean “against”. It ain’t over yet, of course, but three rulings in two hours has got to be a tough blow to absorb.
Now here is a confluence of articles that I would call inexplicable. First up, the state board of ed met earlier in this week and seemed eager to talk about Ohio’s CEO-style Academic Distress Commissions. That is, about how much they all seem to loathe them. Seriously? None of you see any positives at all?
In case you missed it, there was some talk a week or so ago that two new charter schools planned for the 2017-18 school year might not open in Cleveland due to some procedural, paperwork-y type issues.
In case you missed it last week, the General Assembly passed the new two-year state budget and Governor Kasich signed it into law…making a record number of line item vetoes along the way. Jeremy Kelley took a look at 11 of those education-related vetoes and got some big names to help him make sense of the original intent of the language and the effect of the vetoes.
The Dispatch published an interesting piece this weekend discussing the lack of district superintendents who are female and people of color in Ohio.
After the departure of its high-profile leader in the recent past, FutureReady Columbus is still trying to get itself ready for the present day. The organization was born as a big ticket, partner-fueled initiative to help Columbus students get the best possible education.
Apprenticeships are all the rage. President Trump recently announced a doubling of federal funding for apprenticeship programs to $200 million in his next budget. This follows an investment by President Obama of $50 million in the outgoing months of his administration. In fact, this follows a major rewrite of the federal legislation governing job training in 2014.