As the song says, “There’s a war goin’ on out there somewhere.” It seems to be a war on knowin’ stuff and it’s being waged in the state board of education.
The gap in vocabulary for children growing up in poor households compared to their higher-income peers is well documented in research, especially for the youngest students just entering school. But shouldn’t the start of formal education begin to mitigate that gap?
Can you stand a couple more media hits on Fordham’s Back to the Basics report? Me too! First up was a really good write up I missed upon release of the report last Thursday.
In case you missed it, Fordham released a new report yesterday, offering up a redesign of Ohio’s school report cards to be fairer to schools and clearer for parents. Media response was generally pretty good.
For more than a decade, Ohio’s annual school report cards have offered the public information on school quality. The current iteration of report cards has notable strengths: School ratings are grounded in hard data, they use an intuitive A-F rating system, and several of the metrics encourage schools to pay attention to the achievement of all students.
I don’t usually clip blog posts, but the Ohio-centric nature of this piece from Citizen Ed was too much to resist. It describes a panel event called “The Faces of Education Reform,” held at the recent Excellence in Education annual conference.
The Associated Press published a story looking at the racial diversity of students who’ve opted into charter schools across the country and were very alarmed by their findings. I’m assuming that many news outlets across Ohio will be localizing the story in the days to come.
The inimitable Marguerite Roza has been taking a look at dual enrollment programs across the country, including College Credit Plus here in Ohio.
Maybe they were too optimistic? Maybe there was a wink and a nudge? Who knows?
We start the week with another update on Columbus City Schools’ upcoming surplus property auction.
Pretty busy meeting for the Columbus school board last night. Suspensions were approved for two more data scrubbing administrators. Both will retain their jobs after the sting of that wrist slapping abates.
Fordham is namechecked in Jeremy Kelley’s look at the latest charter sponsor ratings. Makes sense since our sponsorship office (and two sponsored schools) is located in the Gem City. (Dayton Daily News, 11/20/17)
New Ohio charter sponsor ratings were released this week. For the first time, there are sponsors rated at the highest level, which is good. The Dispatch is focusing on the bad – 10 sponsors rated “Poor”.
Want a good read? Check out this little nugget on the Fordham-sponsored United Schools Network of charters here in Columbus, including a look at their new School Performance Institute. Just ignore the snarky subhead of the piece. They couldn’t help themselves, I suppose.
We’re back after a little break on Friday, with a lot of central Ohio education news. Stay with me on this first one; it’s twisty. Twenty-some years ago, Columbus City Schools was embroiled in a lawsuit over the use of religious music—specifically Christian hymns and spirituals—used in its graduation ceremonies.
In the last week, central Ohioans got an interesting look at how Columbus City Schools deals with its taxpayer-provided finances and assets, courtesy of two stories from the Columbus Dispatch.
Props to Columbus City Schools for this accounting control measure that likely saved the figurative bacon of dozens of district employees. Surprisingly. (Columbus Dispatch, 11/6/17) Why the surprise?
Youngstown CEO Krish Mohip this weekend unveiled a new teacher evaluation framework coming soon to his district – in which 50% of a teacher’s performance rating will be based on how the district as a whole is doing in terms of value added measures.
Not sure why, but the story about Dayton City Schools’ contract tussle with the Preschool Promise folks—clipped earlier this week—garnered more interest than usual from readers.
In That State Up North, a debate is brewing over the state board of education.
It seems like Dayton City Schools is advocating here to receive money for pre-K kids they don’t have. But I’m probably misreading it.
Not much going on in ed news across Ohio. Must be all the anticipation of Election Day coming up. Speaking of which, interdistrict open enrollment is an important issue in regard to the levy on the ballot in Coventry Local Schools.
The D finally published some kind of actual news story based on what Bill Bush heard at the ECOT board meeting (and committee meetings and executive session) he attended earlier in the week.
We start today’s epic clips collection with a blast from the past – a legislative hearing in which a bunch of people come together to defend the Common Core. Chad is quoted within, naturally. (Gongwer Ohio, 10/24/17)
As we’ve come to learn more about sleep and how it affects adolescents, school start times (SST) have become part of a national conversation.
CEO David Hardy yesterday released a draft of his turnaround plan for the district, dubbed the “Lorain Promise”.
Ugh. Some days the clips write themselves, and some days are like today. Our own Chad Aldis is quoted in this brief piece from public radio on the possibility that Ohio’s various diplomas may fall afoul of ESSA graduation calculation requirements. I think. (WKSU-FM, Kent, 10/19/17)
Our own Chad Aldis is quoted on the uniquely Ohio-centric nature of the attendance audit issues which resulted in a funding clawback order for ECOT (and other online schools, but who cares?) and reportedly threatens ECOT with
Just like other online general education charter schools and even brick-and-mortar charter schools before them, dropout recovery schools in Ohio are currently being ECOTted. That is, tarred with a brush meant for the much-reviled-in-whatever-form Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.
Big changes in the district became breaking news in Youngstown this morning.
