Commentary
Commentary
On school funding, first kill caps and guarantees
The recent unveiling of Governor Kasich’s budget plan for the 2018-19 fiscal years has kicked off Ohio’s biennial ritual of debating school funding. Caps and guarantees have long been a central part of that discussion, and it’ll be no different this spring.
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Gadfly Bites 2/13/17 - Fordham staffers quoted in out-of-the-way places
Fordham Ohio staffers were quoted in some out-of-the-way places over the weekend.
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Ohio’s ESSA plan: Using reduced chronic absenteeism as a measure of student engagement
On February 2, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) released the first draft of its state plan to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act.
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Gadfly Bites 2/10/17 - After the fact
With less than a month to go until a new CEO-style Academic Distress Commission comes to Lorain City Schools, one elected school board member has decided to reach out to the ACLU to see if a possible civil rights case may be an option to halt ADC implementation
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Gadfly Bites 2/8/17 - Global Impact STEM Academy growing again
Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger published an op ed this week in which he opines on the necessity and early efficacy of charter law reform in Ohio. For the latter, he cites our recent report looking at the early implementation of HB 2. Nice!
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Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance
Do incentives nudge students to exert more effort in their schoolwork? A recent study by University of Chicago analysts suggests they do, though the structure of the incentive is also important.
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Gadfly Bites 2/6/17 - Green Bear, Green Bear, what do you see?
A bit more coverage of the Ohio charter school facilities report, with whose release we helped out last week, courtesy of statewide public radio. (Statehouse News Bureau, 2/6/17)
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Gadfly Bites 2/3/17 - "This isn't about the money."
In case you missed, it Fordham assisted in the release of a new report documenting the opportunities and challenges facing charter schools in Ohio in terms of obtaining and maintaining proper facilities for their work.
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Gadfly Bites 2/1/17 - Welcome to The School Choice Corner
Details of Governor Kasich’s new biennial budget are emerging this week. Here are some peeks at the K-12 education portion of said budget from around the state.
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Charter Schools
You’re invited to a panel discussion on the facilities challenges facing Ohio charter schools
Ohio charter schools have long reported struggling in their efforts to secure school facilities.
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Gadfly Bites 1/30/17 - Quantifying and tackling the achievement gap in Dayton
A new report from Learn to Earn Dayton showed some sobering data regarding the achievement gap for black students in Montgomery County’s district schools, especially boys.
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Gadfly Bites 1/27/17 - Four out of five editors surveyed agree...
Kinda quiet in education news today. A decision has been made in Austintown schools on the fate of inter-district open enrollment, a hot-button issue as loyal Gadfly Bites subscribers will recall.
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Gadfly Bites 1/25/17 - Governor Kasich fuels speculation on education funding
A commentary written by Elyria teacher and education activist Matt Jablonski – on the topic of Ohio’s putative “graduation rate apocalypse” – cites a 2014 blog by our own Aaron Churchill while opining. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1/24/17)
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Gadfly Bites 1/23/17 - ABJ "heartened" by Fordham report
There was some further coverage of our HB 2 implementation report On the Right Track over the weekend. First up, Columbus-based public television station WOSU-TV included discussion of the report in its weekend public affairs roundup show.
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Gadfly Bites 1/20/17 - More coverage of Fordham's "On the Right Track" report
Coverage of Fordham’s HB 2 implementation report On the Right Track continued over the last couple of days.
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Gadfly Bites 1/18/17 - Asking the question "What exactly is employment-survival skills training?”
Today, Fordham released its latest report – On the Right Track: Ohio’s charter reforms one year into implementation. First out of the gate with coverage of our HB 2 report is Jim Siegel at the D. Thanks!
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Strong Families, Successful Students
Much prior research indicates that youngsters from single-parent families face a greater risk of poor schooling outcomes compared to their peers from two-parent households.
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Gadfly Bites 1/13/17 - Kasich says, "A diploma has to mean something"
In case you didn't know, our own Chad Aldis is serving on the state supe’s workgroup on dropout prevention and recovery schools and was quoted following the group’s meeting earlier this week.
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Gadfly Bites 1/11/17 - Newspapers saying nice things about charter schools
Here is a nice look at a charter school in Canton, newly opened this school year, which focuses on students with special needs.
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Gadfly Bites 1/9/17 - "People always like to have a choice" indeed
Columbus City Schools is looking to expand selective admissions in a number of its lottery schools. This effort comes complete with school fairs to help district families find the best fit for their students among the CCS offerings.
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Gadfly Bites 1/6/17 - Quality Counts in Ohio too
Our own Chad Aldis was quoted this week on Ohio’s placement in EdWeek’s latest Quality Counts survey of states. At a glance, the Buckeye State’s middling rank was lackluster, but Chad’s more in-depth analysis helps put the data in context.
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Gadfly Bites 1/4/17 - New Lorain Academic Distress Commission to commence March 7
Looks like the new year is starting in Youngstown City Schools the same way the old one ended – with a battle of words between the school board and the CEO waged in the pages of the Vindy. (Youngstown Vindicator, 1/3/17)
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Counting down the top 5 education issues for 2017
In late 2016, we at the Ohio Gadfly asked for your predictions on the most important education issues of 2017. Here were your prognostications, along with—as you might expect from us at the Gadfly—commentary on how we hope these debates will unfold in the year to come.
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Top Fordham Ohio blog posts of 2016
Following the lead of our D.C. colleagues, we totted up the most-read articles posted on Ohio Gadfly Daily in 2016.The Top Five editorial posts are a microcosm of the issues we address regularly in an effort to advance educational excellence in a very real way here in the Buckeye State:
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Gadfly Bites 12/30/16 - The year ends awash in irony
Public radio’s Andy Chow published his year-end education wrap up yesterday. He wrote mainly about charter schools and resurrected an old quote from our own Chad Aldis in regard to the delayed award of federal Charter School Program grant funds. Thanks, Andy!
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Gadfly Bites 12/28/16 - Where are all the high school graduates going?
We start with a curious little story from Dayton. It is ostensibly about the reaction of several Dayton-area colleges to a new report predicting a decline in the overall number of high school graduates produced by U.S. schools over the next 20 years (e.g.