- Ohio’s first ever charter school sponsor ratings have been released after much tumult. No sponsors achieved the highest rating, and most were clustered at or near the bottom. More details on what this all means comes from the usual journalistic suspects. Our own Chad Aldis is quoted in all of the following pieces. Check out coverage in the Dispatch (Columbus Dispatch, 10/13/16), Gongwer (Gongwer Ohio, 10/13/16), the Blade (Toledo Blade, 10/13/16), and the redoubtable PD (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/13/16).
- Speaking of charter schools, here’s a piece from the Dispatch touting something their sports writer found remarkable: a local professional soccer team helping an inner-city district school to get their prep soccer program back up and running. While this is a good thing and a nice story if you like sports, it is hardly an unusual occurrence. What IS unusual in this story is that a charter school has a competitive sports team of any kind. This rare and important fact (the school is Fordham-sponsored KIPP Columbus, by the way) goes completely unremarked other than in photo captions. Thank heaven for photo publication waivers! (Columbus Dispatch, 10/12/16)
- The Plain Dealer has already covered the issues related to non-rollout of the merit pay structure proposed in the 2012 Cleveland Plan. Now, Patrick O’Donnell takes a look at the status of the year-round school schedule, widespread implementation of which was also proposed in the plan. Spoiler: it is not widespread. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/13/16)
- Staying on the North Coast, is Parma Schools’ impending fiscal hole smaller than originally thought? A group of parents thought they’d found a data error in the district’s finances that said yes. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/12/16) Sadly, the district rechecked and found an offsetting error elsewhere that says no. That these issues are playing out over Facebook says all I need to know about the state of relations in Parma. YMMV (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/16/16)
- When is getting more money not a raise? When you, for some reason, need to Orwell-ize it into “experience credit” or “stipends”. (ThisWeek News/Olentangy Valley News, 10/12/16)
- Editors in Toledo opined today on the state’s new-ish College Credit Plus Program. They seem to like it, with some caveats related to funding. (Toledo Blade, 10/14/16)
