- Editors at the Dispatch weighed in on the KnowYourCharter website today. Every line is worth a read, but just a hint: they are not fans. (Columbus Dispatch)
- As you may remember, Columbus City Schools is a pilot site for Ohio’s parent trigger law, and 20 schools in the district are, for the first time, eligible to be taken over/reorganized/reconstituted if a majority of parents want that to occur. Today, KidsOhio.org released an overview of all the schools on the list, noting that all have improvement plans already in place and that most have had new principals within the three-year time frame of the trigger review. Interesting. (Columbus Dispatch)
- The PD’s “test mania” series continues, this time talking with teachers about their views. No spoilers from me. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- I applaud the PD for their extensive “test mania” series, but I have to ask if it was really necessary to use those thousands of words/pixels and all those column inches/bytes to keep on saying that everyone hates testing. Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, those last three words sum up the entire PD series. However, here’s the other side, as presented in a technical and – dare I say it – less picturesque way by a guest columnist in the Dayton Daily News today. Their guest is a veteran teacher who needs over 600 words to express not only why he finds testing valuable but also what he has personally done to help make tests for Ohio’s students better and even more valuable for teachers, parents, and taxpayers. (Dayton Daily News)
- Lorain schools released their 5-year budget forecast this week. The treasurer reports that there are 300 assumptions made in order to report the numbers, which seems like a lot. The “largest single unknown cost element in the forecast” is the number of kids/amount of money the district will lose when students choose to go to charter schools instead of the district schools (which as we noted yesterday are in academic distress). Honestly, if the forecasts are correct, I think this will be a non-issue soon. Hundreds of students are year are forecast to leave (to the tune of $3.5 million per year in state funding); at that rate, there won’t be a district left to administer in very short order. Unless of course that forecast is somehow excessive…. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal)
