- The Dayton Daily News’ look at the most recent evaluation results for Ohio charter school sponsors notes that while most sponsors rated as effective, some folks say that’s “not all good news”. Chad Aldis, quoted here on the topic, is not one of those people. (Dayton Daily News, 11/28/18)
- Speaking of charter schools, the only charter school in Sandusky, Ohio, doubled its enrollment in its second year of operation. While the head of the school says “the future’s bright”, the local district supe has some restrained words in response to the news. (Sandusky Register, 11/27/18) And sticking with the topic of school choice for a moment, here is some news on a new school option coming to Athens County next year for kids ages 4 to 8. The putative Solid Ground School is apparently patterned on the Reggio Emilia educational model, but that is only mentioned once and seems to be downplayed in favor of simply “nature school”. It will definitely be a tuition-charging non-public school when it arrives but whether it will be a traditional state-chartered private school or a non-chartered, non-tax supported “08” school is unclear. (Athens News, 11/25/18)
- Here’s a thorough look at how the legislative sausage is made here in Ohio. It concerns the amendment language that is intended to lower Ohio’s graduation requirements for the Class of 2019. (Dayton Daily News, 11/27/18) While the legislation that will be used to carry this amendment was not the one under discussion in the House Education and Career Readiness Committee meeting last night, the topic was the same. Here is some coverage of that meeting. I would ask you to disregard the “testy exchange” referenced in the headline and focus instead on the numbers quoted here. Seems to me we should consider ourselves lucky to have a “crisis” of so small a magnitude and so eminently fixable by such simple means. And I do NOT mean legislation. But that’s probably just me. (Gongwer Ohio, 11/27/18)
- We end today with a little good news for Youngstown City Schools. The district has been released from its corrective action plan regarding the poor state of services provided to students with special needs. Kudos, of course, but it would have been nice to find out what they actually did to get better services to those students. There is also discussion of budget matters (how much for sports?!) and of some retrenching of the Academic Distress Commission ahead of a new CEO. (Youngstown Vindicator, 11/28/18)
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