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- Let’s start with some legal news. The New York Times took a lengthy look at Reading Recovery’s lawsuit against the State of Ohio, which is aiming to stop the governor’s implementation of the Science of Reading as the law of the land here. “The practical matter is, we have to be able to keep our business going,” says the Reading Recovery Council’s executive director by way of explanation for bringing the fight. “But the stand is principled… We believe that what we do works, and we’ve got evidence to prove that it does work.” Should be a fascinating /trIEUHl/ if it happens, don’t you agree? (New York Times, 11/3/23) In further (and no doubt related) legal news, plaintiffs have filed an objection to the release of a temporary restraining order a couple of weeks ago, an action which allowed the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to begin fully operating. We’ll see how it goes. (Gongwer Ohio, 11/6/23)
- Two different views of the causes of chronic student absenteeism being discussed in schools across the country. Up first is the national view. It does not include Ohio references, but covers a lot of ground in trying to define causes generally. These include the old standby of illness at the top, but also some newer reasons such as a preference by older teens for work over school, rising incidence of mental health problems among young people, and higher-than-usual teacher absenteeism leading their students to follow suit. (The 74, 11/7/23) Up next is the local view—from one of the leafiest of leafy Ohio suburbs. The elected board that runs Yellow Springs Exempted Village Schools also covers a lot of ground in this discussion of absenteeism in their district. Illness is at the top of their list of causes too, but district officials specify that much of that category consists of “family quarantining”—keeping everyone home following a Covid exposure or diagnosis for one family member. But on the opposite end of the same spectrum is family vacationing. To wit: Some parents reported that their families were attempting to “make up for vacations they had missed” during the first two years of the pandemic—“Some families took advantage of the fact that they felt comfortable again going on vacation,” said the elementary school principal—and chose to do so during the school year. (Yellow Springs News, 11/6/23)
- Finally today, a pair of stories from Dayton City Schools. The search for a permanent superintendent there continues apace, with a public meeting held earlier this week to allow community members to tell the search firm what they’re looking for in a new leader. A couple of elected school board members are quoted in this piece (mainly because the press were asked not to attend the breakout sessions), including this interesting “instruction” provided by one to her fellow concerned citizens: “If you put your child in our districts, what do you want from us? If you don’t put your children in our districts, why don’t you put them in there?” I for one am elated to hear an elected school board member fully recognizing their district as a choice—one among many—that parents can make. Love it! (Dayton Daily News, 11/7/23) Why does this make me so happy? Because Dayton City Schools-resident families must (as I must also) continually hear about a deeply dysfunctional operation whose highly-paid leaders and staffers regularly shoot their system in the foot and do not seem to have the capacity to dig out of entrenched structural deficiencies to focus on, say, improving academics or achieving basic operational stability. (Dayton Daily News, 11/8/23)
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