This is our last edition of the year. Thanks for reading and subscribing. We’ll be back on 1/4/23 with a final Bite at 2022.
- There’s a lot of words in this piece, looking at what the next Columbus City Schools superintendent will face whenever he or she starts the job. But leave it to OSU’s Vlad Kogan to cut through the noise: “When you look at districts that are very successful, one of the things that they have is an obsession with student outcomes above all else. Their goal is to serve students, not to serve various adult political agendas.” Kogan is the only one of the many commentators quoted here who seems to care about this focus. It seems like a no-brainer, but he (and I) are probably pretty lonely in that headspace. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/22/22)
- Staying in that headspace for a moment, the elected board of Archbold Area Local Schools got some update on testing data this week. Even though other numbers were available, the only hard info in the coverage is a 62 percent proficient rate on ELA. Everyone seems really happy with it. Covid gaps, they say, are fully bridged. (Crescent-News, 12/22/22) Similarly happy are Medina City Schools officials, who reported to their elected board members that third grade ELA test results are “back to pre-pandemic level”. We get no numbers in this piece at all, but proficiency rates are higher than in the last two years [for this one grade level on this one test] and thus all is well. (Medina Gazette, 12/22/22)
- One more? Sure! Without further comment, I am just going to assume that the four-month-long (?!) detective curriculum described here in an Orange City Schools elementary classroom is not listed in the WhatWorks Clearinghouse. (Cleveland.com, 12/22/22)
- In other end-of-semester news, Alliance City Schools has announced an upcoming auction of tons of surplus junk they’ve been storing for years. Desks, tables, lab stations, and weightlifting equipment are among the trove to be offered via online auction in January. Hopefully this means that no potential buyers will be explicitly blocked from bidding, but if any charter school officials out there find themselves with mysterious “connectivity issues” while trying to participate, don’t bother calling your internet provider. They won’t be able to help, I reckon. (Canton Repository, 12/22/22)
- Finally, we’ve got one more postsecondary options piece from Dayton Daily News, which once again includes our own Dayton Early College Academy. And this is the one I have been waiting for: Kids who want to go—and have been fully prepared to do so by their high school careers—to a four-year college. Today’s headline comes from one of those young people and I approve his message. (Dayton Daily News, 12/22/22)
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