- In case you missed it on Twitter, Chad testified in favor of HB2 in front of the House Education Committee yesterday, along with several other witnesses. You can find thorough coverage from Gongwer Ohio and the Columbus Dispatch. Some good questions from legislators on the important subject of charter law reform. They are clearly engaged on the issue. Chad’s full written testimony is here, if you’re so inclined.
- We haven’t been talking too much about Common Core lately. To redress that imbalance, here is an interesting and detailed look at how teachers in high-flying Hudson Schools have implemented the standards. Probably a text-book example of the fact that no matter how “common” the standards might be, the implementation – and the implications for student success – is as local as the four walls of every individual classroom. (Hudson Hub Times)
- One of the reasons why the standards themselves have not been in the news as much lately is that much of the media focus has been on testing – the first statewide test-drive of Common Core-aligned PARCC assessments is upon us. In the piece from Hudson above, teachers lament the long lag time in receiving scores from PARCC the first time around. As we told you yesterday, there are new “safe harbor” provisions for PARCC takers in the works, and bills to strictly limit the amount of time spent on testing. And then there’s the whole “let’s just stop all testing” rhetoric. I think we can put former Princeton Schools administrator Noel Taylor in that latter category. He opines in a guest column in the Enquirer today that legislative efforts to reduce testing time will be “fruitless” if the “punitive uses of end of year test results” are not curbed. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- The Enquirer is full of education-based opinion pieces today. Here is one from two parents in the Madeira school district who opine on why they opted their children out of PARCC testing for the rest of the school year. They give other parents a list of questions that they asked their school principal and that all parents should want to know the answers to, but give no indication to us readers of the answers they received nor the criteria they used to determine that there was “too much” testing. Inquiring minds want to know…before we act or opine. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- Finally, the Treasurer of Milford Schools opines on several aspects of Governor Kasich’s budget. Her position is somewhat hard to determine in each case. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
- We told you a couple of weeks ago about Monroe schools being released from fiscal oversight by the state, and offered kudos to them for achieving it. Now that the oversight is over, the supe is gearing up for a new day. Today we get a first look at his wish list: hiring lots of new staff. I will paraphrase the dear departed Casey Kasem here and suggest he keep his feet on the ground while reaching for those stars. (Middletown Journal News)
- Every year, the Ohio Department of Education is required to perform “transportation audits” on 10 percent of the state’s 600+ school districts, who control the vast majority of student transportation statewide and the money provided for same (unless a charter or private school decides to take on the task themselves for their own students). Akron was on the list of auditees in the most recent go-round and it was found that charter and private school students in their jurisdiction were routinely walking farther to their pickup points than is allowed by law. Akron must fix this and the first price tag put forward to do so is around $1.5 million. We can quibble about the math or about the incendiary tone of the piece or even the tangents the writer takes. But I can think of two relatively-quick fixes for the problem not discussed here: First, Akron could try to make a school system folks don’t want to leave (which would solve a swathe of other problems the ABJ routinely carps about). Second, the state could choose to give transportation funding directly to charter and private schools for their use, thus eliminating the frankly offensive talk about “our kids” vs. “their kids” permanently (and perhaps becoming a spur to make the first option happen too!). There is a third option also, which I’ve mentioned before but is far more difficult than the others: scrap the archaic district-based transportation system and find something better. P.S. – I think Field Local Schools will take care of that irksome “Falcon Academy” problem for Akron shortly. (Akron Beacon Journal)
