Today’s clips are a side trip inside the universe of the voucher grouchers saga; since many of the grouchers are otherwise occupied and we are in something of a lull. Maybe think of it like the gap between production of Return of the Jedi and Phantom Menace. Perhaps it’s resting on one’s laurels; perhaps it’s retrenching behind the scenes; perhaps something really great will be figured out in the interim. Whatever it is, we’re still getting Jar Jar Binks on the other side of it.
- What folks really seem to be interested in regarding the EdChoice saga is an origin story. So let’s start with these folks in bucolic Yellow Springs who are, it seems, just now hearing about the existence of a voucher program. The piece is really detailed and interesting, but it also contains a lot of cluelessness and buck passing on the part of district officials and the reporter. Insights from the leader of one local private school in this area of high-dollar real estate are also interesting. It mostly echoes what we heard from similar districts across the state in testimony over the last two weeks: Barely anyone is eligible here; all of them believe their district schools are the bee’s knees; and there are barely any private schools to take kids even if they are eligible and, heaven forbid, interested. What, on earth, was all the fuss about? (Yellow Springs News, 2/21/20) Generic groucher Tom Suddes points the finger at school funding in this opinion piece. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/23/20) Sadly, this piece was written by someone else who doesn’t understand the voucher program in Ohio and so it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. That’s sad for a lot of reasons, really, but the main one for the purposes of these clips is that having one of the key architects of the current school funding reform proposal on site at a voucher-accepting private school during this critical time seems like a great opportunity to get some perspective on the issues of funding and vouchers. Alas. (Lima News, 2/21/20)
- There are legit education funding questions being raised, but they are ultimately a separate issue from the more pressing questions of whether there should be a voucher program, how large it should be, and how eligibility is determined. That last point—more germane than funding if you ask me—is covered here, in a piece which summarizes the themes of testimony from the last two weeks. The headline tries to paint “flawed report cards” as the genesis for the saga, but the piece is just a little too balanced to make the case. Imagine! (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/22/20) To try and bolster the case, then, there’s this piece which looks at two rival Catholic schools in Cleveland and how they test their voucher students and report the results. There’s a lot of talk about what “proficiency” is and is not and how parents cannot easily compare those two schools with one another. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/23/20) But it sounds like none of that may matter at all in the very near future, because the Ohio Department of Education is looking to base graduation on
just-higher-than-failingthe lowest achievement levels defensible. To wit: enough to do “the most basic of jobs”. “The competencies that we’re describing are meant to be about that high school-only job position,” said State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria last week. Graduates, he said, can then learn more on their own. You know, like puppies abandoned by the side of the road having learned the “basic skills” of opening their eyes and barking. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/24/20) - I think there’s some comparisons to be made between the above story and this one. See what you think. This is an update on the absolute mess created in Cuyahoga Falls City Schools by the barely thought out and poorly implemented effort to cancel all class and school parties in an attempt at inclusivity. While the initial discussion last week seemed to indicate a groundswell of support for this effort, it transpires that there were a small number of people—principals, mostly—making a decision on behalf of a couple dozen kids across the district, none of whom had even asked for this “accommodation”. Suffice it to say that Facebook was involved, all the principals had to read a public apology, and the parties are all back on again. (Akron Beacon Journal, 2/22/20)
- I squeezed a little glimmer of hope for Ohio’s students out of this piece. Not because schools in Stark County are moving away from reading instruction practices that have been discredited or because they’re finally starting to use the proven “science of reading” (sounds like good old phonics to me, but then I’m really ancient). No, that’s not enough because of the above-noted race away from proficiency that Ohio will soon be making. Teach it right; teach it wrong. The state supe doesn’t care either way. The hope I get comes from the fact that one former teacher in this piece reportedly got “emotional” while discussing how he realized he had been systematically miseducating his students for more than 17 years. “I wish I had known it because there were kids I could’ve helped more,” he said. “I just didn’t know these things.” From your mouth to the supe’s ears. (The Review, 2/23/20)
- Tiny glimmer of positivity in this one too, celebrating adult education completers in Brown County. The puppies survived! (Clermont Sun, 2/21/20)
- Ending in Dayton, as we so often do around here, adult education completion is on the mind of Tom Lasley at Learn to Earn Dayton. “You can have all sorts of good, healthy debate about whether people need four-year degrees or two-year degrees or what kind of post-secondary credential it is,” he said, “but if you don’t have sufficient talent in your population, you’re not going to grow your economy, and that is just a flat, dead fact.” Who am I to argue with that? (Dayton Daily News, 2/24/20) The previous piece updates a lot of ongoing initiatives through Learn to Earn and Sinclair Community College, but seriously, Tom Lasley cannot do everything all by himself. Nor should we expect it. Here’s a look at another initiative—the Miami Valley Intern Academy, run by the Southwestern Ohio Council for Higher Education and aimed at financing job internships for high schoolers—with which Dr. Lasley is apparently not involved. Not yet anyway. (Dayton Daily News, 2/24/20)
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