Gadfly Bites 2/5/24—Some rethinking may be in order

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1. Headline: Ohio voucher haters still hate vouchers; maybe more now than ever. Subhead: Fordham’s Aaron Churchill still says that state funding should follow the child wherever parents want him or her educated. (Cleveland.com, 2/3/24)
   
   

2. Meanwhile, the Blade was a little late in posting this School Choice Week op-ed—by co-written by Fordham friend Yitz Frank—which calls for a national school choice movement, including passage of The Educational Choice for Children Act. It would “first and foremost benefit students, who would gain greater access to educational options. But children in all schools—public, private, charter, and religious—stand to gain since their parent customers would have increased leverage to demand and expect quality education.” Well said, no matter what week it is! (Toledo Blade, 2/3/24) The same day, the Blade also published this profile of Tyrone Jacobs, Jr., an aerospace engineer whose early life in the city, as he describes in detail, was as rough as it comes. But he defied all of the negative temptations, focused on science and engineering, and with the help of school choices (a high-quality charter school and, to my surprise, one of Toledo City Schools’ career academies), he has achieved the success he worked so hard for. A great story. He is also a public speaker now, and one of his messages is that other young people can follow his example: “It’s not about being the smartest person, a child prodigy, or your parents making 500K a year… It’s not true because I defied all of it… You don’t have to have a perfect setup or perfect credentials to get started — because I didn’t. There was no LinkedIn, there were no suits and ties, there was no aerospace, I had literally zero.” A great read, and much food for thought. (Toledo Blade, 2/3/24)
   
   

3. One more clip from Frogtown: The Blade’s editorial board doesn’t like the idea of paying students for attendance, favoring old fashioned truancy enforcement instead. (Toledo Blade, 2/3/24)
   
   

4. Here’s a quick look at the Girl Up! initiative in Canton City Schools, an all-female career and technical education program helping students learn skills and get practical experience in areas like carpentry, construction, and welding. Awesome! (News 5, Cleveland, 2/1/24)
   
   

5. I found this profile of the new president of the elected school board of Columbus City Schools kind of interesting—challenging my own assumptions a bit. By her own admission, Christina Vera was not a very good student while attending Columbus City Schools back in the day. She had a tough life growing up, “school didn’t come easy” for her, and her GPA was low, she said. But she graduated, became a successful business owner, has a growing family, and gives back to the Columbus community in numerous ways. She gives credit to the “amazing” teachers who helped guide her and stepped in to help her shape decisions. “This district gave me so much.” So, if other young people can follow in her footsteps—rising from those rough early days to a high level of accomplishment and success—despite being low-performing students, perhaps my own oft-stated high-academic-output mania could stand some moderation. Not that we don’t need high-flyers, obviously—someone’s got to be able to do the math—but just that maybe we’ll still be OK if all of our low-performers can end up as successful as Ms. Vera. But we’re probably going to need some more evidence as to how that path can be replicated. (Columbus Dispatch, 2/4/24)
   
   

6. ABJ columnist Holly Christensen has a side gig as a tutor in Akron City Schools. So her take on the ongoing kerfuffle in the district over that very thing needs to be taken seriously. She says that “holding back third graders who cannot read at grade level does not stigmatize them,” and in fact leads to better outcomes for those retained kids several years down the line. That being said, if the state wants to support expanded tutoring, it should do so by expanding the services “provided by the people in our school buildings. Anything else is a cruel waste of time and money.” Wowza. (Akron Beacon Journal, 2/4/24)

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