- Our own Aaron Churchill is front and center in the Enquirer, opining on the benefits of private school vouchers for Ohio students. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 5/5/17)
- Chad, meanwhile, has been chatting to that nice Doug “Dog” Livingston about the e-school accountability loophole “of staggering breadth” that found its way into the House version of the state budget under less-than-clear circumstances. (Akron Beacon Journal, 5/3/17). Jim “Sherlock” Siegel is also on the case of the mysterious meandering amendment, with the aid of Chad “Watson” Aldis. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/3/17) Didn’t take long for the culprits behind the erroneous amendment language addition to come forward so Sherlock Siegel could write about them. So that’s that. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/4/17) Patrick “Cut to the Chase” O’Donnell – as is his wont – dispensed with the mystery all together and instead built the “it must be removed” case – no Watson required. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/4/17)
- The superintendent of Lorain City Schools this week renewed a raft of staff contracts, some for as long three years. This despite the fact that all such contracts become nonbinding as soon as the new district CEO is named by the Academic Distress Commission. Dude says he wanted to “make a statement” before the CEO is appointed. True enough, I guess. (Northern Ohio Morning Journal, 5/3/17)
- Back in the real world, Youngstown City Schools is celebrating some pretty great-sounding student growth numbers after just five months of having nearly 900 of their youngest students use the i-Ready platform while participating in an afterschool program. Now THIS is how you get out of academic distress. Kudos! (Youngstown Vindicator, 5/5/17)
- In what can only be described as a sadistic-sounding, full-size “life comes at you fast” advertisement, adults in the employ of Cleveland Clinic Akron General got to portray children from Kindergarten through college and experience their putative lives as a series of things that happen to them randomly. Mostly bad things, if this report is anything to go by. What’s the point of all this? Theoretically, it’s to help adults understand the importance of education for young people at each of six “critical transition points” between Kindergarten and college or career. My take: unless I’m really misreading this, folks sound like they’re learning to put little stock in actual education and to put all their eggs in the “services” basket. Not sure what they can do to help kids in the real world since success in this game appears to be an evolving set of lucky breaks and serendipitous evasion of bad fortune. See Item 4, above, for the antithesis. (Akron Beacon Journal, 5/4/17)
- While that weird game was being played out, editors in Akron opined on the topic of charter school oversight – specifically, the damage they feel that the mysterious meandering amendment as noted in Item 2, above, would do to said oversight. (Akron Beacon Journal, 5/5/17)
- We found out today that a rally in support of the state’s largest online school is to be held at the Statehouse next Tuesday. Why is this newsworthy? Because the initial announcement to school staff about the rally required all staff members to attend. Cue gasps. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/5/17) Less than six hours after publication of the original story, a second piece hit the Dispatch website in which school officials said rally attendance was voluntary. And then there were 721 more words. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/5/17)
- Speaking of teachers with beefs, I think we’re up to at least a double dog dare in Dayton as union members voted this week to authorize a strike. Unless… (Dayton Daily News, 5/4/17)
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