- Editors in Canton opined this weekend against poor-performing charter schools and for charter law reform, then lamented that proposed reforms didn’t come soon enough to spare the kids in a local charter threatened with closure from a poor education in their building. (Canton Repository, 6/7/15)
- Meanwhile, in Trotwood-Madison City Schools, a report issued by the Ohio Department of Education tried to get to the bottom of several years of “F” grades received by the district in a number of areas, including academic achievement. The report was step one in a process that could end up with Trotwood-Madison under the aegis of an Academic Distress Commission…or not. Stern stuff, right? Well, fear not parents of Trotwood. The district supe is resolute: “…[W]e’re going to close those achievement gaps. You’re going to see improvement in Trotwood-Madison City Schools.” Carrying on the theme from the Canton piece, above, I hope someone will publicly lament that these promised changes – when they come – didn’t come soon enough to spare the kids in Trotwood from whatever was going on there before that led to all those “F” grades. Just sayin’. (Dayton Daily News, 6/5/15)
- Continuing the theme of retroactive regret, folks at the Big D looked at some new audit reports of some long-closed charter schools in Columbus. Messy and awful, sure, and money is still to be recovered (if it ever can), but on the retroactive regret-o-meter discussed above, this is probably small potatoes. (Columbus Dispatch, 6/6/15)
- Some conflict-of-interest issues in a management company which serves a number of charter schools across the state got the attention of the ABJ this weekend. I’d say this likely didn’t merit the 1,230 words used on it, but the details sussed out seem fairly relevant. And kudos to the ABJ for actually going to someone’s house to try and get answers to questions. No pings from either the retroactive regret-o-meter or the school-quality-meter here. But maybe later. (Akron Beacon Journal, 6/7/15)
- Just one item in other news: the Senate version of the state budget bill is out and scrutiny is commencing. I’m sure there will be more stories in Gadfly Bites on Wednesday, but the PD got a sneak peek at any items around standardized testing and it looks at first blush like the nuking of PARCC is not in there. For now. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/7/15)
