- Fordham’s Chad Aldis is quoted in a story about an important state Supreme Court case scheduled to begin tomorrow. The case addresses the issue of charter schools that hire for-profit management companies with public money and who then owns the assets of those schools should things go sour in the relationship. There is much more at stake in the decision however, which Chad was kindly allowed to point out. (Akron Beacon Journal). Chad gets a twofer out of this as the same story ran in the Youngstown Vindicator as well.
- Here, also, is a companion piece to the above story, running a few numbers on who owns the buildings in which Ohio charter schools operate. (Akron Beacon Journal)
- Editors in Cleveland opine on the need for charter school reform in Ohio…and offer a bit of advice to state senators on how not to do it. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- We mentioned last week about the report card analysis doing the rounds that shows a link between poverty and performance index scores for districts. Interestingly, one solution proposed in this story about that analysis is a fund analogous to Ohio’s Straight A Fund which would target interventions for low-income students. Legislative hearings on this topic are in the offing. (Columbus Dispatch)
- One puzzling aspect of the Common Core hearings we’ve endured here in Ohio since last November is the notion that “no one knows who their State Board of Education representative is”, despite the fact that every area of the state must vote on one at least every four years. I hope it is safe to say now that the era of ignorance is over – or at least accidental ignorance – especially since the head honcho of the Canton Repository went all out to issue a very personal endorsement for one candidate on the ballot in November. (Canton Repository)
- While the main newspaper in Canton seems to be putting the future of its public school district into the hands of the State Board of Education, the main newspaper in Youngstown is opining upon the need for a homegrown approach at improvement…with a lot of help. A guest commentary published this weekend calls for a plan similar to – and with as much support from Ohio’s governor and legislature –those put forward in Cleveland and Columbus. Not just for Youngstown, but for Warren schools as well. (Youngstown Vindicator)
- I have noted that journalists in Toledo have been writing unlabeled opinion columns recently. The paper has now coined the term “news analysis” for these opinion-as-news pieces, and here’s one from this weekend – combining the above-mentioned report analysis, last week’s “report cards are too complicated for parents” story, a look at the Toledo Supe’s doctoral dissertation, and discussion of a United Way vision screening event – that concludes, “Toledo Public Schools can and should improve. But schools are often used as a scapegoat so that we can ignore our larger, structural social problems we don’t want to think about, much less address.” (Toledo Blade)
- This piece is not labeled as opinion but it starts out like this: “A new and little-publicized increase in state-mandated high school exams is testing the tolerance of students, parents, education experts and even Ohio's governor, all worried about testing overload.” There’s a lot of inaccuracies and some serious verbal gymnastics here, but since the story is actually about the reaction of people – most of whom have no skin in the game – to changes in testing, who cares? (Cincinnati Enquirer)
