- Editors in Columbus opine favorably on the education MBR, covering many of the same points that we have recently made. (Columbus Dispatch)
- One piece of the MBR legislation that very few folks are pleased about relates to a windfall for dropout recovery charter schools. Editors in Cleveland opine against that provision and urge Governor Kasich to use his line-item veto power to “drop-kick it” from the bill before signing. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- Fordham’s 2010 Needles in a Haystack report on high-achieving urban schools around Ohio is namechecked in today's PD story about Concept Schools coming under investigation by federal authorities for what is termed a “white-collar matter”. Concept runs a number of charter schools around the country, including Horizon Science Academy in Cleveland, featured in the first Needles report. (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- The State Board of Education is meeting in Columbus this week, but is still playing catchup in filling all its open seats. One new member was sworn in yesterday, but the resignation of another was accepted. There are still two unfilled seats. Check out coverage in the Columbus Dispatch and in Gongwer Ohio.
- How local is your local control if your superintendent and 10 of 13 administrators live outside the district? That question is being raised by a long-time Canton Schools board member in the wake of his resignation. (Canton Repository)
- We told you about the impending kick off of Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman’s preschool initiative yesterday, and asked some pertinent questions. Perhaps illustrating the work-in-progress nature of the initiative, a number of details changed from that first report in the morning by the time of the actual kickoff announcement event around 11:00 am yesterday. The program’s gotten bigger, it seems, but many questions still remain to be settled. (Columbus Dispatch)
- The city of Cincinnati has experienced a rash of deaths and crimes in which 14-year-olds were victims, perpetrators, or accomplices. The Enquirer has published a series of interviews with 14-year-olds in the city to find out what life is like for them. Education features very obliquely in the stories of these children's lives, but it peeks in at the corners – highly-mobile families, schools of choice, safety, transportation, and the role of education in their lives today and (maybe) tomorrow. If you know any teens or tweens, you owe it to yourself to read this. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
