- So the education news was pretty thin on the ground around Ohio this weekend…unless you count graduation coverage. Here’s one of those graduation stories that caught my eye: remember the kerfuffle we reported back in January about one district high school wanting to hold its graduation ceremony in a church…as they had done for the previous two years? Due to parental concerns, it was back to the cramped, less-accessible civic center this year but the kerfuffle was pretty well forgotten amid the tears and joy. (Canton Repository)
- Another case in point: the Big D was so busy doing other things that they ran a reprint of an editorial from the Chicago Tribune this morning. It was opining strongly in favor of Common Core. (Columbus Dispatch)
- The Beacon Journal editors also opined this weekend, about how charter schools are failing dropouts and potential dropouts, following on from a similiar-sounding series of articles from last week. (Akron Beacon Journal)
- One journalist who was working hard this weekend was Casey Elliott of the Urbana Citizen. Casey went in-depth to look at PARCC pilot testing recently conducted in area districts. Most interview subjects felt that things went “smoothly” but some were concerned about a lack of typing skills among younger students that could hamper online test success. A nice piece. (Urbana Citizen)
- One other journalist working hard this weekend was the indefatigable Patrick O’Donnell. Along with a very busy comments-section presence on the PD website, he also took time to really dig into the principal-based staff firing process currently happening for the first time ever in CMSD. He runs the numbers, including a large number of the original group who successfully appealed the original notice of impending termination, notes that the deadline for the remaining 17 staffers is June 10, and sounds out union teachers on their thoughts about Cleveland’s TFA teachers. I wonder what Fordham Ohio’s newest staff member thinks about that last point? (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
- I don’t think this counts as journalism because it’s really just a 21st century technological update of that old end-of-school rhyme that includes the line “…no more books…”. (Springfield News Sun)
- A story from the tri-state area now: a public radio station in Elkhart Indiana knew what it was going to do today: discussing one of those independent Kentucky school districts I told you about a couple of weeks ago, especially in regard to a lack of standardized testing in the middle school in Danville and the alternative assessment-inators used there instead. (88.1 WVPE radio – NPR, Elkhart IN)
- And finally, a beautifully written op-ed published under the names of the entire editorial board of the Enquirer, telling the intimate stories of just two local graduates who bucked the odds of their difficult family situations to make it across the stage with diplomas that really mattered and futures that were really stretching out before them. Fantastic. (Cincinnati Enquirer)
