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Education News for 06-05-2013

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State Education News

  • Senate, House school funding plans incomparable (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • Ohio senators on Tuesday released more details about their proposed budget for school funding…Read more...

  • Ohio could get millions in early-education funds (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Ohio would receive $103 million in federal funding during the first year of President Barack Obama’s plan to provide preschool for every 4-year-old child in the country…Read more...

  • Lawmakers applaud plan to fix Columbus schools (Columbus Dispatch)

    • A Senate committee vetting a bill meant to help fix financial and ethical problems within Columbus City Schools praised local leaders yesterday who testified in support of the legislation…Read more...

  • Ohio lawmakers push voucher expansion (Dayton Daily News)

    • Ohio GOP senators proposed several changes to state education funding in the latest round of revisions to the state two-year budget bill…Read more...

Local Education News

  • City schools still target of deception lawsuit (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The civil lawsuit that accuses the Columbus school district of deceiving the public about schools’ true academic standing appears to be moving forward…Read more...

  • Fairfield County school districts that shared superintendent going their own ways (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Two rural school districts in Fairfield County that currently share a superintendent are hiring separate leaders…Read more...

  • Gee’s sudden departure confounds interim superintendent plans for Columbus schools (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The Columbus Board of Education was hours away yesterday from hiring Ohio State University Provost Joseph Alutto to a one-year contract as an interim superintendent that would have cost the district…Read more...

  • TPS revised audit projects fewer possible savings than draft report (Toledo Blade)

    • A revised performance audit of Toledo Public Schools recommends changes that could save the district $91 million over five years, $10 million less in savings than a draft version projected…Read more...

  • 4 speak at Supt. Hathorn's hearing (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • Just four people spoke at a public hearing on a request by Superintendent Dr. Connie Hathorn to retire and then be rehired by the school district…Read more...

  • Niles schools need funding help from state (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • Frank Danso, interim superintendent of Niles schools, hopes a funding bill that passed the Ohio House will help his financially strained district overcome its deficit, but two area legislators are unsure…Read more...

Editorial

    

  • Paying for education (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • Richard Ross, Ohio’s superintendent of schools, once described school-funding debates in Ohio as the education version of Groundhog Day…Read more...

Dispatch must apologize

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The school attendance erasures issue continues to be a scandal that isn't. Despite finding nothing more than bureaucratic missteps in his first interim report, the State Auditor has now released a second interim report that has found no evidence of wrongdoing at a further batch of schools.

Just two weeks before school districts across Ohio ask voters for more money, state Auditor Dave Yost reported that his team has not uncovered any more evidence of scrubbing student attendance data.

In the latest update, Yost said auditors examined records at 81 schools in 47 districts and cleared all but eight of the 81. Testing at those eight buildings as well as 15 other buildings from the first interim report is still underway, Yost said. A final report is due sometime around Jan. 1.

Twenty of the 81 schools examined in this round had reporting errors but not enough to suggest scrubbing.
[...]
“Odds are most districts are reporting their attendance data accurately and they’re not scrubbing,” Yost said at a press conference Tuesday.

Again, simply some bureaucratic missteps caused by "the sheer complexity of the accountability system" as the Auditor himself describes it, in his conclusion.

This is a far cry from the irresponsible reporting and opinionating that the Columbus Dispatch has engaged in for a number of months now. Time and time again they have failed to wait for the evidence, and instead jumped to conclusions and made inferences that turned out to be incorrect.

Rather than bemoan the slipping away of a potential Pulitzer, they surely thought they were earning, they ought to have some serious introspection on how they could have gotten a story so very wrong and caused Ohio's schools systems so much trouble.

They have slandered and smeared thousands of public school employees up and down the state with their reckless allegations and accusations. They need to apologize and accept responsibility.

Second Interim Report on Student Attendance and Accountability System