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Education News for 09-14-2012

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State Education News

  • Teachers to pay more for pensions (Canton Repository)

    • By 2016, local teachers will have to contribute an additional four percent of their pay toward their pensions with the State Teachers…Read more...

  • BMI record-keeping no longer weighs on schools (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Ohio schools no longer have to gather students’ body-mass-index measurements — just two years after a state law required them to do…Read more...

  • State School Board candidate holds discussion in Lima (Lima News)

    • State School Board candidate and former Ohio State quarterback Stanley Jackson spoke and listened…Read more...

  • Hundreds of northeast Ohio school buses (WEWS)

    • Hundreds of school buses in the top ten largest school districts…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Erlanger after-school program may become model (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • Principal Bryant Gillis pointed across the Tichenor Middle School cafeteria on Monday to a table of teens enjoying an after-school snack…Read more...

  • Administrators, others to pay toward health care benefits (Newark Advocate)

    • Starting at the end of the month, the Lakewood Local School District no longer will pay 100 percent of the health…Read more...

  • Area schools not playing with safety (Willoughby News Herald)

    • Playground safety is something that local schools take seriously…Read more...

  • School districts add handling of cyberbullying to their policies (Willoughby News Herald)

    • While Mentor Schools has been addressing the issue of cyber-bullying for some time, the district is just now in the process of updating its policy on paper…Read more...

Editorial

  • Saving by design (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • Ohio has seen a building boom in school facilities the past 15 years. Together, the state, school districts and local governments…Read more...

  • Cleveland avoided Chicago's school impasse (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • Four days into a politically charged strike that has sent thousands of teachers to the picket lines and 350,000 students…Read more...

  • Student cheating (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The definition of cheating on a test was pretty clear-cut to most people who grew up in the old days…Read more...

Dispatch dodge disappoints

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The Columbus Dispatch has cheered on the Governor's education "reform" plans every step of the way, from the draconian budget cuts, to SB5 - the Governor has had the full support of the state capital's newspaper of record. A need to improve the quality of Ohio's public education system, challenge the "status quo" has been their rally cry.

We were shocked then, to not read any editorial in this weekend's Dispatch criticizing the Governor for his appointment of an unqualified candidate to the State board of Education.

According to the Dispatch's own reporting, the Governor appointed Stanley Jackson, without ever having seen his resume. The Governor claiming Mr. Jackson's involvement in a charter school was qualification enough, only to discover that the charter school does not yet exist, and before Mr. Jackson can even spend one day on that job, he will resign from his fake school in order to avoid legal complications.

Furthermore, according to reports from NPR,

Kasich spokesperson Rob Nichols said Jackson is currently a candidate for an elected seat on the State Board of Education. Nichols said Jackson’s candidacy was what brought him to the attention of the governor’s office.

However, Jackson has not actually filed to run for state Board of Education, according to the Allen County Board of Elections. The deadline to file is Aug. 8.

StateImpact also reports that Mr. Jackson was an OSU dropout and never obtained his degree.

The State board of education has a full plate of policy to implement and guide, from common core, to teacher evaluations, and a new reading guarantee just for starters - it needs to have qualified people with a deep understanding of the issues in order to be successful, something Mr. Jackson does not posses.

Given these facts, why then has the Dispatch editorial board remained silent? Does their support of the Governor's education policies stop at the waters edge once criticism of their implementation is warranted?

Instead what the Dispatch editorial board decided to publish this weekend was another rehash of the SB5 fight, a sign that the Dispatch cares more about it's partisan politics than policies, even those it allegedly supports.

UPDATE

The ABJ manages to publish an appropriate editorial on this subject.