10/25/08
Columbus Dispatch
Thomas M. Stephens
School accountability, as practiced in Ohio, is a major barrier to improving public education, because it’s based upon a limited understanding of how youngsters learn and because its costs are excessive in both time and money: The state’s testing costs are $87.8 million a year, paid to out-of-state vendors. Gov. Ted Strickland [...]

10/25/08
Columbus Dispatch
Terry Ryan
Nowhere is the politicization of school accountability more obvious than in the Buckeye State.
Exhibit No. 1 is the Ohio attorney general’s legal actions against troubled charter schools, seeking their closure for allegedly violating the state’s charitable trust laws. At the behest of the Ohio Education Association, former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann spent [...]

10/25/08
Plain Dealer
Thomas Ott
The collapse of the credit markets threatens to further slow a Cleveland schools construction program that is already up to 20 months behind schedule.
One piece of the program – construction of an additional West Side high school – faces a different kind of roadblock. The state, which pays two-thirds of the building campaign [...]

10/24/08
Columbus Dispatch
Bill Bush
Columbus schools have applied for reimbursement of about $1.1 million from the federal government to cover losses suffered during the windstorm that tore through central Ohio on Sept. 14, a district official said yesterday.
That’s nearly $500,000 more than the school district initially said it would be requesting.
Columbus schools’ food-services division racked up the [...]

10/24/08
Suburban News
Khalila Perrin
* Additional tax revenues won’t stop district leaders from trimming budget growth.
Whether district officials find themselves cheering or crying on Nov. 4, Columbus’ school district still has aggressive cost-cutting measures ahead, said district Superintendent Gene Harris.
On the ballot is Issue 75, the district’s combination 7.85-mill operating levy and $164-million 1.13-mill bond issue.
The bond, [...]