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Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > February > 15
Friday, February 15, 2008
Dayton expected to shorten spring break
Dayton Public Schools appears likely to shorten its spring break to make up for days lost to inclement weather.
The district is set to begin a two-week spring break on March 24. District spokeswoman Jill Moberley said the board is considering shortening that break.
Teachers’ union President Pat Lynch said this is not surprise to teachers. She said she had discussions with Superintendent Percy Mack about shortening spring break in August after heat forced school to close for five days, using up all of the district’s pre-planned calamity days.
Lynch said she alerted teachers in an e-mail at that time that it was likely the second week of spring break would be shortened and to adjust their vacation plans. Lynch said she expects the district to be in school on April 3 and 4 while adding one additional day to the end of the calendar in June to make up for three calamity days Dayton has used for inclement winter weather. In all, Dayton has been off eight days this year for bad weather.
The spring break plan, Lynch said, will give teachers more instructional days when they matter — before elementary school students take state tests in May.
“It made sense to me to make it up before the test,” she said. “To make it all up in June wastes everbody’s time. I’ve been in the classroom with kids in June. You are not getting back instructional time you need before the test.”
The board could act to make the calendar change as early as Tuesday’s meeting.
Permalink | Comments (23) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
More love for GOTB
I just learned that the good people who run our website here at the DDN entered this blog in the Inland Press Association’s New Frontiers Interactive Media Awards and it won second place for Best Staff Written Blog. Inland is an association of media companies from across the country. (First place went to a Mount Blogmore, a political blog at a South Dakota newspaper.)
This is a very nice honor. And it’s GOTB’s second national award and third major journalism award overall. (Last year, it was named Best Blog in Ohio by the state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and in 2006 it was a national finalist for Best Online Commentary from the Online News Association.)
As I’ve written in the past, no blog would merit recognition if it were just one person yaking on and on. What makes a blog useful and interesting is the exchange of ideas that can only come from active reader participation. So once again, all you readers have made me look good.
Thanks for getting on the bus!
Permalink | Comments (6) | Categories: Journalism
Life is like a box of chocolates
A snarky friend of mine, upon hearing about Checker Finn’s memoir about his life’s work in education policy, jokingly described him as the “Forrest Gump of education.” Let’s see, can you can pick out the education reformer from the pictures at the top of this page?
While it’s true that sections of Finn’s newest book, Troublemaker, trace his early career as a mostly behind-the-scenes player in places like the Nixon White House, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s office and Bill Bennett’s U.S. Department of Education, Finn was not an aimless observer. And by the 1990s he became a huge force in school reform — big enough that both he and the foundation he heads were ranked about a year ago by Education Week among the most influential players in education.
As the book’s name suggests, Finn is known for sharp elbows. He is both reviled by some who view him as hostile to public education and surprisingly well-liked by others who might be considered his natural enemies.
Thus, the occassional snarky comment is hurled in his direction.
For those who don’t know much about him, Finn grew up here. His father was a successful lawyer and he attended Jefferson Elementary School and Colonel White High School before heading to a New England prep school and earning a couple degrees at Harvard. His career jumped back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Vanderbilt, where he was a college professor, before he got his big break, thanks to his father.
The senior Finn has long served on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a local charity named for wealthy industrial-era Daytonian who died young and left a fortune to his also young wife. When the wife died and left her estate to the foundation, the board chose the junior Finn to lead it.
Checker Finn turned Fordham into a national school reform advocate, funding research and outreach efforts in support of school choice and standards reform. Finn and Fordham, now relocated from Dayton to Washington, fanned the flames of a wildfire movement as Republican-led legislatures across tha nation embraced charter schools in the 1990s.
But Finn, staying true to Fordham’s roots, played a special role in pushing charter schools here in Dayton. This helps explain why Dayton has been either No. 1 or No. 2 for the highest percentage of kids attending charter school of any city in the nation since the start of the decade.
Fordham now has a Dayton office and sponsors Ohio charter schools. Its support of charters was a major factor in forcing reform inside the city school district here, also, in part by creating an urgency about education that set the stage for new school board leaders.
The book, however, touches lightly on Finn’s interactions here, sticking mostly to his childhood remembrances and a thin chapter on Fordham’s role in the school choice explosion here.
As he spoke about the book at an event Thursday, it was most interesting to hear him say how Fordham’s work in Dayton helped teach him how difficult it can be to translate neat and clean theories about reform into the nitty gritty, on the ground realities of schools and kids.
By the way, someone asked me today to expalin Finn’s nickname, Checker. His given name is Chester E. Finn, Jr. My understanding is that his father, Chester senior, picked up the nickname “Check” in the Navy. Somewhere along the way, Chester the younger became “Checker.” That’s what everyone who knows him calls him.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
