The IRS scandal that has been rattling Washington has roots in Ohio. State lawmakers did some work this week on recently passed laws that had some issues - the "third grade reading guarantee" and the law on concussions in youth sports.
Gov. John Kasich is set to deliver the commencement address at Chardon High School next month - and school safety was the topic at the state Board of Education this week. And Gov. Kasich signed legislation establishing an official state artifact – it’s the Adena Pipe, a prehistoric effigy pipe found in 1901 in a burial mound near Chillicothe.
Starting in the 2014-2015 school year, Ohio will become one of 45 states that will start testing its students under what are called the Common Core State Standards, a new set of guidelines for English and language arts and math developed by education experts and specialists to prepare kids for college or for the workforce. Common. But some groups on both sides of the political spectrum are now raising concerns about the Common Core curriculum, so the House Education Committee has been holding hearings to answer those questions. It's chaired by Republican Rep. Gerald Stebelton of Lancaster.
As has become the custom for presidential elections, Ohio was practically the center of the universe last fall. And while there weren’t any major snafus, there was some negative attention paid to Ohio as the battle whether there would be early voting the weekend before Election Day dragged on and was finally settled with just days to go. That resulted on long lines at some voting centers on that final weekend, with pictures of those lines being picked up and picked apart by national media. This year is a bit of a breather for Ohio. With no major statewide or congressional races on the ballot in 2013, lawmakers have some time to make changes if they feel the need. Some changes have been proposed that have been well-received, while others are more controversial. Sharing their thoughts on the proposed changes - and predictions for what might be ahead - are Dan Tokaji, Senior Fellow in election law at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University and Stephen Brooks, Associate Director of the Ray C Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron.