Two Things: Perspectives on 0.25%

1. As the Tulsa World reports this morning, voices of reason are starting to emerge in Oklahoma’s Legislature:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Mazzei said Monday that Oklahoma’s “financial management options” should include suspension of the 0.25 percent reduction in the state income-tax rate that went into effect Jan. 1.

“Given the financial stress the state faces, we should consider a number of financial management options, one of which is a delay in the reduction from 5.25 to 5 percent in the top tax rate,” said Mazzei, R-Tulsa.

Mazzei last week filed Senate Bill 1073, which voids the reduction approved by the state Equalization Board in December 2014 and specifies such a reduction cannot occur in a fiscal year in which a revenue failure has been declared.

SB 1073 also raises the requirements for triggering a rate cut from 5 percent to 4.85 percent.

As those of us who agree with Mazzei keep saying, the tax cut is irresponsible at this time. I’ve heard personally from other legislators who get it.

2. Why wouldn’t you fix part of your problem while you can? Maybe because the Oklahoman says so:

Critics argue the money left in citizens’ hands through tax cuts would be better spent on government. They say increased funding for things such as schools, roads and social services makes a state more attractive to businesses than a low tax rate.

If so, Connecticut should be booming. Instead, since 2010 Connecticut has experienced almost no growth in state gross domestic product.

No doubt, some proponents of higher tax rates will note GE is relocating to Boston. So the company is exiting one high-tax state for another nationally lampooned as “Taxachusetts.” Yet the Tax Foundation ranks Massachusetts’ business climate 25th best in the nation, while Connecticut’s was 44th. In comparison, Oklahoma ranked 33rd.

Clearly, if it’s good for big business, it’s good for the state, right? Just ask all those homeowners in Edmond who are dealing with cracks in their walls. Or maybe ask the drinking water aficionados from Flint, Michigan.

It serves the Oklahoman‘s narrative, though, to frame this as the left wanting to hijack your hard-earned income. Like a Geico commercial, that’s what they do.

I actually agree with the closing paragraph of the editorial, though:

No one should argue that tax rates are the only factor in business location decisions. But it’s a fool’s errand to pretend they’re irrelevant.

It’s true. They also consider the quality of the schools. Schools cost money. That requires some taxation. You can’t have it both ways.

Happy Tuesday, everybody.

Hair of the Blog

As with the rest of us, our two biggest state newspapers are waking up resolved to find hope for what 2016 will bring. Take this cheerful outlook from the Tulsa World this morning:

Meanwhile, the state Board of Equalization certified a preliminary general revenue projection for the coming budget year that is $900 million less than the year before.

That’s roughly the equivalent of overall ticket sales so far for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Unless creator George Lucas can spare some change, or the price of oil makes a meteoric climb, the new year isn’t going to feel very new. Rather, it threatens to be a rerun of 2015 with further downsizing of an already shriveling state government.

Those who argue that is not the worst thing that could happen, should say that to the face of a public school student or teacher. Ranking at the bottom of the barrel in per-pupil spending for common education is never acceptable, no matter what the circumstances.

On the promising side, Oklahoma has ridden the energy price roller coaster before and always rebounded eventually.

The last line is my favorite. The editorial board is basically saying, We know we’ll see better days. We always have, right? That’s what I call forward thinking. Surely there’s a unicorn out there somewhere!

Still, as usual, it’s better than what the Oklahoman editorial writers have given us this morning. In their 2016 wish list, they have two Thunder-related items, but just one for education: vouchers.

Education Savings Accounts: Status-quo forces in education often claim Oklahoma students’ academic performance will never improve unless huge spending increases are provided. Yet if parents were given the ability to use their child’s per-pupil allotment, as would be the case with Education Savings Accounts, those officials may be shocked by how quickly improvement occurs. ESAs would allow parents to use a portion of the tax money already dedicated to their child’s education to spend on tutoring, online learning, or private school tuition. It’s time Oklahoma lawmakers provide beneficiaries the same flexibility with education funds that they are provided for other government programs, such as food stamps. One size does not fit all students, and it makes no sense to act as though children will receive a better education if they’re assigned a school based on geographic proximity to one’s house rather than based on a child’s individual needs and parental involvement.

This is where that morning-after blurry-eyed effect hurts me. I’m going to have to go through this one sentence by sentence.

Status-quo forces in education often claim Oklahoma students’ academic performance will never improve unless huge spending increases are provided.

I’m glad to see they didn’t use the trite verbiage Education Establishment. Maybe that’s a sign of a resolution they’ve made. Actually, what those of us who teach students and lead districts illustrate is that huge cuts in state aid have hurt our ability to provide services for students. We point out that the state’s abdication of responsibility vis-à-vis funding public schools at a proper level has made providing teacher raises of any significance impossible. This, combined with mandates that create meaningless work for already over-tasked teachers, has driven quality people out of the profession.

We’re not asking for huge spending increases; rather, we want a reversal of the huge funding cuts that we’ve seen since 2008. Let me just point out that for the 2013-14 school year (the most recent available data), Oklahoma districts received less than half of their funding (48.0%) from the state. The rest came from local and federal sources. This continues a 15 year trend that shows no sign of reversing. Year-by-year, the Legislature has been less committed to funding public education, and more committed to regulating it.

School Year	% Funding from the State
2013-14	48.0%
2008-09	52.0%
2003-04	53.4%
1998-99	57.1%

Yet if parents were given the ability to use their child’s per-pupil allotment, as would be the case with Education Savings Accounts, those officials may be shocked by how quickly improvement occurs.

Actually, we wouldn’t see any improvement, because the voucher pushers in the Legislature and the newspaper also insist that we shouldn’t hold private schools accountable in any way for student achievement. In other words, they want the money, but not the rules.

As for schools, we just get the rules.

ESAs would allow parents to use a portion of the tax money already dedicated to their child’s education to spend on tutoring, online learning, or private school tuition.

As Alex Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Jason James pointed out a few months ago, a voucher isn’t going to help the poor families get into private schools to the extent that their supporters insist:

McGuinness tuition =$12,400 Heritage Hall =$13,925 Cascia Hall =$12,840 Casady =$18,525 OCS =$9,325 90% wt ADM for ESA = $2,150 #oklaed

— Dr. Jason James (@James409Jason) February 16, 2015

The voucher bill currently on the table, SB 609, would provide benefits to a student who “previously was enrolled in the first one hundred (100) days of the prior school year in an Oklahoma public school district.” In other words, students currently enrolled in private schools wouldn’t have access to the voucher – for now. If 609 passes, expect to see a lot of school-flipping.

Another important consideration is that private schools don’t have to accept everybody. And they shouldn’t have to accept everybody. They have a specific mission, which is why parents choose them. Our mission as a state – as a system of public schools – is to educate everybody who shows up. Given that charge, we do a damn good job, no matter what narrative serves the convenience of voucher proponents.

If voucher supporters truly believe that private schools are better education providers, they need to support doing the schools that would accept voucher students committing to two things:

1. Accepting all students.
2. Meeting all state and federal mandates.

Otherwise, this isn’t a serious conversation.

It’s time Oklahoma lawmakers provide beneficiaries the same flexibility with education funds that they are provided for other government programs, such as food stamps.

I’m glad the Oklahoman supports flexibility for how people qualifying for public assistance, such as public school employees, spend their benefits. On the other hand, the paper also supports cuts to the food stamps program.

To be clear, food stamps are a benefit for people living in poverty. Vouchers are a benefit for people in the middle class. Those are the students that private schools would accept. Those are the students whose families could make up the difference.

A food stamp recipient can shop anywhere. The merchant will accept the business because it has cash value. A customer spending food stamps is a paying customer, in their eyes.

A voucher recipient will not have these same choices.

It’s just not the same.

One size does not fit all students, and it makes no sense to act as though children will receive a better education if they’re assigned a school based on geographic proximity to one’s house rather than based on a child’s individual needs and parental involvement.

I agree. That’s why thousands of parents have chosen to transfer their students across school district boundaries. It’s also why I oppose many of the mandates that this paper supports.  We could provide more choices within our arguably-publicly funded schools right now, if the Legislature passed a few simple bills.

• Replace the EOIs with the ACT.
• Repeal ACE.
• Cut all tests not required by the feds.
• Take quantitative measurements out of teacher evaluations.
• Create an accountability system that focuses less on testing.

We’re the educators. We would love to focus more on meeting each child’s individual needs. We don’t want to spend another minute preparing our most profoundly disabled students for state tests or the portfolios that serve as their proxy. We don’t want to spend another minute slowing down our gifted kids in classes that continue to get bigger while we prepare the masses for poorly-developed state tests.

The upcoming legislative session is critical. I can think of at least three term-limited legislators who would love nothing more than to pass a voucher bill. Doing so would serve as their springboard into some of the statewide races that will be up for grabs in 2018. Every vote for SB 609 – or anything resembling it – is a vote against public schools.

 

Third Grade Reading Scores – Pick a Headline

Today is the day that many third graders, their parents, and their schools have been anticipating. Schools now have online access to student scores on this year’s third grade reading (featuring language arts) test. The data portal seems to have worked for administrators retrieving results, and statewide, scores are up from last year.

For fun, let’s play a matching game. In the box below, on the left are three headlines. On the right are the sources of each. Try to guess which came from where.

Headline	Source
Slight improvement seen in state third-grade reading test scores	Oklahoma State Department of Education
More than 7,000 Oklahoma third-graders failed reading test, face retention	Tulsa World
At least 85% of state’s third-graders pass to next grade under RSA	The Oklahoman

This is the fun thing about data. All of these things are true. Let’s see how each source framed today’s results.

From the OSDE:

From the Tulsa World:

From the Oklahoman:

How did you do? If you thought that the OSDE would have the most positive approach and that the Oklahoman the most negative, you’d have been right. Also, keep in mind that the writers don’t typically write their own headlines.

Here’s the rest of Superintendent Hofmeister’s press release:

At least 85 percent of Oklahoma third-graders pass to next grade under Reading Sufficiency Act OKLAHOMA CITY (May 15, 2015) — Preliminary results from this school year’s third-grade Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test (OCCT) reading test indicate that at least 85 percent will be promoted to the next grade. Out of more than 50,000 test-takers, 67 percent statewide scored “Proficient,” while 14.6 percent scored “Unsatisfactory.” Preliminary results are as follows: Unsatisfactory: 14.6 percent Limited Knowledge: 15.9 percent Proficient: 67 percent Advanced: 2.5 percent Under the Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA), third-grade students who score “Unsatisfactory” on the assessment and fail to meet an exemption are subject to retention for intensive remediation in reading. Students who score “Limited Knowledge” are not held back, but must receive reading remediation in fourth grade. However, students have multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery in the area of reading. According to the RSA law, “any student who demonstrates proficiency on a screening instrument which meets the acquisition of reading skills criteria shall not be subject to the retention guidelines.” Students can be evaluated with one of seven good-cause exemptions. Probationary reading teams consisting of parents and teachers can meet to determine retention or promotion for students who scored “Unsatisfactory.” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister said renewed focus on reading as a result of RSA has shown signs of improvement among Oklahoma’s third-graders. “Literacy is critical for success in academics and throughout life, and the RSA plays a valuable role in ensuring that skill,” she said. “While these numbers are preliminary and will change slightly, it appears the percentage of ‘Unsatisfactory’ has decreased. And more students evidently scored ‘Limited Knowledge,’ showing improvement between ‘Unsatisfactory’ and ‘Limited Knowledge.’ “But it is important to remember, too, that the current third-grade OCCT test given to satisfy federal test requirements was not designed to measure reading level the way it is being used for RSA. Instead, a valid reading test should include five essential elements: fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and reading comprehension. “For this reason it is very important that students who did not pass the OCCT reading test now be assessed by an RSA committee. These panels will examine other specific reading evidence to determine the need for retention or targeted intervention for next year. As these committees are essential to ensuring success, I urge the Legislature to keep their voices in the RSA process.” The RSA committees are scheduled to dissolve at the end of the current school year unless lawmakers pass legislation to extend their existence. Additionally, lawmakers are considering a measure that would include “Limited Knowledge” students under the provisions of RSA. This year, for example, that would mean an additional 7,900 students evaluated for possible retention. Over the next few weeks, school districts are required to contact parents and legal custodians of students who scored “Unsatisfactory” and determine the most effective course of action for these children. Approximately two-thirds of students who scored “Unsatisfactory” are English Language Learners, on an Individualized Education Program (IEP), or both. That same designation also applies to roughly 39 percent of test-takers who scored “Limited Knowledge.”

Hofmeister’s words make me want to reiterate several important points that I’ve made at other times:

• Scores have improved (slightly, as the World indicates) from last year.
• This test is a poor measurement of reading ability.
• The RSA promotion committees have worked well around the state.
• Doubling the number of students in the promotion/retention committees dilutes the work needed for our most struggling students.
• Without the RSA committees, we will be retaining special education students and those just learning to speak English at highly disproportionate levels.

This is why we all need to be aware of ongoing legislative discussions. Senate bill 630 is out of conference committee. The Legislature’s bill tracking site shows the most recent version with a date of April 22. Here are the key changes:

• Keep the RSA Committees for promotion through the 2019-2020 school year (p. 4).
• Add an RSA Committee for students not meeting benchmarks on screening instruments in first and second grade (p. 5).
• Add students scoring Limited Knowledge into the retention discussion (p. 11).

The 2015 legislative session is almost over. Let your representative and senator know what you think about these changes.

My Parting Shots (Part III)

For the third installment in my long and labored farewell to our departing state superintendent, I want to focus a little more on the mindset she has brought to office, rather than on Janet Barresi herself. This week, Education Week released Quality Counts – a grading scale for education in each state – for 2015.

The good thing about this scale is that Education Week uses – yes, you guessed it – LETTER GRADES! Oklahoma received a D+, good enough to beat three other states: New Mexico, Nevada, and Mississippi. As always, thank God for Mississippi!

Letter grades, as we’ve been told, are easy to understand. That’s the beauty of them. If Oklahoma received a D+, then by gum, we probably deserved a D+

What’s not remarkable at this point is how each of the state’s largest papers treated the news. Both the World and the Oklahoman took up major space with articles on the rankings. Both papers also included caustic remarks from Barresi.

From the World:

Outgoing State Superintendent Janet Barresi, who lost a re-election bid after her first four-year term in office, said in a written statement that the Quality Counts results, “while not surprising should be a wake-up call to all Oklahomans concerned about our children and the future of this state.”

“There are serious flaws in our system — flaws that begin in the failure to adequately prepare teachers for the classroom and continue when we tell ourselves that our only problem is with children in poverty. Indeed, with abysmal results like this, the problem is with academic achievement of each child in our state,” Barresi said in the statement.

“The longer we as a state ignore the reforms needed to turn around our schools, the longer it is we sentence our young people to a mediocre education,” she said.

From the Oklahoman:

State schools Superintendent Janet Barresi, whose last full day on the job is Friday, said the report should serve as a “wake-up call to all Oklahomans concerned about our children and the future of this state.”

“To put this report in context, it’s important to remember that the National Council on Teacher Quality recently found serious deficiencies with teacher preparation in Oklahoma,” Barresi said in a statement. “There are serious flaws in our system — flaws that begin in the failure to adequately prepare teachers for the classroom and continue when we tell ourselves that our only problem is with children in poverty.

“Indeed, with abysmal results like this, the problem is with academic achievement of each child in our state.”

The percentage of Oklahoma students rated “proficient” or better on National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests for reading and math in the fourth and eight grades is below the national average, according to the report.

Additionally, the report found just 13.6 out of every 100 Oklahoma students taking advanced placement tests achieve a high score — about half the national average of 25.7 students.

“While I have reservations with how Quality Counts determined pre-K enrollment, the stark truth is that Oklahoma teachers are condemned to working in a broken system and our children are set up for failure,” Barresi said. “These are our children. We cannot continue to let them down. The longer we as a state ignore the reforms needed to turn around our schools, the longer it is we sentence our young people to a mediocre education.”

First, let me remind Barresi that only members of the education establishment liberal union status quo are supposed to challenge a report card’s methodology. Second, I find it especially telling that she continues to peck away at teacher quality after writing for both papers this week about how hard they work. It is especially notable that she cites the NCTQ, which gets most of its funding from the likes of Bill Gates and Eli Broad – you know, the people hell-bent on the narrative that public schools are failing.

Unlike the Oklahoman, Andrea Eger and the World broke down the components of Oklahoma’s overall grade.

Education quality indicator	Oklahoma	National average
Chance for success	C-	C+
Early foundations	78.8	81.3
School years	67	75.6
Adult outcomes	72.7	76.5
School finance	D+	C
Equity	88.7	85.1
Spending	44.5	65.4
K-12 achievement	D	C-
Status	51.9	65.6
Change	61.7	68.3

Basically, Oklahoma’s grade takes a major hit from spending. We spend equitably, though. I guess that means we are fair about how badly we fund schools. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, urban or rural, big or small – we keep you on the same scraps.

No, unlike the World, which put more facts into the story, the Oklahoman thought they should put more editorial and snark into it.

DEFENDERS of the status quo often blame Oklahoma’s low education rankings on poverty. Certainly that plays a role. Yet the new edition of Education Week’s Quality Counts report suggests that Oklahoma students at all income levels are falling short.

Quality Counts ranks states based on a student’s chance for success, school finances and K-12 achievement. The report gives Oklahoma an overall grade of D-plus and ranks it 48th in the nation. In the area of K-12 achievement, Oklahoma was given a D.

What Janet Barresi and the editorialists at our state’s largest paper failed to realize is that Oklahoma’s grade on the Education Week scale has fallen during the last four years. Fortunately, not everybody missed it.

A lot of good dialogue on 2015 Quality Counts grades. Friday fun facts: #oklaed 2010 grades, p.5. http://t.co/XCspoBDuo5

— Shelly Hickman (@Shelly_Hickman) January 9, 2015

Perhaps, now that she has some spare time, Barresi should learn to research, so that later she might research to learn. In 2010, Oklahoma’s grade on this index was 76.4, a C. We were above the national average. If letter grades matter (they don’t) and we should take rankings such as these seriously (we shouldn’t), then why isn’t Barresi owning the fact that she presided over our state’s precipitous fall.

Her supporters – few as they are at this point – can’t point to defenders of the status quo on this one. Barresi entered office four years ago with a legislature and governor of the same party. They even re-wrote laws to allow Governor Fallin to relieve the entire State Board of Education of their duties and appoint new members who ostensibly would clear a path for the Reformer-in-Chief. To whatever extent the state has rejected Barresi and even slipped during her tenure, assigning blame to teachers and administrators is disingenuous.

No, she failed as state superintendent because she never honestly engaged the people who work with children and tried to understand their perspective. She failed because she antagonized people who opposed her. She created an echo chamber in which nobody dared question her. Those who fought her Nehemiah-esque  battles, Barresi cleared out competent people and arranged promotions – up to and including her last day in office.

That’s where Part IV will pick up later this evening.

About the Bixby Opt Out Policy

In case you missed it, the Bixby Public Schools Board of Education adopted an Opt Out policy Monday night. This is a response to increased questions from parents about getting their children out of state and federally mandated standardized tests. Before anybody starts an ill-advised investigation, however, we should understand what this policy is and what it is not.

It is a way to inform parents that the district respects their rights and the potential consequences to the student, school, and district if those rights are exercised. It is not an obscene gesture pointed to the southwest.

The district contacted the SDE for legal advice and was told that the district has an obligation to provide a test to every student in tested grades and subjects. The consequences, as outlined in the form that parents would have to complete (which discourages opting out) are outlined by the Tulsa World:

• Oklahoma law requires that a third-grader score proficient or higher on the reading test or be retained in third grade. “There is nothing in the law that would allow for the promotion of those students (who don’t take the test)” unless they meet one of the six good cause exemptions that aren’t predicated on taking the test first, said education department Tricia Pemberton.

• Oklahoma law requires that any person under age 18 to demonstrate score satisfactory on the 8th grade reading test to get an Oklahoma drivers’ license.

• And Oklahoma law now requires students demonstrate mastery of state academic content standards by scoring proficient or higher on four of seven end-of-instruction standardized tests.

Wood also said parents are informed that the school district and its schools’ grades are based on testing. A district is required under the state’s A-F school grading system to test at least 95 percent of enrolled students or drop one letter grade. If 90 percent or fewer students are tested, the district receives an automatic “F.”

There could also be federal funding consequences if the appropriate numbers of students are not tested.

The policy provides parents with information and choices – nothing more, nothing less. That sounds pragmatic and shows parents that the district wants them to think for themselves.

Reading Sufficiency: A Tale of Two Papers – Part 849

DOK editorial shows their bias and their ignorance today. http://t.co/WDipIyNTgk #oklaed

— jason.james (@James409Jason) February 26, 2014

The Oklahoman made a splash again this morning with the editorial, Conspiracies, anecdotes no substitute for analysis. The title itself is the deepest part of the piece, but let me quote from it anyway:

Consider a recent Owasso forum focused on education. At that event, some attendees complained about a new law requiring retention of third-grade students who read at only a first-grade level or lower, based on state tests. The fact that children should be taught to read should be obvious, yet the law still has detractors.

Rep. Jadine Nollan, R-Sand Springs, has filed legislation to allow parents, teachers and local school board members to socially promote students even when tests show a child is far behind classmates. Nollan’s argument for her bill rested, in part, on an anecdote. “I had a third-grader in my district who threw up on her test,” Nollan said. “This is an 8-year-old.”

Think about that: The justification given for changing a major state law is that a single child out of roughly 50,000 third-grade students in Oklahoma once vomited during testing. The law of averages suggests this scenario happens at schools every day across Oklahoma, regardless of whether testing is ongoing. That child could have simply been sick, or other factors may have induced stress. Yet that isolated instance is pointed to as justification for watering down efforts to teach children to read.

To politicians, anecdotes are the gold standard. Without them, we wouldn’t have the Merry Christmas Bill, the Pop Tart Gun Bill, or so many more of the fabulous entries into our state’s legislative record. Just think back to any presidential debate from the past 20 years. Every candidate has cherry-picked someone’s tale of woe and made it the symbol of what’s wrong with this country.

In this case, however, I’m siding with the politician. I have seen the increase in anxiety. I have seen the students crying after their benchmark tests. I have seen teachers whipped into a frenzy over the fear that in spite all their efforts, a student will have a bad test day and they won’t have the documentation to promote the child anyway.

Selective story-telling isn’t limited to politicians, by the way. The editorialists at the Oklahoman missed the big ideas from the parent meeting. Fortunately, the journalists at the Tulsa World were on hand to do something resembling reporting.

Seven legislators and Joel Robison, chief of staff for state Superintendent Janet Barresi, took questions from more than 100 people who asked questions and shared concerns about education funding, the Reading Sufficiency Act and other issues…

Several people also spoke about their opposition to the third-grade reading law, which this year requires third-graders to show proficiency on their reading test or be retained in the third grade.

Robison told parents that there are six ways a third-grader could be promoted to fourth grade after failing the reading test. But one parent told him that has backfired in her daughter’s third-grade class.

“What’s happening, sir, is they are taking instruction time from our children to build a portfolio on every single child just in case they don’t pass,” she said.

After a pause, Robison said, “That’s unfortunate,” bringing a chorus of groans from the audience.

Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, said she has heard that as many as 4,000 third-graders could be retained this year. Robison said state officials estimate that about 12 percent of the state’s third-graders would be in danger of retention.

“Overtesting, teaching to the test, high-stakes testing — all has been detrimental,” said Rep. Jadine Nollan, R-Sand Springs. “I had a third-grader in my district who threw up on her test. This is an 8-year-old.”

She said she has introduced a bill that allows for a team of parents, teachers and principals to decide after remediation whether a child should be promoted to the fourth grade.

“We’re really hoping to put it back into your hands to make the decisions,” Nollan said. “The people on the front lines are the best people to make the decision as to whether a child should be retained or promoted.”

The story, when told in full, is much more interesting. The key word here is parents. It’s not just teachers and administrators who hate the mandatory retention law; it’s parents too. Even ones who should have no concerns about how this will impact their children are unnerved. The Oklahoman believes parents should hold the schools accountable for wasting the time of all students by doing the portfolios (which of course are one of the good cause exemptions – and something REAC³H coaches are training districts to complete under the watch of the SDE). On a greater level, what parents should really demand is that we quit wasting such an insane amount of time on high-stakes testing. And by time, I also mean tens of millions of dollars a year.

During a Q&A with KFOR in Oklahoma City yesterday (questions = softballs & answers = blame teachers), Superintendent Barresi did everything the Oklahoman editorial decries. She discussed her sons’ struggles with reading (anecdotal evidence). And she blamed all of the adults for creating the anxiety being felt by Oklahoma’s students.

To that end, I’d agree with her. I just think she’s blaming the wrong adults.

Fortunately, some of the grown ups in Oklahoma City have been listening to parents. Yesterday, the House Education Committee advanced two bills that would provide more options to parents of third graders in lieu of retention. The only two who voted no on each bill were Sally Kern and Jason Nelson. I’ll let that fact speak for itself.

Thorough Article on the State Superintendent

I encourage people who read this blog to take a few minutes to read yesterday’s piece on Superintendent Barresi in the Tulsa World. I feel Andrea Eger is always thorough and balanced in her coverage of education issues. Apparently, not everybody feels the World gives them a fair shake, though:

Barresi declined to be interviewed for this story. Her spokeswoman at the Oklahoma State Department of Education said she is unhappy with the coverage she has received in the Tulsa World.

“We appreciate the offer. I just don’t think we want to do that at this juncture,” said Sherry Fair.

It’s no secret that much of the loudest criticism of Barresi has come from the Tulsa area. Nor is it a secret that her campaign staff has personal ties to the Oklahoman’s editorial staff.

Eger interviewed a wide range of sources for her article. Nobody – not even her supporters – was completely positive about Barresi’s tenure thus far. To me the most revealing comments were those of Rep. Lee Denney, a Republican like Barresi:

State Rep. Lee Denney, R-Cushing, works regularly with Barresi on budget requests for common education and was a co-author of legislation based on one of Barresi’s campaign platform issues – replacing old school accountability scores with annual report cards with an A-F letter grade for every school in the state.

An intense fight over the method for calculating those grades dominated news headlines throughout the fall of 2012. Eventually, the bill’s co-authors, Denney and Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, got involved to legislate changes to those grade calculations.

At a time when improvement in Oklahoma’s public schools is badly needed, educators have been disenfranchised, Denney said.

“I’ve worked with her just fine because I’ve been brought to the table. I think she’s got some good ideas, but she’s trying to implement change too fast. Also, when you try to ram the battleship for change and you don’t try to bring people along with you, you have problems,” Denney said. “Certainly, she has demonstrated her style of leading is this way because this is how she has led for three years.”

Those last few words – because this is how she has led for three years ­– provide the best overview of Barresi. She promised to make the SDE a service agency rather than a regulatory one. However, during the last three years, she has been ramming new rules into public schools and bypassing legislative authority and the rule-making process to do so. Members of her own party who agree for the most part with her agenda have grown weary of her methods. The interesting part is that they’re not afraid to say so.

In Defense of Superintendents

I caught one item on the editorial page of the Oklahoman over the weekend ripping school district superintendents in general. I totally missed another one targeting two specifically, though. So thanks go to Melissa Abdo from Jenks for tweeting about it and putting it on my radar.

The editorial from Sunday was typical for them. Somebody at the newspaper is incredulous that superintendents continue complaining about funding. Let’s review…

First the legislature failed to fully fund its mandates. Then the SDE withheld more than twice what is mandated this summer. Then they made a slight adjustment in August when online enrollment numbers were known. Finally, they released mid-term adjustment funding levels in December, while still withholding millions of dollars from the formula. The mid-term adjustments strongly favored the state’s online schools.

Unlike the Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, for its part, did this radical thing called interviewing people. They actually talked to school district officials about their concerns over the mid-term surprise. The result was what’s known as an article full of facts. I know…I sound like some kind of beatnik muckraker. Reporting facts in stories in a way that’s designed to present a balanced view so readers can make up their own mind is no way to operate – well, not if your intent is to funnel the billions spent in Oklahoma on real education into the coffers of large, multi-national corporations.

This follows a typical pattern. The World reports a story that includes the perspective of people running schools. Then, after a few days pass, the Oklahoman criticizes the scary Education Establishment on the editorial page. What happened Saturday, however, was altogether different.

This is the one I missed – the one Abdo mentioned on Twitter this morning. Tucked into the Saturday Scissortails post on the editorial page was a blurb criticizing Jenks Public Schools for picking an internal candidate as its next superintendent. The blurb also criticized Tulsa Public Schools for sticking with Keith Ballard for one more year:

With the retirement of Superintendent Kirby Lehman, Jenks schools could have charted a new course. Instead, they promoted Deputy Superintendent Stacey Butterfield, who called Lehman a mentor. This is telling because Lehman’s recent tenure has been marked by frivolous lawsuits and a disturbing attitude toward less-fortunate children. He championed filing lawsuits targeting the parents of special-needs students (which the state Supreme Court tossed) and griped about funding charter schools serving poor minority children (whose parents can’t afford Jenks homes). In 2005, Jenks joined a teachers union lawsuit demanding a billion-dollar increase in school appropriations (also laughed out of court). Sadly, other troubled Tulsa-area schools are following a similar path. Union promoted a deputy superintendent and Tulsa replaced “retiring” Superintendent Keith Ballard … with Keith Ballard for another year. Rather than moving ahead, this suggests that these schools will continue advocating an agenda that hasn‘t benefitted students.

Again I should point out that the husband of Superintendent Barresi’s one-time chief-of-staff writes editorials for the Oklahoman. I should also point out that as chief-of-staff, she caught a lot of grief for calling certain Tulsa-area superintendents dirtbags. When the Oklahoman writes a piece out of the blue slamming two superintendents that aren’t even in its main service area, the motives have to be questioned.

Lehman and Ballard are successful professionals who don’t need me defending them. The academic excellence of Jenks is unquestioned. And the district has continued planning for growth by passing bond issues with sizeable margins. The community that knows Lehman’s work has continued supporting him, for more than two decades. That speaks volumes. Likewise, Tulsa Public Schools, under Ballard, developed the Teacher Leader Evaluation system that has since been adopted by over 400 Oklahoma school districts. This has occurred over the objections of Barresi, who wanted the TLE Commission to select a different model. Garnering the acceptance of your community and your peers is far more significant than any criticism superintendents might receive from a jaded editorial writer.

Both of these articles point to why few want to serve in this capacity. Everything superintendents do is scrutinized. Selecting an architect for a building project, choosing principals, even where you sit during a football game is seen as a referendum on your leadership. The public wants to know not only how much money you make, but where you spend your money. You spend every day in the public eye. And in some cases, newspapers will even come after you before you start on the job.

Crazy.

Worse Than It Sounds

I still remember my Oklahoma History teacher in high school explaining to us the meaning of a political aphorism that now sounds like an anachronism: All politics is local. The idea is that you and I, as citizens, can make the biggest impact by getting involved in the political processes closest to us: city council, mayor, school board. Then county and state government. Finally the federal level.

At no point did any teacher of mine explain that state and local policy should be set by Jeb Bush’s Foundation. This, however, is my main takeaway from yesterday’s thorough investigative work by the Tulsa World.

Do yourself a favor. If you haven’t already, read the article and click through to all the links. You’ll be enlightened.

The World asked the State Department of Education for emails in October related to discussions over the A-F Report Cards. Two months later, they received a fraction of their request. What they received shows contempt for superintendents (continued derisive use of the word “Establishment” to describe career educators). The emails also show a culture beholden to out-of-state influences. At one point, Damon Gardenhire, the former communications director cites the promise of these outside groups as reason for leaving the SDE:

Just keep in mind that the local supts will keep doing this on every reform until choice is introduced into the system. Until then, they will continue to play these kinds of games. Only choice can be the fulcrum to make them truly responsive. A big part of why I took the Walton gig was because I see real promise for bringing positive pressure to bear that will help cause a tipping point with enough (superintendents) that the ugly voices like Keith Ballard will begin to be small and puny.

Gardenhire’s contempt for school superintendents was not unique to him while he worked at the SDE. It was (and remains) the central element of the culture there. The reason that Superintendent Barresi to this day has not had a meaningful conversation with a group of superintendents is that she simply doesn’t care what they think.

The World documentation also includes an email exchange between Governor Fallin’s Secretary of Education, Phyllis Hudecki, and State Senator Clark Jolley, of Edmond. While both show disappointment for the way Barresi has caused some of the political confusion Jolley saves most of his scorn for the school leaders:

As much as we can fault Janet for some of the bumps in the road, on most of these, I frankly believe it is that they figured out they don’t like their grades. They say Janet hasn’t talked to them. That is complete bull. She and her staff have spent hours upon hours trying to answer questions only for the superintendents to allege they were “ramming it through” without even listening Or giving them answers to the questions they posed. I saw the SDE’s responses. They did answer the questions. They just don’t like the answers.”

I wrote about the meeting Barresi had with 51 superintendents in October. That was no discussion. I also posted the responses the SDE gave to superintendents’ questions. Those answers, as I titled my blog post, were evasive at best. What Jolley doesn’t seem to have an explanation for is the fact that the superintendent he most frequently talks to is Edmond’s David Goin. Edmond had great report cards, and Goin thinks the product is flawed and that the SDE was unresponsive. The truth is that no superintendents were satisfied with the process. This isn’t about the final grades at all.

Altogether, the emails the SDE provided to the World, our collective experiences with this process, and the path already travelled through other states point to several realities:

• These people think public schools are failing.
• These people are funded by out-of-state groups.
• These people care little for transparency.
• These people listen to the people who fund them rather than the people they supposedly serve.
• These people will stop at nothing to impose school choice, which is their sanitized way of saying voucher.
• Among the ranks, there is dissent about the competence and political skill of Barresi and the SDE.
• There is no dissent about the ultimate goal, however.
• The governor will remove any board member who does not fall in line like a good little toy soldier.

One last thing: the Oklahoman’s silence on this matter speaks volumes.