Tulsa, Oklahoma

With her long, wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail, the young mom sat alone outside courtroom 6 at the Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justic, checking her phone and anxiously waiting for a court official to call her name for an eviction hearing.

“I’ve never been through this,” Courtney said in early May. Her two kids, ages 5 and 6, were staying with her mother out of town while she tried to catch up on rent or find another place to live. It was the best for the children, she said, but “they want to be with me.”

Between losing one job and starting another, she feared she’d still come up short of the  $1,004 she owed.

She didn’t have much time.

In Oklahoma, the eviction process moves faster than the ability of most renters to respond. State law gives tenants five days to pay their debt or move out. A tenant has to appear in court just three days after a summons arrives. 

Tulsa has one of the worst eviction rates in the country — the as of a decade ago. Since then, the rate has grown from 8% to . Last school year, landlords filed evictions affecting more than 600 children in the state’s largest district, the Tulsa Public Schools. 

Her kids’ schools, Courtney said, didn’t ask why she withdrew them with a month left in the school year.

That’s hardly surprising, experts say.

“[Parents are] looking for, ‘How do I find a place where my kids are going to sleep?’ ” said Eric Hallett, a staff attorney at Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma. “They’re not thinking ‘What can a lawyer do for me?’ or even ‘What can Tulsa Public Schools do for me?’ ”

But in a state with one of the in the nation, that’s something the district is trying to change. Since 2020, leaders have worked with ImpactTulsa, a nonprofit, to prevent disruption in kids’ education and quickly direct parents under threat of eviction to resources like legal aid and rental assistance. When a student’s address appears in an eviction filing, the parent receives an email from the district offering help.

The alert is a promising example of schools being “first responders” in a housing emergency, said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a national advocacy organization focused on students experiencing homelessness. Tulsa’s system has caught the attention of organizations doing similar work from Dallas to Dayton, Ohio. But the resources available to families fall far short of the demand, and the threat of eviction itself can be so traumatic that parents are often too overwhelmed to respond.

“There is a culture of defeat,” said Ana Barros, the director of collaboration and partnerships for ImpactTulsa. If the eviction seems like a “done deal, why would I reach out for help?” 

Roughly nationally are caught up in evictions each year, with households headed by single Black mothers . Housing instability lands the heaviest on families with young from a Stanford University survey shows that nearly 30% of parents with children under 6 were worried about being evicted in the next month and 8% had already received an eviction notice. A federal program provides homeless students with educational and transportation services. But families who are evicted don’t immediately qualify for the same support, and the damage to students’ learning is clear.

“The gaps in children’s education are huge,” said Emily Turner, an attorney who is part of ImpactTulsa’s eviction prevention team. Missing days and weeks of school because of an eviction raises concerns about kids’ safety, she said, and the more they miss, the harder it is to come back. “They feel behind or they feel scared or they feel like this isn’t my space anymore.”

In the Oklahoma City schools, 65% of students whose families received were chronically absent, almost as many as those who were actually evicted, according to , part of Mental Health Association Oklahoma. On state assessments, students with an eviction notice or judgment had 25% lower proficiency rates in math compared to their peers. In reading, the academic impact was more than twice as much — 56% lower. 

“We have slipped to the bottom in education rankings,” said state Rep. Amanda Clinton, a Democrat who this year to give tenants facing eviction access to free mediation before a judge heard their case. The bill passed the House, but died in the Senate. She agrees with Republicans that the state should focus on turning around its dismal performance in . “But we cannot be serious about improving student outcomes unless we get serious about keeping kids in the classroom to start with.”

At Kerr Elementary, on the east side of Tulsa, Principal Jennifer Thomas sees the academic impact of evictions every morning. Students with unstable housing are frequently absent, and when they do come to school, they often arrive at least an hour late and hungry. 

“We have students who have been at four different schools within a month,” she said. As with Courtney’s kids, Thomas said it’s not unusual for grandparents to provide backup, but that adds to the learning disruption. “Grandma doesn’t know where the school is, or Grandma’s not used to having to get the kids up at 7:30.” 

Lawmakers took up the issue last year and worked to pass a bipartisan bill that would have given tenants a few more days to show up in court — a rare development in such a deep red state. But Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, . With a background in , including rental homes in Florida, he argued that the extension would be too “burdensome” for landlords. This year, a died in committee. 

“This is a very, very landlord-friendly state,” said Delia Kimbrel, the director of research and policy at ImpactTulsa. “The scales are really stacked up against the family.”

‘Human realities’

landlords are the most likely to evict, . Those include Vesta Realty, which owned Barcelona Apartments, the Spanish-style complex at a busy intersection in southeast Tulsa that filed the case against Courtney.

Hannah Remick, a former administrative assistant for the company, who herself from one of its 40 complexes, estimates that Vesta filed about 25 evictions a week. Whether tenants have kids doesn’t make landlords any less likely to force them out, she said.

“They would just say ‘units.’ They wouldn’t think about who is living in that unit,” she said. The process, she said, is “very separated from the human realities of what’s going on there.”

When ImpactTulsa identified management companies evicting families with school-aged kids, some of the affected properties had and code violations that had gone for months. In 2024, one mom of a kindergartner told reporters she was to the media about a lack of hot water and cockroaches in her apartment. 

Poor living conditions for renters are not unique to Tulsa. A showed that 13% of renters moved in the past two years because their home needed repairs. Five percent said they were either evicted or trying to avoid eviction.

Remick described as “one of the worst,” with workers instructed to layer coats of Kilz primer over walls with mold. Courtney told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· she had six work orders pending, including one for a leaky water heater, when she was evicted. Because an eviction can prevent a tenant from getting another lease and affect future employment, she asked Âé¶čŸ«Æ· not to use her last name. 

The company’s financial condition was likely one reason for the backlog of repairs. Vesta’s owner, Marc Kulick, is facing . In February, Fannie Mae, the mortgage lender, against the company, and in July, as a result of litigation, a , YSA Investments, took ownership of multiple Vesta properties, including Barcelona. Vesta was also among the Tulsa landlords that fell months behind on .

“We all got letters on our doors saying they were going to charge for water,” Courtney said, even though that cost is supposed to be part of the rent. 

According to a city official, the company caught up with water bills, and Vesta issued a statement saying that because of a pending “ownership dispute,” all questions about conditions, staffing or maintenance at Barcelona should go to the current operator. 

YSA spokesman Parker Detweiler said his company is “doing everything humanly possible within the law to get living conditions where they should be.”

Sherri Daley, executive director of the Tulsa Apartment Association, said while it’s important to address the “underlying causes of housing instability,” landlords have to worry about their bottom line.

“Property owners and managers typically focus on the lease obligations, payment history, and compliance with the rental agreement rather than whether a household includes school-aged children,” she said. One of the arguments against extending the eviction timeline was that it would hurt small, independent landlords. “Even one missed payment can create a ripple effect, leading to deferred maintenance and other financial pressures for the owner.”

Tenants falling behind on rent can sometimes avoid an eviction if they communicate with their landlords, said Amy Coldren, who launched Shelterwell in Oklahoma City in 2023.  As part of its eviction prevention work, the organization provides nonprofits and schools with a free, tenant education program called . It covers topics like how to understand a lease and manage a budget.

Coldren said one of the first women she met after starting Shelterwell was facing eviction because her children, who had previously been in foster care, were considered unauthorized occupants.

“I’m a former foster parent, so I know the work that she did to get her children back,” she said. “A simple solution would have been for her to have a conversation with her landlord and put her kids on the lease.”

‘A sensitive manner’

ImpactTulsa’s work began with a disturbing realization.

Property owners  are also concentrated in the same neighborhoods as schools with the highest . That’s what the organization found when it began scraping the eviction court docket six years ago for addresses that match those of district students.

Between 2020 and 2023, Kimbrel identified eviction filings affecting roughly 4,400 Tulsa students. The disruption wasn’t brief. A year after a district family’s eviction showed up on their radar, nearly three-fourths of those students were still chronically absent. 

“That just slapped everybody in the face,” she said. 

But even the most sophisticated of district data systems can’t stop families from being displaced. The district’s homeless education staff last school year emailed all 621 families identified through the alert system, said BreAnna Shine, director of student engagement. Less than 100 ultimately received support through the district. Most didn’t respond. They might have landed somewhere else, ignored the message or resolved the issue with their landlord.

The other half of the system is a resource hub in one of the district’s most heavily impacted clusters of schools, East Central. The schools on that side of town draw from apartments like Eastgate, which filed eviction notices during that 2020-23 period affecting 47 students at Cooper Elementary and 26 students at East Central High School, Kimbrel’s analysis showed.

The hub at East Central Middle is two offices near the front entrance where Angeles Gonzalez, a family “navigator” with Tulsa Responds, and Turner, an attorney for the YWCA, meet privately with parents to triage their immediate needs — items like rental assistance, a free hotspot or food stamps. But district staff initially wrestled with whether they even wanted to know which families had been evicted. 

“It’s a sensitive matter,” said Stephanie Andrews, executive director of student and family support services. It’s uncomfortable to contact a parent who might not want anyone to know they’ve hit such a low point. “It’s not been without some bumps.” 

The district can guide a family to a nonprofit offering short-term rental assistance or temporary housing, but that often means they end up on a waiting list for services. Restore Hope, a nonprofit, spends about $100,000 a month in rental assistance, but those funds only cover about 30% of the eviction cases, said Josh Geppelt, executive director. Plus, to qualify, applicants have to show they have “means to maintain the rent after we do the assist.”

Living in limbo during that application process, while also bouncing from one living situation to the next, is draining, said Aspen Allen, a mother of three.

“You’re waiting for them to call you, and if nobody answers, they move to the next person,” she said. 

She leaned on the district last fall for clothes and backpacks for her kids in between leaving a rental home with plumbing problems, spending time in a run by a local church and moving into Parkview Terrace on the west side of town, a public housing development known for . It’s the same complex where she’s currently waiting for a subsidized apartment. 

“I haven’t been able to have my own spot for my kids to be happy, go to school, go on vacation and just have a good life,” said Allen, who works as a DoorDasher and was waiting to hear back about a part-time FedEx position. “I’m trying to keep them in school, not missing any days, which is very difficult at times.”

‘They grab what they can’

Inspired by Tulsa’s example, nonprofit leaders in other cities nonetheless face the same obstacles in trying to serve families with scarce resources. 

“There is no system,” said Aqua Porter, executive director of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative in New York. “There are just things that people have to navigate through, and they are not connected.”

Most of those other nonprofits have something Oklahoma does not — a longer timeline between eviction notices and court appearances.  In New York, for example, nonprofits have roughly 30 days from an eviction filing to help families find legal aid, point them toward sources of financial support and encourage them to attend their first court appearance.

Because Oklahoma’s system is designed to get renters with delinquent payments out as soon as possible, it’s often too late to prevent eviction. Those with nowhere to go may stay in the apartment after they’re evicted until they’re forced out by the sheriff’s department, said Melissa Vowell, a homeless education program specialist for the Tulsa Public Schools.

They usually have about an hour to collect belongings. 

“If it’s a sheriff’s eviction, they grab what they can in the time a sheriff will allow,” she said.

Their next stop might be Vowell’s office, which connects to a storeroom packed with school uniforms, socks and underwear, and personal hygiene products.

She also maintains a detailed spreadsheet filled with organizations offering food, transportation and housing. One nonprofit on the list is , tucked into a serene, wooded area west of downtown. Out of a small white cottage, Executive Director Tina Massey runs an eviction diversion program that provides one-time payments of up to $1,000 for those who have fallen behind on rent. Massey estimates that the program reached close to 90 district families last school year.  For those who lose their housing, a shelter on the same property offers fully furnished apartments for up to three months.

Brooklyn Cloud found Family Promise on Facebook last year while living in a Mazda SUV with two daughters, one in preschool and another in second grade. After an eviction from Harmony Glen, a 74-unit complex owned by a , they spent six months sleeping under the lights in Walmart and QuikTrip parking lots. 

“I didn’t even know a 7-year-old could get depressed,” Cloud said. “Her grades started to slip, lack of appetite. She wanted to sleep all the time.”

While staying in one of the apartments, Cloud and her husband paid off the eviction and saved for a new home. Their oldest now “has her own space.” 

“She’s more bubbly and her personality is back,” she said. “She’s not so down-in-the-dumps and snappy.”

‘Legal first aid’

Most parents in a crisis like Cloud’s don’t even show up to court. 

“They can’t get time off work or child care,” said Hallett, the legal aid attorney.

That was clear the day Courtney’s case appeared on the docket. Of the 89 eviction filings before Judge Tammy Bruce, who hears about 13,000 eviction cases a year, less than half of the tenants showed up. 

If they do appear, they’re unlikely to have . In nearly every case, Judge Bruce told them they could either meet with their landlord’s representative or see if they qualified for legal aid. Court documents show Courtney represented herself, while a Vesta employee appeared for the company.

Courtney was evicted two weeks later. Attempts to reach her by phone and text since then were unsuccessful.

Last year, Hallett began asking tenants if they have children in the Tulsa schools. It’s his contribution to the district’s effort to identify more families. 

On the district side, about 40 teachers at East Central MIddle learned how to offer “legal first aid,” like helping parents construct timelines of the events that led up to eviction. Missed or partial payments, maintenance issues reported, and messages to landlords and property managers are important to document because when apartments change ownership, new managers don’t always honor previous attempts to pay. 

Barros, with ImpactTulsa, expected some resistance from staff to the training. She’s a former social studies teacher at East Central Middle.

“Teachers are like ‘Whoa, that’s not my job. You’re adding something else to my plate,’ ” she said. But schools play a unique role in eviction prevention, she said. “Kids are legally required to be here. So let’s take advantage of that.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal appeals court has upheld and limited the interpretation of a controversial Oklahoma law impacting public school teaching on race and gender.

In a split Wednesday, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals decided House Bill 1775 appropriately bars Oklahoma public schools from teaching certain discriminatory concepts as if they are facts. The decision overturned a from a U.S. district judge in Oklahoma City federal court, who had blocked a few portions of the law for vagueness.

A group of Oklahoma students, teachers, college professors and activists who sued to overturn the 2021 law contended HB 1775 is overly vague and unconstitutionally censors classroom discussions. 

The law prohibits schools from requiring or making part of a course concepts such as one race being superior to another race, that individuals bear responsibility for past actions by others of their race or sex, and that students should feel discomfort or guilt over their race or sex.

Schools face a downgrade to their accreditation and teachers risk a certification penalty for violating HB 1775.

To violate the law, a teacher would have to present the banned concepts as fact, Tenth Circuit judges Gregory A. Phillips and Harris L. Hartz decided in their majority opinion.

“Apart from any prohibited racist or sexist editorializing, teachers remain free to instruct about historical or popular issues, and students remain free to draw their own conclusions,” Phillips wrote.

The third member of the three-judge appellate panel, Nancy L. Moritz, said the law should have been struck down “in full.” The majority opinion “impermissibly rewrites the statute” to clarify an unconstitutionally vague law, she wrote in her dissenting opinion.

The text of HB 1775 doesn’t specify that to violate the law educators must endorse a prohibited statement, Moritz wrote. Teachers could unintentionally make a banned concept part of a course “through discussion, by responding to questions, and in myriad other ways, any of which could violate the law,” she wrote.

Attorneys on both sides of the case celebrated the Tenth Circuit’s majority opinion.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the plaintiffs, said the judges’ narrow interpretation of the law means HB 1775 no longer impedes inclusive classroom discussions on race and gender.

“Oklahoma students deserve a nuanced education of race, gender, and American history,” ACLU of Oklahoma legal director Megan Lambert said. “This ruling narrowed Oklahoma’s censorship law out of existence by interpreting it to only prohibit educators from affirmatively encouraging discrimination.”

Attorney General Gentner Drummond, whose office defended the law, called the decision a first-in-the-nation appellate victory.

“This is a significant win for Oklahoma and affirms a simple principle: every Oklahoma student deserves to be treated as an individual, not defined or divided by race or sex,” he said. “Oklahoma teachers do important work every day, and the court has given them clarity to keep doing it well.”

With the Tenth Circuit decision on the preliminary injunction entered, the case now returns to Oklahoma City federal court.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Confidential student records are sitting in a vacated building nearly eight weeks after a charter school permanently closed its doors, officials from the state and the school said, though both sides disagree on who is at fault.

Proud To Partner Leadership Academy, known as PTPLA, ceased operations on July 1 after the over financial, operational and academic quality concerns.

The charter high school’s 100 students have either graduated or transferred elsewhere, but paper copies of their academic transcripts, vaccination records and enrollment documents still remain at PTPLA’s former building in southwest Oklahoma City, raising concerns over privacy protections and potentially racking up thousands of dollars in rental fees, according to email correspondence Oklahoma Voice obtained from the state.

Representatives of the shuttered school told Oklahoma Voice that state employees haven’t worked with the building’s landlord to pick up the records.

A spokesperson for the Statewide Charter School Board, Shelly Hickman, said board staff has contacted the landlord, who indicated the student records are under lock and key and “it is the PTPLA team, and not he, who has that key.”

The state received electronic copies of the student records and has been providing them daily to school families upon request, Hickman said. A lack of paper copies hasn’t stopped any students from attending school elsewhere, she said, because enrollment commonly involves an electronic exchange of records.

Recovering the physical copies from the empty school building, though, has turned into a monthslong dispute.

The state board’s staff tried to retrieve the files multiple times in June when the school still occupied the building, but PTPLA leadership declined to provide them because the records were incomplete, Hickman said.

Emails that Oklahoma Voice obtained show state officials have asked PTPLA representatives repeatedly in July and August to either hand over the physical documents or agree to a time that state employees could pick up the records.

School representatives on a “transition team” overseeing the closure had a deadline of Aug. 12 to transfer all financial, student and personnel records, the emails show. Days after the deadline, state employees still were sending emails seeking a response.

“We could be at the building today if the PTPLA transition team arranged for us to enter and finally produced these hard copy records for us, which has been their legal responsibility all along,” Hickman said.

The state needs to contact the building’s landlord to gain entry because the school no longer has access to the facility, said Marva Williamson, a PTPLA board member and the school’s only remaining representative on the transition team.

School board member Charlesetta Jossell also was part of the team but resigned on Aug. 18, email records show.

The school board president of PTPLA, Sharri Coleman, returned the building’s keys to the landlord on July 31, according to a written memorandum, which Oklahoma Voice obtained.

The memorandum states that student records and some desks still remained inside at the time of the key transfer. Any further access to the building must be coordinated with the landlord, the document states.

Coleman said she isn’t part of the transition team. Her responsibility was to ensure the building was secure and the keys were returned, not to transfer records, she said.

But, she said she became concerned with the lack of progress toward final closure, so she decided to notify the news media, multiple state lawmakers and state Superintendent Lindel Fields on Friday of the documents remaining in the former school facility.

“The reason why I went to state officials is so that someone on the outside can say, ‘Hey, get the records. The records have been left there for you. They weren’t abandoned. There was documentation saying that they’re in the building,’” Coleman told Oklahoma Voice on Monday. “That’s just a part of the transition process, and I just felt like the transition process had stalled.”

Her email to state leaders only stoked frustrations among the statewide board and its staff.

State employees have made “numerous attempts” to obtain the documents from PTPLA, Statewide Charter School Board Chair Brian Shellem wrote in an email to Coleman on Sunday evening.

Abandoning the documents could violate student privacy laws, he wrote. His email argues that the school at any point could have hired a courier service to deliver the records to the statewide board’s offices.

Meanwhile, the leftover items have accrued two months of rental fees, totaling $39,469, according to an email Thursday from the building landlord, Cameron Kaspereit.

Kaspereit, who did not return requests for comment from Oklahoma Voice, wrote in emails to state officials last week that another $118,800 is owed for a “building expense due from the early termination,” along with “fees for damages previously submitted.”

The last of PTPLA’s funds will go toward its outstanding bills, according to a July 21 email from the state board’s legal compliance officer, Emily Witwer.

“Following closure, the landlord’s only recourse would be to sue the defunct entity, as the Statewide Charter School Board does not inherit the debts of PTPLA,” she wrote.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Now he’s likely to be the next state superintendent after defeating teacher and conservative pastor James Taylor in the Republican runoff Tuesday. 

“I thought to myself, ‘If we lose, at least it edifies the work that you’re doing. You’ll have a much more grounded perspective,’ ” he told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· in an interview.

He’ll face the Democratic candidate Jennettie Marshall, a pastor and former Tulsa Public Schools board member, in November. But in such a conservative state, Franklin is expected to be the frontrunner. 

With strong support from pro-public school networks, Franklin’s primary win represents a clear departure from the state’s last elected state superintendent, conservative firebrand Ryan Walters. The former history teacher pushed Bibles in classrooms, threatened to revoke teachers’ licenses for teaching topics some view as divisive and filled his calendar with appearances on conservative talk shows. Critics said he neglected the state’s education system. 

Franklin, a moderate Republican, has more than 40 years in education as a teacher, administrator and associate superintendent at Tulsa Tech, an independent district offering career training to high school students and adults. As a former member of the state’s now-defunct virtual charter school board, he voted against allowing the state to open the nation’s first religious charter school, separating himself from Walters and other officials who battled unsuccessfully all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to establish the school. With the state now trying to improve its poor educational rankings, where it is nearly last in the nation, one political expert said Franklin seemed “like the safer choice.”

“Ryan Walters is pretty fresh in a lot of folks’ memories across the state, including Republicans,” said Deven Carlson, a public policy researcher at the University of Oklahoma. As an inductee into the state’s Educator Hall of Fame, Franklin, he said “is kind of a known quantity in the education space.”

Franklin stepped into the race after Rob Miller, former superintendent of the Bixby Public Schools and an outspoken critic of Walters, withdrew . Teacher groups quickly shifted their support to Franklin, who along with Taylor, edged out five other candidates in the June primary, including state Sen. Adam Pugh.

Walters, who had been expected to run for governor, left his job a year early and now runs an organization that encourages teachers to opt out of their unions. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Lindel Fields, a retired career and technical education administrator, to complete the term and has since appointed him as education secretary. 

Fields some of Walters’ policies, like requiring classrooms to have Bibles and expecting applicants for teaching positions from blue states to take an , a conservative media company. The multiple choice test covered civics and history topics, but also included ideological questions about parental rights and gender issues.

Education advocates see Franklin as one who can further mend the relationship between school districts and the department.

“Franklin is hands down the most qualified person that we’ve ever seen run for this position in the history of the state,” said Erika Wright, founder of and now a community organizer with the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.

Taylor, meanwhile, appealed to many of the same groups that helped Walters win in 2022, like the . He for more Christianity in the classroom and teaching students “the word of God” through historical documents. 

He proposed to under countywide school boards as a way to save money, but Franklin warned that such an approach would take away local control.

The state’s Republican party ahead of the runoff. It has historically remained neutral until the nominees are named. Some in the party criticized the move as an attempt to influence voters ahead of the runoff.

Taylor said his job as a history and government teacher in the Little Axe Public Schools, outside Oklahoma City, would give him the insight he needed to lead the state education department. But some called his success as an educator into question after records showed that he taught in an Advanced Placement U.S. Government class took the exam. He only taught the class once in 2024.

After his defeat Tuesday night, Taylor posted on , “I exit this race with zero regrets.”

‘Pockets of excellence’

Franklin faced his own controversy during the campaign, a 2014 incident in which he accidentally with disabilities at a camp he co-founded in 1986. The issue came to light when the child’s mother warned not to vote for Franklin and accused him of having “explosive anger issues.”

In a statement, Franklin, a former special education teacher, explained that he was trying to get control of a child who had become aggressive. When he grabbed the boy, he left scratches behind his ears.Ìę

“I’ve worked with thousands of individuals with special needs,” he told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. “I’ve had to intervene a lot with young people. Sometimes it just doesn’t go according to script.”

The camp’s director confirmed that he was trying to de-escalate a situation and said the camp’s leaders took appropriate action.

Whoever wins in November will oversee implementation of a that requires struggling readers in the early grades to be held back or receive extra help. Third graders not proficient in reading would be required to repeat the grade unless they qualify for an exemption. This year’s state test scores show that about 24% of students reached the proficiency level, a slight drop from last year.

“Oklahomans expect both candidates in the general election for state superintendent to make the case for how they will lead the successful implementation of our state’s landmark reading reforms,” said Dave Bond, vice president for advocacy at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, a conservative think tank. “Those reforms passed our state legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support earlier this year, and our next state superintendent has a mandate to approach them with a no-excuses focus on student success.”

Franklin or Marshall will also inherit a system in which districts often rely on emergency certified teachers to staff classrooms. 

Franklin said it’s important to look for “pockets of excellence” in the state where schools are outperforming in reading outcomes even though they serve a higher-poverty population. He suggested establishing regional support centers to make expertise more readily available to districts.

But “we just don’t have enough trained educators in front of young people,” he said. Turnover rates are higher among teachers with emergency credentials. “We’re just kind of spinning our wheels, trying to train people and get them up to speed.”

The state, he said, should consider tax breaks for teachers, like it has for . 

Marshall, the Democratic candidate, has also made teacher recruitment and retention a part of her platform, and has said that serving on the school board in Tulsa, the state’s largest district, to lead the state education agency. She said she would focus on being a smart steward of state funds and that a lack of resources “is one of the main reasons that we’re struggling.” 

Her diverse career includes 17 years with the Department of Corrections as a parole officer and three years as a child welfare investigator.

Like Franklin, Marshall has pledged to keep policies focused on core academics and not politically divisive topics that put children and teachers in the middle of polarizing debates.

But the future state chief may have to work with a governor who, during , said the state has “541 school districts that are run by liberal, left-leaning radical socialists.”

Businessman and former state senator narrowly defeated Attorney General Gentner Drummond in the GOP runoff Tuesday. Endorsed by President Donald Trump, he’s called for partisan school board elections as a way to tip districts toward more conservative policies. He’ll face Democrat Cyndi Munson, minority leader in the state House, in the general election.

Governors appoint the state school board, which the future superintendent will have to work with to implement any new policies. Carlson, with the University of Oklahoma, said Mazzei doesn’t have much of a “political track record.”

“We really don’t know what we’re getting,” he said.

Mazzei has promised to appoint a state literacy director, but Marshall sees a potential conflict with that arrangement. 

“That person is going to usurp the authority of the department and there’s going to be a whole new battle,” she said. “That’s why education is hurting; there are too many irrelevant distractions.” 

But Wright, with Appleseed, said Franklin is capable of navigating political differences as they arise.Ìę

“If there’s anyone that can bridge that divide,” she said, “it’s Dr. Franklin.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — Hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma children returned to school this week for their first academic year under . It will be their final school year before reading scores carry even higher stakes.

More than 21,100 Oklahoma third graders, or 44%, scored below a basic level on statewide reading tests this past spring, according to . Future third graders, starting in the 2027-28 school year, would risk being held back a year for scoring below basic, which the state defines as failing to demonstrate even partial mastery of grade-level expectations.

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State leaders enacted more rigorous this year in hopes of emulating Mississippi, which progressively rose in national academic rankings after implementing similar regulations.

Mississippi, though, retained only 6% of its third graders in the 2024-25 school year, . The Magnolia State , or 3,000 students, in its first year of retentions in 2014-15.

The fact that Oklahoma could have significantly more students at risk of retention indicates that “our state tests are not the same” as Mississippi’s, said Chris Brewster, superintendent of Santa Fe South Charter Schools. That’s a signal Oklahoma might have more work to do on its methods of assessing students, he said.

“There are certain schools where the vast majority of all of their third graders, historically speaking, haven’t met that standard,” Brewster said of the potential statewide impact. “I don’t know if that’s the intent of the law, but it seems very punitive to children and not really a way to progress the work.”

Brewster, though, said he’s not at all against holding schools accountable for ensuring all children learn to read. His charter district, based in south Oklahoma City, had 46% of its third graders score below basic in reading in 2026, but he said he’s optimistic about future growth.

How are schools accelerating learning?

This past spring, 66% of Santa Fe South’s first graders, who will be among the initial third graders to take the high-stakes literacy test, scored at or above their grade level in reading on districtwide benchmark assessments.

That’s the result of six years of steady improvement since spring 2020, when 34% of the district’s first graders performed near or above their grade level, Santa Fe South leaders said. Rather than making significant changes this year, they plan to continue with the methods behind that success.

Santa Fe South students, many of whom come from low-income and non-English-speaking homes, take a mix of assessments that test specific reading skills.

Once students’ weak points are identified, they begin a three-week cycle of daily small-group instruction focused on the skills that need improvement, said Missy Stotler, Santa Fe South’s content and curriculum coordinator for early childhood. That’s in addition to daily class time dedicated to literacy.

“It’s the idea of short bursts of intense, very focused work with a group of kids, and then quickly assessing, ‘Did they move the needle? Where are the needs now?’ And then, quickly putting them back into new groups that meet their new need of learning,” Stotler said.

Key pieces of reading law still undefined

Still, “there’s a lot of question marks” for schools about the new reading laws, said Meg Wheeler, executive director of elementary education at Santa Fe South. Right now, the number of students scoring below basic is one of the only clear indicators school leaders have of how many of their students might face retention, she said.

Under the new law, students would have to score below basic on state reading tests and fail a second literacy assessment to be held back in third grade, unless they meet limited criteria for an exemption. State officials haven’t decided yet what that second test will be.

Also, all districts will have to implement the same reading screener to check students’ literacy levels and determine how much intervention each child needs. The universal screener hasn’t been chosen yet, either.

“For schools who have not previously used that screener — (it) could be us, we don’t know — we won’t have any historical data to pull from,” Wheeler said. “We don’t get very much information (from state tests) about why a student is scoring at below basic at the third grade level, and we don’t know that we’re going to have any historical data from the screening assessments to help us understand what is happening with a student.

“So, there’s a lot of blindness in the data that I think we have some fear of right now.”

Districts prepare for high-stakes testing

The question in Edmond Public Schools Superintendent Josh Delich’s mind, he said, is how training and staffing can support the literacy initiative — and whether the state will help with the cost of educators’ professional development.

The state already began rolling out teacher academies for educators who want to earn a reading specialist credential. The state Department of Education’s .

Edmond schools continue to focus on building teachers’ capacity for literacy instruction, Delich said. A major emphasis has been the quality of general classroom reading lessons, which are provided to all students in a class regardless of their performance level.

Thirty percent of Edmond third graders scored below basic in reading, according to 2025-26 state test results.

“What is that first level of teaching and learning instruction that students receive in the classroom, and how do you support that?” And then through that, you look at how do you spiral in learning objectives that students may struggle with. How do you reteach areas and content in which students are struggling?” Delich said. “We want to make sure we’re moving every single student through individual growth.”

Oklahoma City Public Schools found reason for optimism during the 2025-26 school year when after only the fall semester. Adding a second reading curriculum on top of the district’s original lesson plans helped accelerate learning, administrators said.

But, “there are many students who would fall in that retention window,” said Jason Galloway, the district’s chief of academics.

Sixty-six percent of third graders in the district scored below basic, according to state test results.

So, Oklahoma City schools made further changes following the new reading law.

Daily reading instruction time has increased to 150 minutes in many elementary schools from the previous standard of 90 to 120 minutes, said Alisha Suffield, Oklahoma City’s chief of schools.

The district also added more reading interventionists, paraprofessionals and teaching aides to work with students in small groups, Suffield said. All kindergarten and first grade classes will be staffed with a certified teacher rather than someone holding an emergency certification, who might not have traditional classroom training.

“Emergency certified teachers have a very valuable place in our system, but we don’t want them to be placed in those early primary reading years of kinder and first grade,” she said. “So (we’re) just trying to protect those reading spaces and ensure that our kids get the strongest start possible with a certified staff person.”

Reporter Emma Murphy contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, Inc, led by former Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch, the Statewide Charter School Board in March, saying that Oklahoma’s law requiring charter schools to be nonsectarian qualifies as religious discrimination. 

“Many parents, both Jewish and non-Jewish, want the kind of rigorous, faith-based education Ben Gamla would provide,” said Daniel Chen, an attorney with Becket, a nonprofit law firm focusing on religious liberty. 

The earliest the virtual school could open would be the fall of 2027. 

Ben Gamla is the second religious charter school that has tried to open in Oklahoma, where Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and former state Superintendent Ryan Walters encouraged the first online Catholic charter school. Last year, a lawsuit over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in a 4-4 tie deadlocked over the question of whether charter schools are private and can, therefore, explicitly teach religion. That leaves the question unanswered, say supporters of religious charter schools. Similar efforts in other states, including Tennessee and California, mean there are many routes for returning the issue to the high court.

In the Ben Gamla case, U.S. District Judge David Russell, for the Western District of Oklahoma, will consider two issues. In addition to asking the court to allow the school to open while the case proceeds, Ben Gamla’s organizers also want the court to block Oklahoma families, now “intervenors” in the case, from accessing information about the school, like proposed admission and student conduct policies.

“Intervenors are going on a fishing expedition, seeking sensitive information about schoolchildren, donors and the like,” Chen said.

But attorneys representing the families, , say any planning documents should be publicly available.

“To what extent will those policies discriminate against students or employees based on religion or sexual orientation or gender identity?” asked Alex Luchenitser, vice president and associate legal director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “How religiously coercive will school operations be?” 

In June, Russell granted requests from two groups of parents to intervene in the case. They argue that the school would force taxpayers to subsidize religion. Because the charter school board is not opposed to the Ben Gamla school in theory and even welcomed the lawsuit, that leaves the parents, including those whose children attend charter schools, as “the only litigants seeking to defend the constitutionality” of the state law, he wrote.

The judge is expected to rule in a few weeks, but Luchenitser said he could issue a decision on the documents sooner.

Luchenitser is also Americans United’s lead attorney on a federal case in Tennessee in which , a proposed “Christ-centered” charter school in Knoxville, is suing the Knox County Schools because the district wouldn’t allow the organizers to submit a charter application. 

U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley Jr., for the Eastern District of Tennessee, has set a trial date in that case for the week of Jan. 12. As in Oklahoma, the judge allowed a group of community members to intervene in the case when the school board said it wouldn’t take a position on Wilberforce’s legal argument. The organization says that while the state supports families who want a religious education for their children through its education savings account program, it shows “hostility” toward religious charter schools.

‘Not freestanding’

In Colorado, a over a Christian “contract” school, similar to a charter, was another potential test case for faith-based public schools, But the 30-student Riverstone Academy shut down permanently at the end of last school year after health and safety violations as its facility. The state legislature also , making the school ineligible for funding. 

In a fourth case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled earlier this year that a homeschool program in California that operates under the umbrella of the Blue Ridge Academy charter school is still a public school, and, therefore, can’t practice religion. Parents and grandparents sued the state when officials said using public funds to purchase religious curriculum materials would violate state law. 

Liberty Justice Center, the conservative law firm representing the families, has until Aug. 20 to to the Supreme Court. 

But while supporters of religious charter schools plan their legal strategy for getting the issue back before the conservative justices, some advocates are sharpening arguments saying that charters are, without question, public schools.

According to a from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, these schools of choice “are not freestanding private institutions.” They exist only because of state action and operate with public resources.

Kevin Welner, an education and law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, called the paper a “valiant effort,” but one unlikely to sway the court the next time they hear a case over religious charter schools. 

The only reason the St. Isidore case ended in a tie is because Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself. While she didn’t give a reason, Barrett is close friends with a law professor who advised the school’s founders. That won’t happen a second time, and given that Barrett typically sides with those wanting on religious expression. Welner said he’s convinced that the Alliance “will lose that argument.”

Along with Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education and Preston Green of the University of Connecticut, in a policy paper that if the court ultimately rules that charter schools are private entities, such schools will not only be able to practice religion, but potentially ignore other “basic laws governing public schools,” like open meetings requirements and conflict-of-interest rules.

To prevent that possibility, the three recommend that states should have districts govern charters instead of independent nonprofit boards. This change, they said, would make charters “unambiguously governmental entities” that are “fully subject to constitutional requirements and civil rights laws.”

Watching Florida

Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the Alliance, rejected the idea, saying their proposal “would open the door to more regulation that will basically turn charters into district schools.” The Alliance and other choice advocacy groups, like the , favor charter laws that allow for a variety of authorizers, including nonprofits.  

Meanwhile, in Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier issued stating that the First Amendment doesn’t prevent states from “encouraging” religion and that excluding religious groups from opening charter schools violates the Constitution. 

So far, the Alliance hasn’t seen any religious groups trying to launch charters based on Uthmeier’s statements, Coleman said.

“But it doesn’t mean we won’t,” she said. 

After all, Deutsch represented Florida in the House from 1993 to 2005 and that’s where he built a successful network of secular charter schools that teach Hebrew language and culture. In 2023, he told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· that if he had known education savings accounts and private school choice programs were about to take off, he would have founded a “Jewish voucher school.”

“We know there are people in Florida who are interested in advancing this issue,” Coleman said. “We are expecting that Florida could be the next state with an active case.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — State leaders say they’re still pursuing solutions to reverse a yearslong decline in traditionally trained teachers entering the classroom, all while emergency certified educators continue to fill essential teaching roles. 

The number of graduates completing Oklahoma teacher preparation programs, including college degrees in education, has fallen by about 40% since 2013, state officials told the Oklahoma State Board of Education on Thursday. 

Traditionally certified educators who completed these programs have represented less than half of all first-year teachers entering the state’s public schools since 2018.

To help fill in the gap, Oklahoma districts hire thousands of emergency certified teachers, who might not have traditional classroom training, when a candidate with full or partial credentials is unavailable. Uncertified adjunct instructors, who must have relevant career experience but aren’t required to have a college degree, also have taken on a growing role in public schools.

The state Board of Education has placed increasing scrutiny on Oklahoma’s reliance on emergency certified teachers, who were a rarity a decade and a half ago. The board votes monthly to issue emergency certifications.

“I’m not against it,” said Becky Carson, a retired teacher and one of the most vocal board members on the issue. “I just want to make sure that the educators that we’re putting there are supported and we’re giving them the right training and being able to remove those that might not be (in) the best place for them.”

Research shows teacher ÌęČčČÔ»ćÌę impact student academic achievement, she said. If Oklahoma wants to rise from the bottom of national education rankings, Carson said, “we have to look at all aspects that could be of a concern that’s putting us there.”

The state issued 3,928 emergency certifications for the 2025-26 school year, state data shows. 

So far, 1,392 more have been approved for 2026-27, said Jeff Smith, program director for teacher certification at the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

More than 470 of those teachers are renewing past emergency certifications, he said. 

The number of applicants seeking renewals — some as many as eight times after failing to pass certification tests or not completing required coursework — has been one of the state board members’ top complaints.

Sixty of the 638 applicants approved Thursday have been issued an emergency certificate more than three times, according to an Oklahoma Voice analysis of state records. Emergency certifications are typically renewed every one to two years, according to state administrative codes.

“Why are we having people that are having to ask for that renewal eight times?” Carson said. “Why aren’t we being able to get them to pass the test if that’s the reason?”

Data agency staff presented at the board’s meeting Thursday showed the stark reality of the pipeline feeding Oklahoma’s teacher workforce.

Emergency certified educators, once considered a stop-gap measure, were the most common of all first-year teachers in 2025. They represented 38.8% of teachers in their first year and more than 5% of all Oklahoma educators, state officials said.

Traditionally certified educators made up 87.8% of the overall teacher workforce in 2025 and only 37.1% of those in their first year, but their numbers could rise in 2026. So far, they represent 45.5% of 2026 first-year teachers, but state data doesn’t yet reflect the full hiring cycle.

Provisional educators, who have completed some requirements but still have testing or coursework to complete, represented 7.6% of all teachers and 24.1% of first-year educators last year.

That presents a striking difference from 2010, when emergency certifications amounted to 0.5% of incoming new teachers. Those with traditional certifications counted for 96.3% of the classroom teacher workforce and 64.7% of first-year entrants. The rest held a provisional certificate.

The data sheds light on an “unfortunate situation” that state leaders must work together to solve, said Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber. The state House Common Education Committee leader, who attended the board meeting Thursday, said he’s going to participate in interim studies and a working group with the state Board of Education to explore solutions.

“I think if you look at those numbers, you kind of understand where our test scores are, where they’re at and why they’ve been there,” Lowe said of .

The weakening teacher pipeline wasn’t a shock to Carson, she said, given how many educators complain of classroom behavior issues and a lack of support.

State lawmakers in recent years have ,  for aspiring educators and  in the hopes of combatting the education workforce shortage.

A state initiative known as TeachForward is helping 450 emergency certified educators earn a standard certification within one year, Education Department staff said Thursday. Six Oklahoma universities partnered with the program to offer accelerated coursework and exams at no out-of-pocket cost to participants.

The agency also touted a program it will launch Monday to give 463 early career teachers a week of professional development and mentoring throughout the school year. The program serves first- and second-year teachers with any type of certification.

State Superintendent Lindel Fields expressed enthusiasm for the program’s potential to help retain participating teachers in the classroom long term.

“There’s a lot of talk about recruiting teachers. The real problem is keeping teachers,” Fields said during the state Board of Education meeting. “Everything we can do to help those teachers be successful in this program is super exciting.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Touting his state’s soaring literacy scores, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves urged Oklahoma leaders to commit to tough reading policies.

This year, Oklahoma as Mississippi, whose fourth-grade reading scores have after decades of ranking near the bottom. The state’s meteoric rise has been called the “Mississippi miracle.”

“It really wasn’t a miracle at all,” Reeves said during an Oklahoma State Chamber event Wednesday. “It was the direct result of very good, strong policy followed by a plan to properly implement, and also — and perhaps most importantly — an accountability piece that was built into the statute.”

Mississippi began implementing significant investments and changes in its literacy laws in 2012, Reeves said. That included a controversial requirement that struggling readers repeat third grade.

Oklahoma students will face a similar “third-grade gate” starting in the 2027-28 academic year. Third graders who score below a basic level on the annual state reading test and who fail a second standardized assessment would have to repeat the grade, unless they meet limited criteria for an exemption.

, signed into law in April, also requires Oklahoma public schools to provide extra tutoring, small-group reading lessons, summer academies and transitional classrooms starting in kindergarten to support students who show early signs of falling behind.

The state Legislature invested $5 million to grow a statewide team of literacy coaches, $5 million for reading instruction training for teachers and $840,000 to purchase reading materials to mail to children. Lawmakers also added $26.25 million in school funding for reading instruction.

State Chamber President and CEO Chad Warmington said literacy coaches and teacher training will be essential to improving Oklahoma’s academic outcomes. The chamber, a powerful collective of Oklahoma’s business community, has been a .

“If we don’t take the science of reading and make sure that teachers have that training so it’s being taught in the classrooms, none of this meant anything,” Warmington said.

The science of reading emphasizes phonics-based instruction. Focusing on phonics is “a good place to start” for a state turnaround, Reeves said.

Mississippi also has raised its standards for how it defines a proficient reader. A state law whenever 75% of students make a proficient score on yearly tests or when 65% of schools or districts make a grade of B or higher on annual A-F evaluations.

“We have increased that level, by the way, four times since I’ve been in office, and (are) about to increase it again,” Reeves told Oklahoma City news reporters. “Because what’s going to happen when you raise the bar, when you raise the level of expectations, what’s happened in Mississippi is exactly what’s going to happen in Oklahoma.”

Oklahoma’s proficiency standards . NAEP tests students in all 50 states every two years and compiles the results in the Nation’s Report Card.

Not only has Mississippi’s overall fourth-grade reading progress impressed the nation, but the state’s scores among Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students have ranked at or near the top of the country, according to .

Mississippi ranks only 40th in eighth grade reading, though, which has raised questions about the long-term efficacy of the third-grade gate.

Reeves said he signed legislation this year to add reading, math and career coaches focused on grades 5-8 to address the middle-school regression.

“If we don’t start seeing better retention of those (reading) gains, then we’re going to start testing kids when we get towards the seventh grade, just like we test kids in the third grade,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Like them, she’s part of a Latino family from East Tulsa and wanted to give back to the community she loved. She kept her word. The new charter middle school quickly performed among the best schools in Oklahoma with an A on the state report card. 

But on a recent sunny morning in May, she sat in a conference room in the former paper mill the school purchased and renovated and spoke words uttered by countless school leaders since 2020: “Then the pandemic happened.”

The school’s ranking fell. Chronic absenteeism spiked, and instead of being two or three grade levels behind academically, some students arrived as much as four years off track. Even as she worked to expand the network, Pollock that she would be able to fulfill her commitment to get kids in and through college. Students went to work to help their families during the crisis or cared for younger siblings.

“The mindset of school being a top priority had shifted,” she said.

But there are signs that recovery is now underway. All 74 seniors in last year’s graduating class were accepted to at least one four-year university, and the small network’s two middle schools for growth in reading and math from a national charter school organization. 

As the network prepares to take its next major step, opening an elementary school, Tulsa Honor Academy is “back on an upward trajectory,” Pollock said. “Our goal was to get back to a level of excellence, both in terms of academic growth and school culture.”

The new school will open as a Spanish-English dual language program. It’s something parents have wanted for a long time. Roughly half of the students Tulsa Honor Academy serves are not only first in their families to go to college, they’re also the first to graduate high school. 

That means some students’ “home language skills are not fully developed at home, and our kids also need to learn English,” she said. “By the time they get to middle school, they will be completely fluent in both languages.”

Teachers at the school already use strategies that build fluency and new vocabulary among English learners. On a morning in May, sixth grade science teacher Miguel Ramirez led a lesson on the nervous system. In their matching uniform sweatshirts and khaki pants, students read aloud definitions of terms like nucleus and dendrites and turned to a partner to repeat the material.

“Constantly hearing people say the words gets them to internalize it,” explained Justine McGovern, the school’s development director. 

The academy celebrates Latino culture by being the only one in Oklahoma, as far as Pollock knows, that offers full courses for elective credit in , cultural dances from Mexico. In authentic dresses that represent the regions of Mexico — white for Vera Cruz or vibrant colors for Chihuahua — the students perform all over Tulsa, and many compete nationally.

‘Unapologetically college prep’ 

Inspired by her mother, an engineer who moved from Mexico to Tulsa to pursue a career,  Pollock originally planned to become an immigration lawyer. At a time when there weren’t many Latinos in Tulsa, her mother advocated for a Spanish mass at a local church and started a free GED program.

But Pollock abandoned the idea of pursuing law to join Teach for America, and developed the drive to launch her own school while working in St. Louis and Chicago. 

From the beginning, Tulsa Honor Academy has been what she calls “unapologetically college prep.” College campus visits start as early as fifth grade. Juniors work on personal statements in class. They research different careers and share their insights with sophomores, and because navigating college life can be overwhelming, staff in the school’s college readiness office encourage alumni to return for one-on-one help.

“If we want more Black and brown, first-generation, low-income students to eventually become teachers, lawyers and doctors,” Pollock said, “then we need to make sure that they’re being educated to be able to go to and graduate from college.”

with hospitals, nonprofits and city agencies are another hallmark of the school’s model. After his semester interning with Reading Partners, a tutoring organization, Oscar Gutierrez was convinced that teaching wasn’t for him. 

“I don’t want to work in the education field whatsoever,” said Gutierrez, who graduated this year. 

The experience still gave him a glimpse of behind-the-scenes operations like scheduling and recruiting volunteers. It eased anxiety over finding his way around an unfamiliar place and interacting with people he hasn’t met.

“You had to talk to the kid,” said Gutierrez, who plans to study accounting at Tulsa Community College and then transfer to the University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University. “It teaches those communication skills and just being confident within yourself.”

Kimberly Perez, part of the first graduating class of 2023, landed an internship at Miller-Tippins, a leading construction firm in Tulsa. She learned how to prepare bids for projects and estimate the cost of materials. Now a rising senior on a full-ride scholarship to Oklahoma State University, she’s already received job offers from companies in Dallas. 

She still remembers when Pollock visited her home in 2016, sat on the couch and promised her mother that Tulsa Honor Academy was a better option than the district middle school. She was in fifth grade at the charter at the time, but only reading at a first grade level. 

“I would come crying to my mom, like ‘I don’t want to be in that school,’ ” Kim said. Her mother considered pulling her out. “But Elsie said, ‘She just needs extra time.’”

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Those were the years that Pollock was still leading just one school. In 2019, the high school opened, housed in a trailer on the same property. In early 2020, just as schools shut down because of COVID, Tulsa Honor Academy of a building for the high school, an accomplishment in a sector where schools often face challenges securing facilities.

Financing for the project, however, required enrollment to grow, so Pollock and her board fast-tracked the opening of a second middle school in the fall of 2021 — three years early. The expansion to three schools, in some ways, marked a temporary setback. The challenge, Pollock said, was managing a major renovation while also responding to families’ needs in a community by the virus.Ìę

“During the critical years of growth that other schools get to methodically establish network systems and structures,” she said, “we had to pivot and start to focus on surviving the pandemic.”

Student behavior worsened, turnover rates among staff increased, and the principal hired for Flores Middle quit just after the new school opened. 

Brent Bushey, CEO of Fuel OKC, a nonprofit that provides financial support to charter schools, has watched Pollock’s journey from the beginning and recognized where the network stumbled.

“They overextended, and that came through in the academic results,” he said. 

Since 2021-22, the original middle school hasn’t earned higher than a C. Flores, the second middle school, has been stuck at a D since it opened. But those are 2025’s scores, and Pollock is hopeful about where Tulsa Honor Academy is headed. Last year, Flores Middle saw the highest fall-to-spring growth in reading and the third highest in math on NWEA’s MAP assessments among the 60 schools that submitted data to , a national nonprofit formerly known as Building Excellent Schools. Tulsa Honor Academy Middle was second in both reading and math.

Overall, the high school earned a C from the state, but was graded a B for postsecondary opportunities, better than the state average 

Overcoming the pandemic hasn’t been the only crisis Pollock has had to weather. In March, a former middle school teacher following accusations he texted a 12-year-old student and inappropriately touched the child. The school fired him in January and released a of the steps taken to report the situation to police. According to Tulsa police, the investigation into whether other students were affected is ongoing.

‘Tipping point’

As she focuses on Tulsa Honor Academy’s growth, which is expected to reach nearly 1,800 students with the new elementary school, Pollock also has a larger goal of inspiring and supporting more Latino educators to start charter schools. She helped to launch , Latino Educators Advancing Leadership, a word that also means loyal in Spanish. 

She was the first and remains the only Latino charter school leader in the state. It’s both a point of pride and what she calls a “gross disservice” when the majority of students attending brick-and-mortar charter schools are Latino. She’s encouraged that another Latino leader, Robert Ruiz, will open a in Oklahoma City in 2027.

The biggest barrier, she said, is the lack of educational attainment among Latinos in Tulsa. data shows that less than 20% of Latino adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Pollock sees that void in her own work. Two years ago, she knew of four Latino charter school assistant principals in Oklahoma, two of them in her own schools.

“The tipping point is going to be once our scholars graduate from college and we can start hiring them back,” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. “My biggest dream is for one of our scholars to eventually sit in my seat.”

I knew I wanted to be one of the engineers building this future. But at the end of middle school, the time I spent in class felt stale and unambitious, like just another obstacle separating me from my goals. I wanted to take my education more seriously.

So I transferred to the Academy of Seminole, a charter school in Seminole, Oklahoma that offers more opportunities to move forward faster. 

The new environment took some getting used to, but I thoroughly enjoyed the challenging classes, engaging teachers and new friends during my first two years of high school. The real turning point came at the end of sophomore year, when we all began finalizing our upperclassman plans.

TAOS challenges us to start our postsecondary education early through college or vocational dual enrollment or Vo-Tech. With the contrast of a traditional high school timeline fresh in my mind, I wanted to squeeze as much utility out of the next two years as possible.

I decided to take college courses at Seminole State College to graduate with an associate’s degree like many other students at TAOS. At the same time, I enrolled in Gordon Cooper Technology Center’s machining program. 

Machining is the most precise form of mechanical manufacturing, so the trade appealed to my love of mechanical systems. For me as an engineer, it offered a better understanding of how projects are made, giving me a unique perspective to design for manufacturability. 

I also wanted a way to pay for my education to avoid student loans, so developing a valuable technical skill alongside college coursework made perfect sense. Even better, TAOS covered the remaining tuition and fees not paid by the state, removing any financial worry.

The biggest challenge was simply fitting everything into the day. My physics class ran until 1:35 p.m., but my Vo-Tech work started at 1. My college classes stretched into the late afternoon. I missed more class time than I liked and weathered quite a few late nights to make it work. But with the support of all three schools and my family, I graduated high school already four years into my postsecondary education.

For a long time, my post-graduation plan was simple: attend a local university close to home and earn my engineering degree while using my machine training to keep me debt-free. Then, while filling out scholarships in senior year, I discovered the QuestBridge National College Match and applied on a whim. To my surprise, I became a finalist. For the first time, I realized I was a nationally competitive student who could attend an elite university.

While I didn’t match through QuestBridge, I still applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and after a few weeks of anxious waiting, I was admitted with financial aid that completely covers my cost of attendance. Without even realizing it, I had been studying under the exact educational philosophy laid out by the MIT motto: “Mens et Manus” or “Mind and Hand” by applying myself both academically and technically. 

Looking back, I’ve grown so much since I was that pessimistic eighth grader. I found an ocean of opportunity at my three schools. More importantly, I found a community of people who believed in me and helped me become capable of far more than I once imagined.

Now, I look forward to pursuing a bachelor’s degree, and hopefully a PhD, in nuclear engineering at MIT. I plan to use my education to help pioneer new methods of producing abundant, safe and clean energy. I’ve already come farther than I once imagined, but I’m nowhere close to done yet. I can’t wait to see what challenge my ambition drags me into next and to meet the great people who will help me overcome it.

She got her opportunity four years ago, when a K-8 art teacher position opened up at Dove School of Discovery, at the same time her daughter was preparing to enroll at a school in the network.

Lanning was thrilled that her new curriculum would combine art with STEM. Soon, she was helping students build cars, use a power drill and solder metal.

“I don’t allow the students second grade and under to use the dangerous stuff by themselves, but for third grade and up, once they’ve had safety lessons, they’re able to use those types of things — there is no limit to what they have access to,” Lanning said. “A lot of them are scared, but I walk them through it. I’ve literally held hands. Once they get that experience of trying it, they’re like, ‘Oh, I kind of like this.’ ”

STEM education is one of the of Dove Schools, a with nine campuses in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, plus a statewide virtual program. Educators there credit the presence of STEM in every grade — from computer science in kindergarten to high school career pathways — to the schools’ 100% graduation and college acceptance rates, and other measures of academic success.

“The [students] have grown up with the Dove Schools culture, and in elementary and middle school they already know what the meaning of college is and the importance of college,” said Ibrahim Eskikurt, Dove’s STEM coordinator. “From ninth grade until 12th grade, students already know they have to do something — go to college and graduate — and then they will have more opportunities.”

The first Dove School was founded in 2000 in Tulsa by Oklahoma State University graduates. Since then, the network has grown from roughly 200 students to more than 4,700. 

Last year, 157 Dove seniors each had an average of four college acceptances. Nearly 88% of them were the first in their family to attend college. The average scholarships each received topped $95,000.

Maureen Brown, Dove’s chief outreach and development officer, said she doesn’t know what the district’s “secret sauce” is, but a few main factors contribute to student success. Besides STEM programming and college preparation that begins in kindergarten, Dove Schools offers , a curriculum that teaches skills like critical thinking, kindness and morality. The district also arranges home visits to keep educators and families connected.

“Every teacher and school administrator, at the beginning of the year, wants families to see that the school is there to partner with them, so they make an appointment to go visit families at their homes,” Brown said. “The home visit is not to go check on their house and see their living circumstances — it’s providing information and resources they have at school. It’s really about building a relationship, and that’s been a really, really big deal for us.”

About 80% of Dove Schools students are low-income. Because the charter is tuition-free, a lottery system decides which students are accepted if there are more applications than open spots. 

“Anybody can apply as long as they live in city limits,” Brown said. “If they want to come to Dove Schools, and if there’s a spot available for them, they come in.”

Students who enter Dove Schools as kindergartners will be immersed in STEM through computer science activities on their Chromebooks. In the higher elementary grades, they learn how to code. Middle schoolers explore hands-on STEM projects in robotics or electronics. 

If students want to continue their STEM education in high school, they can enter a pathway to learn computer science, engineering or biomedical science. These also award college credits and offer specific career-focused courses.

After school, the network offers multiple STEM-based extracurricular clubs. The five-year-old drone program is particularly popular.

It began with one small team of students building and flying drones in local and national competitions. Now, Dove Schools has about 25 drone teams from fourth to 12th grade. Each group has roughly three students.

Eskikurt said students can’t earn drone aviation licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration through the program, but that’s something administrators are working to offer in the future. The district also plans to add a high school pathway in aerospace engineering next year, as it’s one of the in Oklahoma.

While the drone club teaches students to build machines that fly the sky, another program is focused on those that operate underwater. Lanning is one of several teachers who manages the Dove Schools club, part of an international program in which students build aquatic robots that can be entered in competitions against other schools. 

“We give them the materials, they do all the work, and we just guide them along as they do the engineering design and the science concepts,” Lanning said. “They have to go through an obstacle course, a mission course and an interview stage.”

Lanning’s program for third through fifth graders used to run for just a semester, but this year she extended the afterschool club to last the entire year. Roughly five students meet for 40 minutes once a week to build their robots. She said her goal for next year is to get 10 students involved at her school. 

The favorite part of Lanning’s day, she said, is watching her elementary students discover STEM for the first time. 

“They see what they can do, because I give them an idea, and the goal is to let them take that idea in any direction they want to,” she said. “Once you give them the materials and guidelines, they take off with it and they have no limits to their imagination.”

I grew up hearing that line. However bad things were in Oklahoma — from teacher pay to life expectancy — our nation’s poorest state, Mississippi, was presumed to have it worse. It was a cruel quip, but also a comforting one. At least somebody was behind us.

In education, however, that old prayer of gratitude has become obsolete. Mississippi, for one, has posted impressive gains in student learning, especially in the early grades. Oklahoma has been moving in the opposite direction. According to I conducted of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, the Sooner State now ranks 48th in the nation when fourth and eighth grade math and reading results are combined. Among the dozen states in the region, Oklahoma ranks dead last.

That is bad news for Oklahoma, but it is also a warning to every state that assumes lasting decline can’t happen there. 

In the 1990s, Oklahoma was not a superstar, but neither was it an educational basketcase. The state generally hovered around the national average and occasionally beat the average. And for years, Oklahoma outperformed Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee on the Nation’s Report Card. What I found when examining the NAEP scores over time is not just that Oklahoma ranks near the bottom today, but that Oklahoma experienced a generational erosion of performance that unfolded over decades and accelerated after 2015. 

Oklahoma’s math scores were on the rise until around 2015, when math scores plateaued before steep declines during the COVID-19 era. Because most states’ math in the era following the passage of No Child Left Behind, Oklahoma’s score increases did not translate into rankings increases, and the state fell from 30th to 40th in the nation in math scores from 2000 to 2015. Since then, Oklahoma’s math scores have dropped sharply, with declines larger than many other states, even as the entire .

In reading, the story is simpler: Oklahoma has experienced both relative and absolute decline over the last decade. In 2024, Oklahoma posted its worst reading scores on record in both fourth grade and eighth grade. In the years since 2015, the state’s reading rank fell from 34th to 48th.Ìę

These shifts are sobering, but they are also confounding. Oklahoma has not experienced a unique economic shock or demographic shift that obviously accounts for the scale of its educational decline. Indeed, all but one major student group in Oklahoma performs poorly relative to comparable students in other states. 

White students, Hispanic students, Black students, wealthier students and poorer students all significantly underperform the national average. Only Native American students stand out positively, ranking first nationally among the 14 states with sufficient data to report scores. It is common to explain away weak test scores with demographics. But when a state’s relatively advantaged students also post dismal results compared with their peers elsewhere, demographics are probably not the main story.

The regional picture looks even worse. Oklahoma now ranks last among the 12 states in the region in combined math and reading achievement. Oklahoma’s current regional ranking is attributable not only to Oklahoma’s decline, but also to experiencing noteworthy change. Tennessee was the first state in the region to pull ahead of Oklahoma, overtaking it in 2013. Mississippi surpassed Oklahoma in 2019, followed by Louisiana, which passed Oklahoma in 2022. 

It’s a depressing state of affairs for Oklahoma, but Oklahomans are unlikely to accept this story as final. Public frustration with the state’s education system is rising, according to . The state’s schools are , and policymakers are increasingly looking to for ideas. 

The larger lesson is not just for Oklahoma. Educational decline can happen slowly, almost invisibly, until it becomes impossible to ignore. Other states should take note before they find themselves becoming someone else’s punchline.

The routine offered a helpful reminder of why she’s stayed in the field for 26 years. 

“I look at where these babies have started. Some of them might have known two or three alphabet letters,” said Jarvis, who teaches in the Chickasha district, southwest of Oklahoma City. “Now, looking at their test scores, I’m sending six to first grade on a third grade reading level.”

But when she looks at her paycheck, she doesn’t get the same satisfaction.

Her take-home pay has increased about 17% since 2018, about half the rate of inflation. Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill last month raising teacher salaries by $2,000, but when Jarvis calculated the amount after taxes, it translates into less than $6 a day.

“I definitely don’t do it for the money,” she said, “but that was an eye-opener.” 

Eight years ago, she was part of a massive, nine-day teacher walkout that saw more than 30,000 educators descend on the state capitol to demand increases in education funding. Then-Gov. Mary Fallin had already signed a $6,100 raise, but teachers wanted $10,000 and increases in the education budget. They also saw raises in and .

But since that historic “Red for Ed” movement, teachers like Jarvis say the incremental progress is barely noticeable. Starting teacher pay in the state still hovers near the bottom in the country, while neighboring states have climbed in the rankings. Some districts say they’ll have to come up with to extend the $2,000 increase to non-teaching staff, and teachers are likely to return next year asking for more.

“We have to have substantial increases annually to catch up,” said Shawn Hime, executive director of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association and a former assistant state superintendent. He applauds lawmakers for increasing teacher pay 37% since 2018, but high numbers of teachers still either leave the field or for better pay. “We’re all in the same race, and we started a lap behind.”

Districts can pay higher salaries above the state scale, but there are limits. That’s because to avoid large gaps in funding between poor and wealthier communities, the state caps how much they can raise .

“If you’re an equity warrior, in theory, this is like the perfect funding formula,” said Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a nonprofit focusing on school finance. But in a state that’s reluctant to increase taxes, she said, districts are often “forced to decide between hiring more people and giving pay raises.” 

To deliver the 2018 salary increase, the legislature overcame a 75% supermajority threshold to increase taxes. But now, in an election year, some lawmakers who voted for it are “getting hammered” by their opponents as they seek higher office, said Hime, with the school board’s association. 

One of them is Charles McCall, the former House speaker and now a Republican candidate for governor. , Chip Keating, a challenger in the June August GOP primary, accuses McCall of passing “the largest tax increase in Oklahoma history. “That’s why taxes are too high.”

The state needs a long-term plan for funding education, Hime said, but lawmakers’ hands are tied because they can’t obligate money for future years. One former legislator has been arguing that point for years. 

“We have this year-to-year budgeting and that’s got to stop,” said Mark McBride, a Republican who chaired an education appropriations committee in the House. He recalled voting against a previous $2,000 pay raise prior to the walkout because he preferred to support a substantial hike over several years. Educators, he said, “got really irritated with me.”

‘Disrespect crept in’

Pay is not the only reason teachers in Oklahoma leave the classroom. Some advocates say mandates like making struggling readers repeat third grade will force more out.

“This is going to exacerbate our teacher shortage,” said Erika Wright, a community organizer for the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice and the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition. “Who the hell wants to teach third grade now?” 

When former state Superintendent Joy Hofmeister was in office, she commissioned a of thousands of teachers who were currently certified but not teaching. While pay was a factor, nearly a quarter said their views rested on “the inability to make decisions related to instruction” and “burdensome standards and curriculum requirements.” 

Rhetoric that teachers found demeaning hasn’t helped either. Former state Superintendent Janet Barresi, Hofmeister’s predecessor, once said she wouldn’t let the “education establishment lose another generation of Oklahoma’s children.” 

She was the first to remove an educators hall of fame display from the state Department of Education building, former Superintendent Ryan Walters repeated when he took office in 2023. He sought to from educators, publicly criticised them in videos from his car and instituted a to weed out applicants from states he deemed too liberal.

“Disrespect crept in,” said Bryan Duke, dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. “Job creep,” was another factor, he said, as teaching became more complex and behavior problems escalated. “It’s like screaming into the wind. I think many teachers felt that their voices weren’t heard.”  

Lawmakers introduced this year to lower class sizes in the elementary grades, a frequent request from teachers, but it died in committee.

Some years, Jarvis, the Chickasha teacher, has had as many as 28 students in her class. This year, she had 21, but doesn’t have a classroom aide. With about eight more years until retirement, she feels more fortunate than some of her colleagues who work a second job at a nearby steakhouse because the tips are so good.

But she often puts off vacations and big-ticket purchases now that she’s paying health and car insurance for her two sons. Eight years ago, they demonstrated with her at the state capitol.Ìę

“I remember sitting them down and explaining why we were going,” she said. Her youngest made a poster with the names of his teachers. “It was very meaningful to see the kids there.”

“Blah blah blah.” That’s all I heard during story time, sitting on a colorful checkered carpet in kindergarten, feeling like a stain that didn’t belong, yet somehow stood out. English was not my first language, and mastering it took time. Years later, I became the one other students would ask, “What clicked?” or “How’d you do it?” 

The answer I always heard from upperclassmen was simple: “Just do the work.” But as a first-generation student in East Tulsa, I learned that doing the work was not enough. Balancing school, homework, extracurriculars, home responsibilities and applications all before turning 18 is tough. 

Like most of my classmates, fitting in was a priority. Many were Hispanic like me, but they often had siblings or parents who spoke English. I didn’t have that privilege. As the oldest, I became the bridge between home and my community: the translator, the example, the one who had to “walk” so my siblings could run. My mom was just as lost as I was, a non-English speaker herself, navigating a school system nothing like the one she grew up in. Nevertheless, she found a way to support me. 

She enrolled me at ReadSmart Learning, a tutoring program in Tulsa. I still remember the big cartoony bluebird at drop-off and the pins I earned for completing lessons. Slowly, my grades rose and I spoke English with more confidence. My mom noticed, rewarding me with packs of Shopkins figurines and saying, “Ya vez? No hay mal que por bien no venga mija, siguele echando ganas.” 

Every cloud has a silver lining, sweetie. Keep working hard.

Her faith in me made me believe that effort could change everything. For first-generation students like me, programs like ReadSmart aren’t extras. They’re essentials. 

Middle school brought a new challenge, an all-English environment. Although it was intimidating at first, it also brought math. Numbers became a language I could master, and that love followed me into high school. Tulsa Honor Academy’s College Readiness team was a constant presence, always helping me navigate hands-on opportunities that I wouldn’t have found on my own, including Tulsa Technology Center’s dual enrollment program. Tulsa Tech offers a two-year program that allows students to take classes and get a real view on what engineering or pre-med tracks might look like. It was here that I found that electrical engineering was the career path I wanted. 

I’ll never forget the project in which my team and I used programming sensors to detect a chocolate chip cookie. Our clay “chips” had a mind of their own and tumbled off the conveyor belt, scattering everywhere. Hours of troubleshooting, reshaping and laughing with my team taught me more about perseverance. I learned that pushing through the struggle is what makes the result feel rewarding and worth it. 

That same perseverance carried me through applying for programs and scholarships such as , and Imposter syndrome creeps in sometimes, but I always keep going. 

Perseverance has helped me become a and earned me a full ride to Washington University in St. Louis.

Now, when students come to me and ask “What clicked?” or “How’d you do it?” I don’t tell them to just do the work. I tell them to look for scholarships, apply to summer programs, build their extracurriculars, keep their grades up, and most importantly, take every opportunity in their path. I give them the guidance I had to piece together for myself, because nobody handed it to me. 

My story isn’t about being exceptional. It’s about dreaming big for your future and creating a plan. It’s about dedication to your goals and being relentless, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. It’s about the power of having someone who believes in you and is willing to walk alongside you, even if they don’t have all the answers. 

The truth is, your circumstances do not define your future. With perseverance, hard work and the courage to keep going, kids like me don’t just get by. We succeed academically. We become professionals. We go back and tell the next kid on that carpet: “You belong here, too.”

“Resting up from my vacay.”

“Netflix binge last night.”

Those were among the “lame excuses” for missing school that Oklahoma’s Union Public Schools featured during the 2024-25 school year, part of a humorous campaign intended to reduce chronic absenteeism.

Behind the comical posters, however, leaders were troubled by the data. During the 2022-23 school year, 29% of students missed at least 10% of the school year. At Union High School, the rate soared to 43%.

“I think there have been huge changes in behavior since COVID,” said Chris Payne, spokesman for the Tulsa-area district. He echoed what policy experts and school leaders nationwide have been saying since rates skyrocketed after schools fully reopened. “I think people reprioritized and decided, ‘You know, I’ve got things I need to take care of.’ ”

In addition to the attendance campaign, staff met with parents and visited students’ homes to find out why they were missing school. But starting in 2027, Oklahoma schools will no longer be judged on whether those chronic absenteeism rates go up or down. The legislature voted last year to remove the indicator from the state’s education accountability system as a factor that contributes to a school’s overall grade and can determine whether a school is labeled in need of improvement. 

Among , teachers and administrators, there’s a sense of relief.

“I’m not sure that it’s fair to evaluate schools based on something that we cannot control,” said Mike Simpson, superintendent of the Guthrie Public Schools, north of Oklahoma City. Originally in favor of making chronic absenteeism a factor in schools’ A-F grades, he no longer thinks it’s a good way to assess schools.

Oklahoma’s most , for 2024-25, gives the state a D for the percentage of students with good attendance. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 19% is far from the worst in the nation, but it’s still 5 percentage points above the state’s pre-pandemic level of 14%. Data from shows the rate stands at about 21%. 

“It’s not just an Oklahoma thing,” Simpson said. “I’ve got colleagues and friends all over the country, and they’re fighting some of the same challenges.”

Oklahoma isn’t the first state to remove chronic absenteeism from its accountability system. Arkansas took it out in 2024 as part of . Illinois officials have recommended replacing chronic absenteeism with , and now reports broader attendance data rather than just chronic absenteeism.

‘States already had the data’

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires state accountability systems, and the report cards available to the public include indicators of academic performance, graduation rates, progress in learning English and an additional measure of student success. For that last metric, 38 states chose chronic absenteeism.

The U.S. Department of Education confirmed that it’s currently considering the state’s request to replace chronic absenteeism with a new measure, but so far, state officials haven’t said what that’s going to be. The challenge will be landing on a K-12 data point that is comparable across Oklahoma’s more than 500 districts, said Paige Kowalski, executive vice president for the Data Quality Campaign. The nonprofit has published reviews of state report cards since 2016.

Chronic absenteeism “was an inexpensive indicator to implement because states already had the data,” she said. Adopting a new measure, she said, could require districts to pay for changes to their student information systems and spend time training staff to collect and input the data. In addition, she said, it takes two years to ensure data is reliable enough to use in decisions about school ratings.

But the connections between chronic absenteeism and student achievement are backed by years of research. , for example, showed that a 1% increase in attendance was linked to a 1.5% jump in third graders passing the state reading test. showed that students who were chronically absent in middle school had lower math scores and were less likely to graduate on time than those who didn’t miss as much school. 

Kowalski said there’s plenty schools can do to improve attendance. Reducing bullying, increasing teacher retention and challenges, she said, can address some of the reasons students miss school.

Transportation surfaced as a barrier when the Union district surveyed parents, teachers and students on the issue. But teachers were far less likely than parents to say that reliable transportation would improve attendance — 25% compared to 47%. There were also stark differences between parents and students. Twenty-three percent of students said mental health reasons kept them home, while 12% of parents said that was a common explanation. 

Tulsa makes progress

Some communities in Oklahoma have adopted a tough posture toward parents whose children are frequently absent. Erik Johnson, a Republican district attorney in the southeastern part of the state, has prosecuted and jailed parents to force compliance with the law. 

Prior to the pandemic, Guthrie allowing police to fine parents for their kids’ truancy, but Simpson, the superintendent, said those measures didn’t “move the needle.”

In Tulsa, the state’s largest district, Board Member Stacey Woolley said she’s glad chronic absenteeism is no longer part of the grading formula because the indicator lowered schools’ scores. 

“At the same time, we have to continue to make it a priority,” she said. When leaders examine student data, they find that students who struggle are chronically absent, regardless of their socioeconomic status. 

The district’s work shows that reductions are possible. The rate has declined over the past two years from 44% to 37%, and have seen drops of at least 10% compared to last school year. 

Such efforts won’t go completely unrewarded. Under the to the Education Department, schools that lower chronic absenteeism could still score “bonus points” toward their grade but the indicator won’t be used in determining which schools are identified as needing improvement. 

By the end of the Union district’s campaign, chronic absenteeism had dropped by about 1.4%, well below the goal of 7%. Still, Payne said, the progress equated to 200 fewer chronically absent students. 

Leaders also realized something else: Students in the district’s career-tech programs, like aerospace and construction, had lower absenteeism rates than those in the general student population. Now, in response to local workforce shortages, the district has launched a healthcare career pathway as well. 

“I had students that didn’t really have a direction,” said Jason McMullen, who teaches aviation courses at the district’s Innovation Lab. “Then they see a helicopter land and that lightbulb goes off.”

On a recent Wednesday morning, some students at the lab learned how to secure safety wire to the nuts and bolts that hold planes together, while others patched holes in sheetrock. 

The change to the state’s accountability system, “doesn’t mean we’re going to quit working on it,” said Payne, the district’s spokesman. “The reality remains that if students are not present, they’re not going to perform and have success in school and life.”

What can the state do? One step might be to continue expanding its charter school sector, especially the brick-and-mortar schools serving predominantly Black and Hispanic students.

Oklahoma’s declining NAEP scores represent a sample of students across both traditional and charter schools, but Oklahoma has been fortunate to have a relatively successful charter sector. For example, using data through 2019, a Harvard found that Oklahoma had the sixth-highest-performing charter sector in the country.

A from the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board allows for a deeper, more up-to-date analysis. The biggest takeaways focus on size, performance and cost.

Both brick-and-mortar and virtual charters have grown in Oklahoma, collectively increasing from about 51,000 students in the 2022-23 school year to 55,000 last year. In the 2024-25 school year, 35,831 students attended a virtual charter and 19,190 were enrolled in brick-and-mortar charter schools. All told, charters serve about 8% of all public school students in the state.

A of student performance found 31 of 49 brick-and-mortar charter schools outperformed their neighboring traditional schools last year. For example, students at Stanley Hupfield Academy and John W. Rex Charter Elementary School outperformed the Oklahoma City average by 21 and 20 percentage points, respectively. The Dove and Santa Fe charter networks each had several standout schools, including Dove Science Academy, where students outscored nearby traditional schools by 34 points and which we named a Bright Spot for its third grade reading proficiency.ÌęThe largest outperformance was notched by a standalone charter called Deborah Brown elementary school in Tulsa, where students scored 59 points higher than peers in the neighboring district.Ìę

As for virtual charters, the analysis found that only one — the Oklahoma Connection Academy High School — outperformed the statewide average, while 15 did not.

Note: Brick-and-mortar charter schools are compared to the traditional public schools in their physical districts. Virtual charters are compared to all traditional schools in the state.

A new from Adam Tyner at the University of Oklahoma made similar comparisons for high schools. At that level, students attending brick-and-mortar charters had slightly lower ACT scores than peers attending traditional public schools, but they had higher graduation rates — especially the low-income students. Meanwhile, the virtual charters had significantly worse outcomes. 

Notably, Oklahoma’s charters are getting these results with significantly less money. According to the state charter board, traditional public schools received $10,643 per student in state and local funding last year, compared with $9,684 for brick-and-mortar charters. This disparity of almost $1,000 per student has widened over time and is largely due to the fact that charters do not have the same access to money for facilities and do not receive the same share of local revenues that traditional district schools do.

Closing this funding disparity would likely boost outcomes for charter students even further.

While it is impossible to know for sure whether Oklahoma’s charter schools are getting their results by cherry-picking the best students, or even whether the rise of charters may have contributed to stagnation on the part of traditional public schools, suggests that’s not the case. If anything, traditional schools tend to get higher scores when they face increased competition in the form of charter schools.

For instance, Tulane University researchers Feng Chen and Doug Harris found that the effects from this type of competition tend to materialize when charter schools a 10% market share in a given district. The new charter found that Oklahoma now has six communities where charters have surpassed this threshold, led by Oklahoma City at 23%.

When I spoke with Rebecca Wilkinson and Shelly Hickman from the Oklahoma Charter Schools Board, they said they wanted to create an annual report that was comparative and meaningful, and to dispel myths about what charters are and are not. They are optimistic about increasing market share in more communities, and they hope that success can generate even more momentum across the state. 

But by the time the class leaves the following spring, the majority are ready for fourth-grade reading. It’s a transformation made possible by Frederick Elementary’s third-grade teaching team, whose strategies include daily interventions that break down literacy into 15 distinct skills.Ìę

Frederick Elementary has roughly 360 students in a district of 737, located about 45 miles from Lawton, the nearest mid-sized city. About 87% of elementary students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch during the 2023-24 school year, which would predict a third-grade reading proficiency rate of only 40%, according to federal data that are the basis of Âé¶čŸ«Æ·â€™s Bright Spots literacy project. Instead, 71% of the school’s third graders were proficient in reading.

The academic scores of all schools in Oklahoma rose that year, after the education department, led by then-State Superintendent Ryan Walters, lowered testing standards. After the state last year, Frederick’s proficiency rate came in at 66%. 

Oklahoma requires students in early grades to receive reading intervention if they score below the 40th percentile on a screening test that’s given multiple times a year. Depending on a student’s level, state statute mandates specialized instruction in small groups at least twice a week.

At Frederick Elementary, reading intervention occurs daily.

The school’s program, called , can be difficult to implement, said reading specialist Danna Akin. 

“There’s been other schools that have wanted to get started in it, and they bought into the program, but it’s hard to get started,” she said. “The scheduling gets pretty complicated.”

Students who score below the 40th percentile then take an exam with 95 Percent and are grouped together by the specific reading skills they are missing, such as understanding silent “e.” A teacher — sometimes the librarian or special education instructor — works on a particular skill during a period called flex time, a 45-minute block that occurs each morning.

“The students above the 40th percentile obviously don’t need 95 Percent, so we put them in larger reading comprehension groups,” Akin said. “But for the 95 groups, we try to keep it to seven or less [students] so they can get that one-on-one intervention time.”

The instruction starts with plastic envelopes, each containing lessons and activities that teach a specific phonics skill. Students will move small chips over a board that has letter sounds and review them with their teacher. They’ll practice vocabulary, spelling and reading short passages that include words they’re struggling with. 

Each of the 15 skills in the 95 Percent program takes students roughly a week to 10 days to go through. After students graduate from a skill, they are tested again to see if they can advance to the next envelope taught by another teacher during flex time.

“If you’re only doing [reading intervention] twice a week, they’re not going to get the reinforcement that they need. But if you’re doing it five times a week and for 45 minutes, they’ll get what they need,” Akin said. “By the time you’ve done that much reinforcement with them and you’ve spent that much time on a skill, they’ve got it.”

Akin and Frederick’s three third-grade teachers review student progress at least once a week to see what each child still needs to become more proficient. A data wall in Principal Laura Yeager’s office tracks where each student in the intervention program is at.

“Sometimes it takes a little while, but eventually they all get out of the 95 Percent program, and then they’re working on those grade-level skills,” Yeager said. “This year, we’ve been really fortunate. We’ve been very, very successful getting kids out of it.”

Frederick Elementary has only third, fourth and fifth grades. Younger students attend the Prather Brown Center from pre-K through second grade.

“It’s really challenging, because when the second graders come to us, we usually have a large amount that fall under that 40th percentile,” Akin said. 

That’s a trend seen nationwide: A found that by the middle of the 2024-25 school year, only 58% of second graders were on track for core reading instruction and were likely to meet grade-level standards by spring.

Frederick’s third grade teaching team starts each school year with the mindset that they can’t begin with third grade standards, because they have to review second grade skills first. 

“We’re having to fill these phonics holes, which I think is happening probably everywhere — I don’t feel like that’s just a Frederick Elementary thing,” said Halle Pineda, one of the third grade teachers. “But I don’t feel like we really get their best third-grade self until about January. And by then, we only have four months until it’s time to start wrapping up. It’s a game of catch-up.”

Last fall, Frederick Elementary received $10,000 from the state to bolster the 95 Percent program. Yeager said the money was part of Oklahoma’s new , which has an initiative solely for rural schools. Frederick Elementary used the money for high-dosage tutoring in reading. Early data showed some students jumped from the 30th to the 60th percentile in literacy. Others, on average, improved 12 percentage points in their performance.

Oklahoma has been trying to improve its reading proficiency scores for . Legislation implemented in 2013 required third graders to be held back a grade if they scored poorly on the state’s reading test. After years of back and forth and added exemptions to the retention law, it was .Ìę

Now, literacy is back on the table, and it’s center stage. Lawmakers want to reverse Oklahoma’s , which show that 27% of students scored at or above grade level in English language arts and 36% scored below basic during the 2024-25 school year. 

A law has a robust set of guidelines for struggling readers and reinstates third-grade retention. It’s part of a by the state’s chamber of commerce to boost local economies and make Oklahoma more competitive against other states for employees and business.

Beginning next school year, the mandates that first and second graders who don’t read at grade level at the end of the year either be held back or receive reading interventions when they return to school. 

Parents will be notified of their child’s reading deficiency within 30 days of its discovery. Third graders not at grade level by the end of the school year will be retained unless they qualify for an exemption. Some exemptions are geared toward English learners, students with disabilities or children who were already held back in earlier grades.

Chad Warmington, CEO of the , said there have been “lessons learned” from the 2013 legislation that required third grade retention. This year’s law uses the practice as a last resort, he said. 

“You can’t put in place a retention policy at the expense of all the other things that are going to improve outcomes — that’s just not how it works,” he said. “Last time, there was far more emphasis placed on the retention part, and not enough on what we are going to do to make sure teachers coming out of teaching schools are trained on the science of reading. Or that the teachers in the classroom are retrained and given opportunities to improve their skills in the science of reading.”

Some educators want legislators to focus on other challenges in the classroom than reading proficiency, said Erika Wright, founder and former leader of the .

“Our teachers have been screaming about class sizes and behavior, and pay is always on the burner. When this whole literacy [initiative] came out, we pulled together a group with the State Chamber to sit in a room so that they could listen,” she said. “I sat in that room for four hours listening to the teachers saying, ‘This is awesome, but you’re not listening to us. This will not work because I have 29 kids in the kindergarten class and 14 of them have Individualized Education Programs and eight of them don’t speak English. I don’t have an assistant. I am spending all of my day managing behavior.’ ”

Warmington said he’s heard from teachers who are dealing with similar issues, but a “vast majority were absolutely for this deal.”

Yeager said very few Frederick Elementary third graders were held back when a retention law was in place a few years ago, so the new legislation won’t have much of an impact in that area. But that Oklahoma held back more students than all other states, except Mississippi, when the old retention law was still active.

A small number of third graders will go through the 95 Percent program again once they enter fourth grade to build back skills they lost over the summer, Yeager said.

“We have a unique culture and a great team that works together with these 95 Percent groups. We also do these groups in fourth grade to make sure we’re not missing skills,” she said. “It doesn’t just stop with third grade, but it gives you that idea that, ‘This is just not my class, and I’m responsible for my class’ scores.’ They’re all our kids, and that’s something my teachers say that makes the difference.”

The $37 million effort is the brainchild of Chris Brewster, founder of the popular Santa Fe South Schools, a charter school network that has already opened classrooms in former big box retail stores that anchor the mall. 

Âé¶čŸ«Æ·â€™s James Fields visited Crossroads this spring to see the work firsthand and to film the progress being made towards raising funds to scale available seats for families across the city. 

Last year, WalletHub, , ranked the state 50th — just above New Mexico — on a mix of criteria including test scores, graduation and teacher certification rates. More recently, a University of Oklahoma researcher zoomed in on the , where the state places 48th overall in math and reading.

The unwelcome attention typically prompts a wave of finger-pointing from politicians and . 

Sometimes, teachers like Sarah Clifford.

A single mom of two who relocated from New York, she’s among the thousands in the state who entered the classroom without completing a teacher training program. In 2023, as a new teacher in the Edmond Public Schools outside Oklahoma City, she struggled to write lesson plans and hated teaching math, a subject she disliked as a child. Districts statewide have increasingly depended on emergency certified educators like her to fill vacancies. In 2023-24, the number topped 5,000, state data shows. Since 2022, the state has also allowed schools to hire , who may have no more than a high school diploma.

“We don’t want to demonize any person who is stepping up to be a teacher, regardless of the pathway,” said Bryan Duke, dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. “But the difference in preparation launches people successfully or unsuccessfully into careers.”

Duke’s program has been part of the solution. In 2024, the university received nearly $2.5 million in from the state for scholarships to help teachers like Clifford complete their certification programs and earn a master’s degree. She graduated with last December after spending nine months instruction so she could “help students feel confident and start to love something that’s hard.” Most of her third graders students who were “on watch” in math ended up on grade level by the end of the year.

“Our state doesn’t look like we’re doing well,” she said. “But if you go inside a classroom with people who have the passion and want to be there, those kids are thriving.”

The data on the state’s decline is undeniable. In the mid-’90s, the state ranked 17th in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. With the 2024 scores, the state had fallen to 48th.

In a , University of Oklahoma researcher Adam Tyner described how Oklahoma missed the “southern surge” that brought academic turnarounds to states like Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Those states saw improvement after pouring millions of dollars into teacher training, strong curriculum and coaching.

Oklahoma’s results have also affected public opinion. Less than a third of Oklahomans graded their local schools an A or B in from the university’s Oklahoma Center for Education Policy. Two years ago, 41% gave their schools high marks.

At about $12,500, the state’s per-pupil spending is . One reason is because it takes a in the legislature to approve a tax increase. District budgets could take another hit if voters this fall approve on property taxes. 

“If it’s really hard to increase revenues, you have to take away things from other areas,” said Deven Carlson, a public policy researcher at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s going to be hard to improve outcomes, if you think that money matters.”

One possible off-ramp for parents is school choice. Many charter schools their local district schools, data shows, leading to push for expanding the charter sector.

This year, lawmakers took a dual approach to tackling the state’s education challenges. They gave teachers a $2,000 raise — but the is still well below neighboring Texas and Arkansas. Gov. Kevin Stitt also signed a increasing the minimum number of days in the school calendar from 166 to 173. That will make it harder for some districts with four-day weeks to maintain that schedule.

“We’ve lost a lot of instructional days,” said Education Secretary Dan Hamlin. “It’s not the only thing that matters; you need other things, too. But it is a component that’s meaningful.”

‘Art of teaching’

State data shows that 184 districts are in session for 166 days or less, which they can achieve through four-day weeks with longer days. 

shows four-day weeks don’t necessarily improve retention, but districts that don’t adopt them can to nearby ones that do. The model is generally popular with teachers, who trade off longer hours for three-day weekends.

Superintendent Rick Cobb’s experience in the Mid-Del School District, outside Oklahoma City, illustrates the problem. When he became superintendent in 2015, he was “alarmed” that the district had 20 emergency certified teachers, he said. Now 114 either have emergency certifications or are adjunct teachers, according to .

His district, which serves a blue collar community near an Air Force base, never shifted to a four-day week. But others around Mid-Del did, luring away his teachers.

Knowledge of the subject matter generally isn’t a weak spot for emergency certified teachers, he said. But they often lack the skills to manage classrooms and modify lessons for students working at higher and lower levels.

“That’s the art of teaching,” he said.

Mike Simpson, superintendent of the Guthrie Public Schools, north of Oklahoma City, has faced the same challenge. His district, where nearly 60% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, has lost teachers to districts with four-day weeks. But he never went that route because parents in his district depend on schools not just for education, but also for school meals. 

“If the parents go to work, who’s taking care of those kids? Who’s feeding them?” he asked. “I take that very seriously.”

The small, rural Jennings Public Schools, west of Tulsa, is among those that run four days. It received a waiver from the state to operate a 156-day calendar.

Superintendent Derrick Meador doesn’t struggle to find certified teachers. He had three job openings recently and about 10 applicants for each one. It was the first time in three years he’s had to hire a teacher. Families, he said, support the four-day week and don’t want to lose it. Fewer than 2% of students are chronically absent, and the district performs well academically.

“If we weren’t getting the results that we were, I would have ended it a long time ago,” Meador said. He doesn’t appreciate districts with four-day weeks getting for dragging the state down. “I don’t like being lumped in with other districts. We stand alone on our merits and should be judged accordingly.” 

He hopes the state will continue to allow waivers from the new 173-day requirement, but without it, Jennings will likely have to give up its four-day week.

‘Life experience’

It’s difficult to tie student outcomes to any one education policy, whether that’s the academic calendar or teacher certification. But Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, said if performance is falling, teacher quality “is one of the very first things that I would look toward.”

Oklahoma is certainly not alone in lowering the bar to teach, especially since the pandemic. Goldhaber examined post-COVID outcomes for students in Massachusetts and found that those whose teachers had emergency licenses in math and science than their peers. 

In Texas, a third of teachers were unlicensed in 2023-24. aims to reverse that trend by gradually reducing the share of unlicensed teachers that districts can hire to 5% by 2029.

Oklahoma took a small step in that direction this year when it tightened restrictions on adjunct teachers, who are only required to have “distinguished qualifications in their field,” but not a college degree. Stitt signed that stops schools from hiring adjuncts to teach core content areas in K-5.

that educators with temporary or emergency certifications are more likely than those who are fully certified to leave the profession. But they often take positions that would otherwise be nearly impossible to fill. 

In the Union Public Schools, which serves southeast Tulsa and part of Broken Arrow, several teach at the district’s Innovation Lab, a hub for career and technical education courses. They include Jeremy Weber, a who teaches students the basics of aircraft maintenance. On a recent morning, he showed students how to use safety wire to secure nuts and bolts to parts of a plane.

“That life experience is pretty valuable,” said Kenneth Moore, the district’s executive director of secondary education.

Earlier this month, newly certified teachers with years of life and career experience gathered at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond to celebrate their graduation from the two-year alternative certification program. 

Grabbing refreshments at a pre-graduation reception and posing for pictures with their families and fellow graduates, they talked about wanting to reverse the stigma attached to teachers who take a nontraditional route to the classroom.

They included Cherice McDonald, a teacher in Oklahoma City schools who previously worked in the oil and gas industry, and is now being recruited to work as an assistant principal. 

Melanie Whitekiller Lawrence, a member of the Cherokee Nation, stayed home to raise her four kids before taking a job as a long-term substitute. When she took charge of a fourth grade class in Edmond, she said she “had no idea” there were academic standards in math and reading she was required to teach under state law. She’s come a long way since the days when a colleague in the classroom next door would supply her with ready-made lessons for the week.

Last fall, her colleagues at Chisholm Elementary chose her to represent their school as . 

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m more knowledgeable about current and best practices than my colleagues who have been teaching for a very long time,” she said at the reception. “We’re not just warm bodies.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — After hours of witness testimony and pages of evidence, a struggling Oklahoma City charter school still has not convinced a state board that it should be allowed to stay open for another year.

The Statewide Charter School Board on Monday made the rare vote to terminate the founding charter contract for Proud To Partner Leadership Academy. The board first voted 9-1 to declare there is “clear and convincing evidence” the school violated that contract before agreeing unanimously to proceed toward canceling it.

Board members made their decision after a lengthy and uncommon termination hearing that began April 29 and continued on Monday. A few more procedural steps remain before the school’s charter contract could be canceled officially, after which point its state funding would be cut off.

If the southwest Oklahoma City high school closes, its 100 students will have to return to their home districts or find another educational option for the next academic year.

The only way to avoid a shutdown is if the school makes “significant changes structurally” in the coming days, said Brian Shellem, who leads the statewide board. He said the board would “extend a hand” to the school and its attorneys to explore options.

Proud To Partner’s superintendent, Dawn Bowles, said the school’s leaders will wait to hear from the state board about what alternatives are available. In the meantime, students are “in limbo of knowing where they will actually be next year,” she said.

“We are still devoted and committed to doing what’s best on behalf of the families that we serve,” Bowles said after the vote.

Throughout the termination hearing, state officials described Proud to Partner, known as PTPLA, as a school in financial and operational disarray since it opened in July 2024.

Attorneys representing PTPLA said the school was unfairly targeted in a “rush to judgment” and wasn’t given proper due process to address concerns.

“The evidence here will show there’s been a sort of fearmongering, a sort of hysteria, a flame of emotions that were overblown and overindulged,” the school’s attorney, Kwame Mumina, said during the first day of the hearing.

Members of the statewide board’s staff testified that they came away with grave concerns about the school’s academic quality after visiting it.

Statewide Charter School Board executive director Rebecca Wilkinson, who visited PTPLA at least 15 times, said she saw signs of poor engagement of students. She reported seeing students sleeping or sitting in front of computers while not logged into classwork.

“I was concerned that too often students were not able to even tell me the course that they were working in, much less what they were doing,” she said.

Wilkinson said she had further concerns over whether the school’s special education and child nutrition services complied with law and the charter contract.

PTPLA finances also raised red flags when the school finished its first year with a $250,000 deficit. This school year, three teachers were laid off from the small teaching staff because of a lack of funds.

“This school is spending money it doesn’t have, and that is an issue,” said Thomas Schneider, the board’s attorney and deputy general counsel at the Attorney General’s Office.

Wilkinson initially reported seeing only during a site visit this fall. PTPLA leaders said the report was false and the three laid-off teachers continued working as volunteers. Those teachers have since been rehired on part-time pay.

Multiple members of the board’s staff and Oklahoma State Department of Education officials testified to having difficulty getting PTPLA administrators to respond to issues and to file financial reports on time.

School officials acknowledged they struggled with financial and operational difficulties, but they said it never compromised student learning. They said they were caught off-guard when the statewide board placed PTPLA on a November meeting agenda to discuss deficiencies at the school.

The statewide board in that November meeting ultimately .

Sharri Coleman, PTPLA’s school board president, said the state was too quick to punish rather than offer support.

“If we’re all for students, then you as a board, as my authorizer, would help my board to make sure that we are getting the supports that we need so that we can help those students,” Coleman said on the witness stand.

After being placed on probation, PTPLA’s board from the state and contended there was “nothing to fix.”

Statewide board members over the following months, contending school leaders refused to cooperate fully with state oversight. They finally ran out of patience in January, when they .

Bowles, PTPLA’s superintendent, warned that closing the school would harm the underprivileged students it was designed to serve.

“Most importantly, it will take away an opportunity to provide an education that is aligned to the needs of our Black and brown families in Oklahoma City,” she said during the hearing.

For the charter contract to be canceled, the statewide board must vote again to approve findings of fact from the termination hearing. That vote could take place as soon as next week, Shellem said.

PTPLA then would have 10 days to file an appeal with the board and, if rejected, to take the matter to district court.

Bowles didn’t confirm or reject the idea of challenging the state board in court.

“Right now, we’ll wait to hear from them as to what those next steps are,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A $2,000 teacher salary increase advancing through the Legislature has raised concerns among school district leaders of whether state funding will support its total cost.

The Oklahoma House approved the teacher pay raise, outlined in , by a vote of 92-1 on Tuesday, more than a month after . The legislation, which returns to the Senate for final review, would add $2,000 to the state-mandated minimum salaries for Oklahoma teachers and certified school employees.

Although lawmakers budgeted $100 million for the pay raise, some district leaders said their schools likely will have to pay out of pocket to cover the full expense, especially if they already pay above the minimum salary schedule for teachers.

The $100 million allocation is part of a budgeted for public education.

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said the extra money should be sufficient for districts to raise their teachers’ salaries, regardless of whether they pay at or above state minimums.

“If districts are on the formula and pay above the minimum now with existing funding, they can pay them $2,000 more with nearly a quarter billion in new public education funding, $100 million of which is specifically dedicated for teacher pay,” Hilbert said in a statement.

Districts already paying above the state minimum wouldn’t be legally obligated to provide a full $2,000 increase. But, teachers in those districts still should push for a $2,000 raise, Hilbert and other legislative leaders have said.

The extra state funding coming to Midwest City-Del City Public Schools would cover just under 80%, or $232,000 short, of the cost to increase the district’s teacher salaries by $2,000, Superintendent Rick Cobb said.

Raising a teacher’s salary by $2,000 comes at a true cost of $2,500 when factoring in added teacher retirement expenses and higher payroll taxes, he said.

Although the district already pays well above the state minimum, Cobb said “I don’t think our teachers are going to accept us not giving them a $2,000 raise when we go into negotiations.”

“I know one of your questions is going to be about whether (lawmakers are) fully funding the raise, and in our case, they’re not,” he said. “So, I think that needs to be part of the conversation, too, is that our teachers are going to expect a $2,000 raise. Our teachers are making less than the cost of living increase that inflation is bringing into their lives. So, without an infusion into the salary schedule, their buying power is less and less every year.”

As district leaders put together a budget for the next fiscal year, Cobb said Mid-Del schools still are going to try to make a $2,000 raise work.

“I’m not sure exactly how right now, but we’re going to try,” he said.

The small northeastern Oklahoma district of Peggs pays at the state minimum but completely covers teachers’ retirement contributions, saving each educator $3,000 to $4,000, Superintendent John Cox said. Teachers in the rural district also “wear many hats” and are compensated for fulfilling multiple roles.

Cox, also a Republican candidate running for state superintendent, said he expects Peggs would have to pay a small amount out of pocket to cover the total cost of the $2,000 raise when considering retirement and fringe benefits.

The bigger challenge, he said, is affording the rising payroll while operational expenses, like bus diesel and maintenance, also increase year over year.

The state budget doesn’t raise funding for schools’ operational costs, even though lawmakers are in 2027-28.

“There’s a definite balancing act,” Cox said. “We’re required to pay the teacher pay raise. Then what do you do with operational costs and what do you forgo to be able to pay those teacher pay raises? What in the maintenance area and in the operational costs do you cut to be able to make those pay raises?”

State lawmakers touted the pay increase as the latest of multiple steps in improving Oklahoma teacher salary levels. The Legislature last approved teacher raises in 2018, 2019 and 2023.

Oklahoma’s current average teacher salary is fourth among all bordering states and second in the region when factoring in cost of living, . The average starting salary for teachers in the state is still ranked toward the bottom of the region, even when considering cost of living, the agency reported.

The state’s largest teacher union, the Oklahoma Education Association, said it is “grateful to lawmakers for making another investment into competitive teacher pay.”

“Even if districts already pay above the minimum, we hope that they will use the funding that will be provided by the state to give all teachers the full $2,000 raise,” the organization said in a statement Wednesday. “They deserve it.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Major changes to early childhood reading policies, including a return to strict third-grade retention, are now law in Oklahoma after .

Gov. Kevin Stitt signed while surrounded by state leaders and students at John W. Rex Charter Elementary on Tuesday morning. Multiple children at the downtown Oklahoma City school asked for the governor’s pens as a souvenir.

The legislation implements stricter requirements, starting in the 2026-27 academic year, for public schools to intervene when students fall behind grade-level expectations in reading. Third graders who score below a basic level on state reading tests and fail a second state-approved literacy assessment would be held back from advancing to fourth grade, unless they meet limited criteria for an exemption.

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“This is about early support, strong instruction and giving parents the information that they need to stay involved in their child’s progress,” Stitt said. “And it ensures that when a student is struggling, we act quickly before that gap becomes a lifelong challenge.”

About 27% of Oklahoma students scored at or above their grade level in English language arts last school year while 36% scored below basic, . Below basic is the lowest category and indicates a student is not on track to be college or career ready by the end of high school.

Legislative leaders said they hope to , a former bottom-dweller in education rankings before it dramatically raised student reading scores after years of investment and stricter policies. Mississippi similarly requires low-scoring students to repeat third grade, has an expanded network of reading coaches and specialists, and spends $15 million a year on literacy initiatives.

“We can do better because Mississippi has done it, which shows that other states can as well,” House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said during the ceremony while accompanied by two of his young daughters.

It could take five years for Oklahoma to rise in national rankings, Hilbert said, though he suggested the state could see “improvement pretty quickly.”

SB 1778 passed with .

It establishes three tiers of reading instruction and support starting in kindergarten.

Tier 1 represents the core reading lessons all students receive. Children who score below their grade level qualify for Tier 2 and 3 interventions, such as small-group lessons, extra tutoring, summer programs and transitional classrooms, which would involve separate reading classes for students who have fallen behind.

Families also could choose to have their children repeat first or second grade.

Schools will be required to notify parents or guardians within 30 days of a student showing a reading deficiency and must give monthly updates on the child’s progress through an improvement plan.

“The idea here is that third-grade retention is not the actual tool for learning,” Stitt’s education secretary, Dan Hamlin, said. “It’s a last resort after many other efforts have unfolded.”

The state, for the first time, will administer the annual third-grade reading exam to second graders to give students an early opportunity to pass and avoid retention the following year.

The new law lays out good-cause exemptions for students to continue to fourth grade despite poor reading results.

Students whose individualized education plan “indicates that participation in the statewide student assessment system is not appropriate” would qualify. Exemptions also would apply to children who have spent fewer than two years learning English as their non-native language.

Children who have been retained twice between kindergarten and third grade would be eligible for a good-cause exemption, as would students with disabilities who have repeated a grade once.

The state budget, , adds more than $26 million to a fund that supports literacy instruction in public schools. The total $43.75 million Strong Readers Act Fund will dedicate 40% of its money to Tier 1 instruction across the state, 30% for students needing Tier 2 and 3 support, and 30% to reward districts that improve their reading scores.

The budget also adds $100 million to raise all teachers’ minimum salaries by $2,000.

Lawmakers dedicated $5 million to expand a team of literacy coaches at the Oklahoma State Department of Education. The team will grow from five to 20 literacy coaches, who assist educators in improving reading instruction and will prioritize low-performing schools.

State Superintendent Lindel Fields, who leads the Education Department, said the agency will begin hiring for the team immediately. His administration also will start preparing a new early literacy micro-credential program, called “teacher academies,” with Oklahoma colleges and universities.

SB 1778 requires all districts to employ a reading specialist, reading interventionist or staff member who has completed the micro-credential program, which will focus on the science of reading and best instructional practices. Any certified school employee who completes the micro-credential would receive a $3,000 stipend from the Education Department.

“The bill gets signed today, but the real work starts tomorrow morning,” Fields said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Legal efforts to found the nation’s first religious charter school in Oklahoma have reignited, with a and a former U.S. congressman filing a lawsuit against the state Tuesday.

The founding group of Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School and former Florida U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch, who applied to open the school, sued the state’s attorney general and the Statewide Charter School Board in Oklahoma City federal court.

The statewide board, which governs charter schools, voted earlier this month to deny the school’s application to open. The Oklahoma Supreme Court forbade the board from permitting state-funded religious schools in .

Deutsch and Ben Gamla’s founders allege religious groups are wrongfully excluded from opening charter schools with faith-based instruction — a similar argument Oklahoma Catholic leaders made when trying to establish St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. 

They contend the Jewish school’s rejection amounts to religious discrimination, violating the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They asked a federal judge to block the state from enforcing Oklahoma laws that require charter schools to be non-sectarian.

“We’re asking the court to end that blatant religious targeting and allow families to choose schools that are best for them,” Deutsch said in a statement Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, Shauna Peters, said it is reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in due time.

A law firm representing the Statewide Charter School Board didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Attorney General Genter Drummond led the legal fight against the Catholic school, contending the concept of a publicly funded religious school would violate church-state separation enshrined in both the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions. The state Supreme Court sided with him.

Members of the Statewide Charter School Board said they rejected Ben Gamla’s application solely to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and . They hired a conservative Christian legal group, the First Liberty Institute, to represent them.

After the Catholic school was rejected at the state level, the in April of last year. The nation’s highest Court , with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused. That allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling to stand.

One of the Catholic school’s founding board members, Brett Farley, now holds a similar board position with the Jewish school as a representative of prospective parents.

All charter school boards in the state must have a parent member. Drummond called into question whether Farley, who is Catholic, would genuinely enroll a child in the school. Farley told Oklahoma Voice he “would definitely” consider the school for his daughter, if it opens.

For this reason and others, Drummond contended Ben Gamla’s board and application had multiple deficiencies beyond the religious component that should have contributed to its rejection. He against the statewide board, alleging it deliberately weakened its own legal position to benefit the school’s federal case.

Drummond asked that an Oklahoma County district judge order the board to issue a new and complete rejection letter to the school.

Meanwhile, multiple Oklahoma synagogues and Jewish organizations . In a January joint statement, they said Ben Gamla’s founding group failed to meaningfully consult the local Jewish community.

Deutsch told the statewide board he spoke with about 10 Jewish parents and 20 people total in Oklahoma before applying to open Ben Gamla. He founded six secular charter schools in Florida that have a similar name.

The Oklahoma school would offer an online-based education to students K-12 that is “intellectually rigorous and deeply rooted in Jewish knowledge, values and lived tradition,” according to its application.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Pensions are sort of like New Year’s resolutions. Policymakers always promise, to themselves and to their constituents, that this will be the year they’ll finally get their financial house in order and bolster their pensions. But inevitably, something shiny comes along and distracts them.  

Oklahoma is grappling with this dilemma right now. After years of dutifully funneling millions of extra dollars into its beleaguered teacher pension plan, state policymakers are now considering scaling back. Instead, they would like to use that money to fund : pay raises for active teachers, more money for its school choice tax credit program, plus new investments in reading and math.

It’s likely to be a popular list. But it threatens to derail the state’s progress on pension funding. 

Oklahoma has actually done better on the pension front than most other states. Thanks to a combination of benefit cuts, plus a surge of new contributions, it has dramatically improved the health of its teacher pension plan. 

For example, the system’s unfunded liability, essentially the difference between how much it had promised and how much it had saved toward those promises, from $10.4 billion in 2010 down to $6.1 billion last year. Its funded ratio — a comparison between its assets and its liabilities — has improved from in 2010 all the way 80% as of last June. 

Oklahoma’s teacher plan is still not quite as well-funded as the median state and local plan — which was funded last year — but the state’s policymakers deserve kudos for making progress. Current and retired Oklahoma teachers should be thankful that their retirement plan is in much better shape than it was 16 years ago.

So how did they do it? First, legislators raised the retirement age from 62 to 65 and extended the amount of time that a teacher would need to work to qualify for a benefit from five to seven years. (This is called the vesting period, and these tend to be longer for teachers than for workers in the private sector. For example, according to a survey of Vanguard 401(k) plans, of employees are immediately vested in their employer’s retirement contributions.) These policy changes meant that any Oklahoma teacher who started after Oct. 31, 2011, had to wait just a bit longer to qualify for retirement benefits than those who came before them.  

A rising stock market certainly helped the pension plan as well, but the biggest change was on the funding side. From 2001 to 2011, Oklahoma was contributing less each year than what its actuaries said it needed to. Instead of paying off their metaphorical credit card in full, they made only minimum payments, which led to a large financial hole.

But every year since 2012, Oklahoma has put in more than what its actuaries said it needed to. As of , individuals were required to contribute 7% of their salaries. Employers like school districts paid 9.5% of each employee’s salary. And the state contributed a percentage of its revenues from sales taxes, cigarette taxes, corporate income taxes, individual income taxes and lottery proceeds. This extra state contribution came out to $456 million last year, and this is the portion that state legislators now want to cut back.

Oklahoma’s teacher pension plan is in much better shape today than it was. But it’s instructive to compare it with the plan Oklahoma offers to other state employees, which is in even better shape than the teacher plan.

That largely comes down to how far legislators went in designing reforms for each plan. In the case of the teachers, Oklahoma’s legislators were more hands-off. Teachers continue to be placed in the same defined benefit pension plan, for example. On average, their benefits are worth 10.67% of their salary, according to the plan’s latest . But remember that teachers themselves are paying about two-thirds of that cost, which means that most of the contributions made by the state and its school districts are paying for the plan’s unfunded liabilities, not for benefits for today’s workers. Moreover, the benefit structure is so heavily that someone would have to teach in Oklahoma for decades just to earn more than what they personally contributed.

Meanwhile, state employees have been enrolled in a portable defined contribution 401(k)-style plan since 2015. Members are required to contribute 4.5% of their salary, their employer contributes 6% and employees qualify for a growing share of those contributions over five years. A in the state legislature would raise those contribution rates and drop the vesting requirement altogether. Oklahoma’s higher education employees get an deal.

Putting the benefit situation aside, Oklahoma deserves credit for making substantial progress funding its teacher pension plan. According to the latest financial projections, the state’s actuaries expect that the plan could be fully funded by 2034. However, that assumption depends on its investments earning a 7% return every year. They also cautioned that one risk to its projection is that “actual contributions from the state may not be made in accordance with the current arrangement.” 

If Oklahoma legislators go forward with their plans to divert some of the money toward new expenses, they’d be putting all their hard-earned funding progress at risk.  

OKLAHOMA CITY — Everywhere House Speaker Kyle Hilbert goes, the topic of childhood literacy follows.

Hilbert, R-Bristow, said improving Oklahoma’s elementary reading scores is “top of the agenda for me,” and he’s been telling everyone who will listen.

“Every single event that I’m asked to go to or every single question that I’m asked where it’s economic development, tourist-related, you name it, I talk about reading because it applies to everything,” he told news reporters last month.

Early literacy has risen to the top of state lawmakers’ priorities for their 2026 legislative session, generating discussions and disagreement across the state about what policy changes and resources are necessary to improve children’s reading levels.

Only 27% of Oklahoma public school students scored at their grade level or higher on state reading tests last school year. A ranking of drew widespread public attention to Oklahoma’s ongoing struggles.

Legislators have discussed in literacy programs, but the single most dramatic change — and the most concrete reading policy idea that has emerged at the state Capitol — would be retaining struggling readers in third grade.

Republican leaders have pointed to third-grade retention as a clear solution for Oklahoma’s , but educators and parents said they’re less convinced.

Hilbert’s legislation would require students who score below a basic level in reading to repeat third grade. It also would promote earlier interventions, like summer tutoring, small-group lessons and optional retention in younger grades.

“We know if we pass this bill we will have better education outcomes,” Hilbert told a House education subcommittee in February. “That is a fact. It’s backed by science. It’s backed by data. It’s backed by research. It’s backed by evidence of what other states have done. We know what will happen if we pass this. We just have to have courage to do that.”

Research indicates retaining a student in elementary school leads to a , but retained students face a and .

Parents voice concerns over retention policy

Republican lawmakers and have pointed to Mississippi, with its strict retention requirement and improved reading scores, as a success story to emulate.

Mississippi has surpassed the national average in fourth-grade reading proficiency after on literacy initiatives and reading coaches, along with retaining its lowest-performing third-grade readers.

Oklahoma implemented similar third-grade requirements in the 2013-14 school year and by 2015-16 among early elementary grades.

School districts at the time said the retentions were necessary to prepare students for the high-stakes third-grade reading test.

The policy became unpopular among parents and educators, who complained the state placed far too much consequence on the results of one annual reading test. Lawmakers progressively for children to avoid being held back. They altogether in 2024.

Parents don’t want to return to high-stakes testing, said Wendy Hardwick, president of the Oklahoma Parent Teacher Association.

Hardwick’s twin daughters were in third grade when Oklahoma last had strict retention laws. They had already repeated first grade, and two years later, their reading skills were strong, she said. That didn’t stop them from feeling “scared to death” that a poor testing performance would hold them back again in third grade, she said.

Hardwick, who worked in public schools as a long-term substitute and later in special education, recalled the school environment was “stressful and palpable” during state testing time.

“What (students) understand is that they’re going to take this test, and if they don’t pass it, they’re going to have to take third grade again,” she said. “It’s hard to see kids of that age being put under that type of pressure.”

Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, had similar worries for her son, who was in pre-K when the retention law first passed.

Like Hardwick’s children, Kirt’s son repeated first grade. It worked out well, she said, but she feared a poor standardized test result would hold him back a second, more damaging time.

“I was pretty nervous about it, and knowing my educators didn’t have much say in it concerned me,” she said. “Our classroom educator the year my son was in third grade said, ‘I know he can read. I’ve talked to him about it. I watch him read. He tells me he knows. We have no idea if he will show that on a standardized test.’”

Broken Arrow parent Kristine Chambers said her daughter in second grade already reads above her grade level and tests well. An extra reading curriculum her daughter received in pre-K through Broken Arrow Public Schools set her up for success today, Chambers said.

Boosting early literacy instruction should be lawmakers’ focus, she said, rather than having students repeat a grade.

“I think that instead of focusing so hard on this retention, maybe put that focus into funding for new programs, new ideas for early childhood literacy, so that we have that good base,” Chambers said. “Obviously, there’s going to be students that learn at different speeds, but I think that if we have a really good, strong reading support and intervention early, we can not have the retention possibility at third grade.”

The state’s poor reading scores demonstrate not enough schools are intervening sufficiently when young readers are struggling, Hilbert said.

That’s why his would require schools to offer summer tutoring, small-group instruction and other services. Mandatory retention “forces that accountability” for schools to take action and communicate with parents earlier, he said.

Teaching quality comes to forefront

Public school teachers have voiced disagreements, not with the concept of retention, but with doing so in third grade.

Students learn the foundations of reading in earlier grades, so the sooner a student is retained, the better, if it’s absolutely necessary, said Cari Elledge, the president of the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union.

“If you wait until third grade, it might be too late,” said Elledge, a former elementary teacher. “That’s really what we’re hearing from our educators across the state, is we do support this, but if there was any way that we could shift it back a little bit to pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, that would be more beneficial.”

Republican legislators and business leaders have framed backing off of tough retention laws as the start of Oklahoma’s downturn in education rankings. But, other key factors have impacted public schools since that time.

Oklahoma experienced some of the and an . Public schools in Oklahoma now employ and over 800 uncertified adjunct instructors, both of which used to be a rarity in the state.

“When we talk about watering down things, we’ve also watered down certification and licensure, and that has been a dramatic change to public education in the state of Oklahoma,” Elledge said.

The state Legislature has steadily increased public school funding since then, though Oklahoma in per-pupil spending.

Sen. Adam Pugh, who leads the Senate Education Committee, said as lawmakers invest more dollars in public schools, they’re aware Oklahoma’s teacher workforce is now younger, less experienced and more reliant on emergency certified educators.

That’s why measures to recruit and retain more teachers, including raising teacher salaries by $2,500, doubling college scholarship funds for aspiring educators, growing a statewide team of reading coaches and adding millions of dollars to support literacy instruction in public schools.

“I also think when it comes down to it, it’s not about the curriculum,” said Pugh, R-Edmond. “It’s about the individual that’s in front of the classroom every day, and so preparing that individual to go teach kids to learn how to read, I think, is really important.”

Oklahoma City schools show improvement in early readers

Test scores were already on the decline when disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic . Scores then from 2022 to 2024.

As districts seek to claw their way back up, Oklahoma City Public Schools has found a reason for optimism this school year. Winter benchmark testing showed nearly a quarter of the district’s first graders had more than a full academic year of growth in a semester of learning.

If more first graders show accelerated growth now, more will be on track to read proficiently by fourth grade, Oklahoma City Superintendent Jamie Polk said.

A major factor in that growth has been the addition of an extra reading curriculum on top of the district’s core literacy instruction, district leaders said in a March school board meeting. The extra curriculum more explicitly covers phonics and phonemic awareness, two concepts that are essential to sounding out words.

Classrooms that showed the most growth had another key element, Polk told Oklahoma Voice. They had teachers who were trained through content-specific professional development.

“What we have found that works more than anything is 
 teacher clarity — teachers understanding exactly this is what the students need to know and be able to do, but also when our students can articulate what they need to know and be able to do,” Polk said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.