At a time when seemingly endless budget cuts are squeezing our public schools to the breaking point, the Coalition for Community Schools continues to advance a rich and comprehensive approach to education.  Their vision is one in which schools are not just places for kids to learn during the school-week, but also community centers open to everyone – all day, every day – making the school the hub of the community.  If you’re having a hard time envisioning how a ‘community school’ differs from the norm, watch this short video about Tulsa’s Area Community Schools Initiative (TACSI).  The transformational potential of this approach is hard to miss.

View other clips from OKPolicy’s “Watch This’ video series:

What is an IDA?

Elderly parole

Long term unemployment, 1967-2011

Packed Oklahoma prisons, rising costs

Photo by flickr user pamhule used under a Creative Commons license.

[UPDATE: A previous version of the debt-to-degree chart misidentified Northwestern Oklahoma State University as a community college when it is a four-year university. The corrected chart reflects that NWOSU has the lowest debt to degree ratio among Oklahoma's public universities.]

We’ve previously discussed the overwhelming evidence that college is a good investment both for students and the state as a whole. The need for at least some college education to get a good job is greater than ever. That’s reflected in Oklahoma by record-breaking college enrollment.

Lawmakers are also taking a growing interest in Oklahoma’s higher education system, with much of their criticism focused on tuition increases. A bill has already been introduced to return the power to approve tuition increases to the legislature, reversing a 2003 change that gave the State Regents full control.

Rising tuition is a legitimate concern. However, advertised tuition rates are not the best way to evaluate colleges and universities for a number of reasons. Due to scholarships and financial aid, fewer than half of all public university students and fewer than 18 percent of private college students pay the full “sticker price” for their education.

What may be a better metric for how well students are being served by a school are the federal loan default rates. The federal government made or guaranteed more than 80 percent of all outstanding student loans this year. If a large proportion of students are unable to pay back their loans, that is a strong indicator that they are not able to find well-paying jobs after leaving school, with or without a degree. Read the rest of this entry »

Betty Casey has taught high school English, middle school gifted and talented, and Freshman Comp., English Lit. and Humanities at the University of Oklahoma and Tulsa Community College. She is currently managing editor of TulsaKids Magazine, a monthly parenting publication.

In the past few months I’ve had the pleasure of watching three screenings about public education: “Waiting for Superman”, “The Race to Nowhere” and, most recently, “American Teacher.” Of the three, “American Teacher” contributed the most realistic and valuable information to the dialogue about what’s wrong and what’s right in American education.

The documentary follows five public school teachers. While “Waiting for Superman” blames teachers (and teachers’ unions) for everything from low standardized test scores to young people going to prison, “American Teacher” actually lets the teachers tell their story — and it’s a story of heartbreak and courage in the face of low pay, poor working conditions, and lack of respect.

Are there bad teachers? Sure. But does anyone seriously believe that our schools are suddenly filled with bad teachers? My children who went through Tulsa Public Schools were all well prepared for college. Like the dedicated teachers in the film, my children’s teachers were available early in the morning and late into the night. One of their high school math teachers would stay and tutor kids as long as they needed him, sometimes until 9 or 10 pm. Read the rest of this entry »

James W. Utterback, Ph.D. is President of Seminole State College and Chair of the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority Board. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of OETA or any other group or business.

In his acceptance of the Republican Presidential nomination in 1880, James A. Garfield stated that, “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”  The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) plays a vital role in enhancing the public education mission of our state.

As Chairman of the Board for OETA, it has been exciting to witness over 24,000 Oklahoma families step forward to donate in excess of $2 million annually to support Oklahoma’s only statewide public television network.  An additional $1.5 million is donated annually by Oklahoma foundations and corporations. In spite of such overwhelming grassroots support, a small group of Oklahoma Legislators are calling for the elimination of funding for OETA.  As an educator and a concerned citizen who cares deeply about the future of our state, I believe this action would be reckless and irresponsible. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is by OK Policy intern Emily Callen. Emily is a senior at the University of Tulsa, where she is pursuing a major in Biology and a minor in Economics. A longtime wonk-in-training, Emily has for years been boring her college friends by quoting statistics at parties. 

Photo by flickr user pamhule used under a Creative Commons license.

Last month, Governor Fallin released her plan  to increase by two-thirds the number of students graduating from Oklahoma’s public colleges and universities. At the same time, some Oklahoma lawmakers and other critics are questioning the state’s spending on higher education, arguing that colleges and universities should face the same budget cutbacks as other areas of government and the legislature should limit tuition increases.

Tuition and fees in Oklahoma remain comparatively inexpensive, but we have not avoided the nationwide trend of rising costs at both public and private universities. We certainly should take this trend seriously and work to ensure college is affordable and accessible to students from diverse backgrounds.

Yet even though the cost is rising, the value of a college education remains very high. Oklahoma should maintain strong investments in higher education for several reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

John Thompson is an education writer currently working on a book about his experience teaching for 18 years in the inner city of OKC. He has a doctorate from Rutgers University and is the author of  Closing the Frontier:  Radical Responses in Oklahoma Politics.

The last generation has seen the rise of education reform. This movement brought a profound sense of urgency to improving our schools, arguing that it is essential for the United States’ survival in the global marketplace. Consequently, reformers argue that data-driven accountablity, as well as an unflinching focus on classroom instruction, are more than a tough-love program for schools. They are the key to prosperity in the 21st century. Read the rest of this entry »

If Oklahoma is to have any chance of improving our students’ educational performance, we need to support excellence in our teachers and administrators. In recent years, Oklahoma has made such a commitment by investing in research-based professional development programs for teachers and school leaders. Unfortunately, three such successful programs – Literacy First, Great Expectations, and A+ Schools – have fallen victim to the  budget axe and are set to lose all state funding in the upcoming budget year.

The decision to eliminate funding for these programs must be viewed within the state Department of Education’s budget context. This year the Legislature cut appropriations to the Department of Education by $108 million, or 4.5 percent, compared to FY ’11. Within the total Common Education budget, the Legislature allocates a set amount for “the support of public school activities”, which encompasses the costs of the flexible benefit allowance for teachers and support staff, the teachers retirement credit, and all the educational programs that are funded outside the state aid formula. The FY ’12 allocation of $401.2 million is $18.7 million less than that of FY ’11 and $57.4 million, or 12.5 percent, less than FY ’10.  For the second straight year, the Legislature chose not to provide line-item allocations within the Activities Budget, leaving it in the hands of Superintendent Janet Barresi and the Board of Education to manage the shortfall. Read the rest of this entry »

Students at Kendall Whittier Elementary School

The University of Tulsa recently announced that it is changing the name of its education department to the School of Urban Education. The change reflects an increased focus on the issues confronted in low-income, urban districts. OK Policy spoke with Dr. Thomas Benediktson, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at TU and interim director of the School of Urban Education, about reasons for the change and what it means for Oklahoma.

Here is the transcript of our conversation, slightly edited for length:

First can you speak a little about what is urban education and how it differs from traditional curriculum?

In an urban setting, you’re dealing with a primarily poor population of students who often don’t have a strong family structure at home. In Tulsa we have a very high rate of female incarceration, so many of the students don’t have mothers at home. From week to week, teachers may have different students in their classes because the students move from uncle to foster parent to biological parent to somewhere else. There’s just not a stable environment for the students to learn. Read the rest of this entry »

Public schools have long been clearinghouses for fitness and nutrition initiatives in the United States.  Since the 1960s, the President’s Challenge program has inspired kids to meet physical fitness benchmarks.  Schoolchildren began to learn about the basic building blocks of a nutritious diet with the introduction of the food pyramid in the 1980s.  First Lady Michelle Obama tours the nation promoting the ‘Let’s Move!’ initiative to fight childhood obesity.  State and local governments continue to incentivize a variety of public health programs aimed at school-aged children through grants for innovative projects, i.e. planting community gardens.  I interviewed Anna Eller, a fourth grade teacher at Tulsa’s Lee Elementary School, to learn about simple techniques teachers can employ at the classroom level to encourage kids to lead an active lifestyle and embrace healthy eating habits.

What made you interested in integrating fitness and nutrition education into your curriculum?

I just finished a Masters degree at OSU in Health and Human Performance, with an emphasis on Applied Exercise Science, so I’ve been exposed to the research on the childhood obesity epidemic.  Also, my school, Lee Elementary, received grants as a Healthy Lifestyles School and our principal encouraged us to come up with ways to introduce the kids to health education.  I had already observed the impact of unhealthy habits in my classroom – many of my kids were sluggish and unmotivated throughout the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Kathy McKean is the director of the Oklahoma Technical Assistance Center, which provides evaluation and professional development to Oklahoma schools.

When people think of alternative education, they may imagine “punishment schools” or the Sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter.  In many states, they’d be right.  But in most of Oklahoma, alternative programs are true alternatives – schools of opportunity for some of our highest-risk students.  A national study of alternative education conducted in 2010 concluded, “Only two states – Oklahoma and Minnesota – have set the policy conditions necessary to encourage the development and sustainability of innovative alternative education models.”

In the late 1980s, a handful of pilot projects were funded and the most cost-effective proved to be an academy model that grew out of the alternative school research of the 1970s. Pilot projects were initiated in 1989. By 1993, because the program had established a strong record of success, the Oklahoma Legislature expanded the initiative statewide.  Every high school in the state was required to operate an academy or to join an academy cooperative. Alternative education now receives $17 million in annual funding and serves more than 10,000 students every year. Read the rest of this entry »

In the spring of 2003, Saul Munoz* was a Tulsa high school senior thinking seriously about his future.  Saul’s parents had moved the family to Oklahoma years earlier, leaving Mexico at a time of increasing violence and instability, and he was not a legal U.S. resident.  A member of the National Honor Society, ranked in the top ten in his class, and enrolling in extra math and science classes to graduate with a Certificate of Distinction, Saul worried constantly about what would happen after graduation.  He couldn’t enroll in college and even if he were allowed to enroll he knew his family would struggle with the tuition payments.  His teachers, unaware of his immigration status, peppered him with questions about his plans and couldn’t understand why a student so smart and so clearly driven was not more proactive about applying for admission and scholarships. In February, a few months before graduation, Saul heard about a bill making its way through the state legislature. Read the rest of this entry »

High on this year’s agenda for Governor Fallin and education reform groups is to put more money into Oklahoma classrooms by reducing administrative costs. Two bills filed for the upcoming session seek to accomplish this by mandate — HB 1493 by Rep. Brumbaugh and HB 1746 by Rep. Nelson would respectively require 70 percent and 65 percent of education funds to go towards direct instruction by 2014.

Critics often point to the large number of Oklahoma school districts. Oklahoma has nearly half as many school districts as Texas with only about 15 percent of the population. District consolidation is a perennial controversy in Oklahoma, especially for rural areas that depend on their local school as a community center.  While the drawbacks are clear, consolidation could still be worthwhile if it freed up resources for the classroom.

But would it?  While sending more money to classrooms is a laudable goal, it’s unlikely that this can be accomplished solely by taking from administrative costs. To understand why, we can compare how education spending is divided up in Oklahoma, the region, and nationally: Read the rest of this entry »