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

In Oklahoma, more than one in four households are “asset poor,” meaning they have little or no financial cushion to rely on if unemployment or another emergency leads to a loss of income, according to a report released today by the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).  Asset poverty is distinct from and broader than income poverty, which measures the amount of money a household receives during the year.  According to the U.S. Census, about one in six Oklahomans were income poor in 2010.  Andrea Levere, president of CFED, highlights asset poverty as a significant barrier to long-term financial stability:

Growing numbers of Americans have almost no savings or other assets to fall back on if they lose their jobs or face a medical crisis.  Without those savings, few will be able to invest in a more economically secure future, including buying a home, saving for their children’s college educations or building a retirement nest egg.

The 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard offers a comprehensive look at Oklahomans’ ability to build wealth, fend off poverty, and create a more prosperous future. The Scorecard compares states along 52 different measures of how residents fare in five issue areas: Financial Assets & Income, Businesses & Jobs, Housing & Homeownership, Health Care and Education. Read the rest of this entry »

This enlightening hour-long film explores creativity in education by highlighting four Oklahoma schools: Educare Preschool in Tulsa, Flower Mound Elementary School in Lawton, Odyssey of the Mind at Piedmont Middle School, and Santa Fe South Charter High School in Oklahoma City.  The film interviews teachers, parents and national experts about the role of creativity in children’s’ development and the most effective ways to promote creativity while maintaining a rigorous academic focus.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year during state budget discussions, state leaders speak about prioritizing spending to protect core services. That’s especially true when times are bad and the overall budget pie is shrinking. However, the distribution of that pie among agencies over the past decade has remained relatively unchanged (with a couple notable exceptions).

A series of visualizations created with the online tool Many Eyes illustrates this fact well. The graphs are derived from data compiled by OK Policy on the percentage of total state appropriations received by the ten largest agencies, plus another category for all other agencies, from FY ’00 to FY’12.

Click on any of the images below to see a larger, interactive version.

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 »

Another budget year, the same sad story: The combination of tax cuts and the recession results in severe cuts to public services.

Over the past two years, most agencies have lost 15 percent or more of their funding. Even though state appropriations as a share of the economy is at a 30 year low, next year’s shortfall is projected at $500 million. The Governor’s proposed budget for next year would eliminate some agencies and take another 3 to 5 percent from the rest.

Last year we surveyed some of what’s been lost. Here’s an update:

• With personnel costs making up 93 percent of its budget, more cuts to the Public Safety Department will mean furloughs and possibly laying off troopers. The Department already has 110 fewer employees than 2 years ago, and more than half of the drivers’ license testing sites across the state have been closed. A portion of these funds are being replaced by increasing the fee to reinstate a driver’s license. 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 »

Several months ago, with polls showing SQ 744 ahead by a two-to-0ne margin and supporters announcing that the National Education Association had committed over $3 million to the Yes campaign, many thought that the measure’s passage was a slam-dunk.  Subsequent polling showed a sharp fall-off in support for 744, and by the final week of the campaign, most observers were expecting its defeat. It’s unlikely, however, that anyone anticipated the magnitude of the final margin: 81.4 percent opposed versus just 18.6 percent in favor.  Ultimately, opposition to SQ 744 outpolled everything else on yesterday’s ballot, including support for such popular ballot ideas as voter ID and English as the state’s official language.

What happened? My sense is that the defeat of SQ 744 was the result of its opponents ability to convincingly build three arguments. The first was the argument, which  OK Policy can claim some credit for having developed, that increased K-12 funding of the magnitude required by SQ 744 would necessarily come at the expense of health care, corrections, higher ed, and other areas of state government.  On the one hand, I’m not sure this argument directly swayed a large portion of the electorate. Few voters likely voted no on SQ 744 out of concern for kids in foster care. Many voters believed that common education should be a higher priority, and Yes on 744 proponents were at least somewhat effective at countering the idea that the measure couldn’t be paid for by pointing to tax breaks and politician’s perks as a funding source. However, the argument helped persuade leading politicians and opinion leaders, including those acknowledged as committed advocates for public education and children, to take a strong stand against SQ 744, giving the No side respectability while putting SQ 744 proponents on the defensive. At the same time, from the standpoint of building a coalition and mounting a campaign, the fear of being left with a shrinking share of the budget pie certainly mobilized organizations whose interests were put at risk by 744′s passage to raise money, get involved and spread the word among their members.

The second argument against SQ 744 that seemed to reso Read the rest of this entry »

In the spirit of full and vigorous debate on state policy issues, OK Policy is pleased to post this guest blog by Michelle Cantrell challenging our position on State Question 744.  Michelle is the mother of three boys in the public school system, and a frequent volunteer at school.  She also volunteers for various other organizations, including the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission.

As a strong supporter of State Question 744, I would like to respond to the Oklahoma Policy Institute’s arguments against, and argue for, the proposal.

• State Question 744 will improve the overall economic health of the state, resulting in more revenue for all budget areas.

Increasingly, when looking to relocate, companies consider quality of life issues, including the public education system. When Oklahoma is competing with surrounding states to attract businesses, ranking dead last in school expenditures is a huge strike against us.  According to the Economic Policy Institute, there is a direct correlation between spending on primary and secondary schools and the business climate, and increased spending can increase property values.  Investing in education “is the best way to achieve faster growth, more jobs, greater productivity, and more widely shared prosperity.”

Failing to provide appropriate spending for education can cost our state more in other areas.  An OECD report summarizing studies of non-economic benefits of education states that education results in better overall health and greater life expectancy.  Further, parents with more education have children with higher cognitive development and higher future earnings.  People with more education are more likely to save money and make better consumer choices, and are less likely to rely on public assistance even when they are entitled to that assistance.  They also are less likely to engage in criminal activity.   Increased spending can lead to reduced student drop out rates, which ultimately increases lifetime wages.  The amount of lost income from a student who drops out is staggering—the loss of lifetime earnings from students who dropped out in just one year in Oklahoma was almost 4 billion dollars. Thus, inadequately funding schools could ultimately result in higher costs for healthcare, public benefits, law-enforcement, and prisons.  Short-changing schools is penny-wise and pound-foolish. Read the rest of this entry »

John Thompson is an Oklahoma City teacher with 18 years of urban high school experience and an education blogger at thisweekineducation.com. He contributes regularly to our blog on education issues.

In 2000, when serving on the Steering Committee for MAPS for KIDS, I grinned as arch-conservative Leland Gourley demanded a “warranty” that Oklahoma City Public School students would be reading at grade level by 3^rd grade. Little did I know that cognitive and social science research would soon show that Gourley had identified the key to closing the achievement gap.

I recalled Gourley’s prescience recently when the liberal Schott Foundation for Public Education announced that New Jersey has the nation’s highest graduation rate for Black males. In contrast to the national rate of 47 percent, or Oklahoma with a rate of 52 percent, in New Jersey 69 percent of  Black males graduate from high school. The Schott Foundation also reported 4^th grade NAEP Reading test results showing 66 percent of Oklahoma Black males score Below Basic, as do 58 percent of Black Males nationally. In New Jersey, 45 percent of Black males score Below Basic, 40 percent score Basic, and 15 percent score Proficient or Advanced.  Better still, in contrast with the normative trend where Black NAEP scores drop by the 8th grade, there was no fall-off in New Jersey.  This is crucial because social scientists have long used New Jersey as evidence that the best way to help poor children is to invest whatever is necessary so that elementary children read for comprehension. Read the rest of this entry »

John Thompson is an Oklahoma City teacher with 18 years of urban high school experience and an education blogger at thisweekineducation.com. He contributes regularly to our blog on education issues.

A large body of social science has demonstrated the long-term effectiveness of high-quality early education and teaching children to read for comprehension by 3^rd grade. New research and cognitive science is now explaining why investments in the early years are far more cost effective than trying to turnaround struggling schools.

In the classic Perry Preschool Experiment, 123 low-income, three year old, African-American children were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, and given a high-quality pre-school education, or to a control group. While kids exposed to preschool got an initial bump in general intelligence, those gains dissipated by second grade. That result has been used by both the political left and right to challenge the effectiveness of early education. However, after tracking the Perry Preschool subjects for nearly 40 years,  the research found that adults assigned to the preschool program were 20 percentage points more likely to have graduated from high school and 19 percentage points less likely to have been arrested more than five times. They earned much better grades, were more likely to remain married and were less dependent on welfare programs. Other scientific studies have shown that improvements in test scores due to early interventions often dissipate in subsequent grades. But when adult outcomes are considered, a dollar invested in high-quality early education can result in $8.70 savings to society. Read the rest of this entry »

John Thompson is an Oklahoma City teacher with 18 years of urban high school experience and an education blogger at thisweekineducation.com. He is a regular contributor to our blog on education issues.

All of the neighborhood high schools in the Oklahoma City Public School System and four other metro schools are categorized as “dropout factories” because they graduate less than 60 percent of their freshmen. And this is a huge improvement from the early 1990s when the OKCPS had a graduate rate of 39 percent. The Alliance For Excellent Education’s new report, “The Economic Benefits from Halving Oklahoma City’ Dropout Rate,” calculated the effects of reducing the city’s 4,800 dropouts by 50 percent. They estimate that reducing dropouts would generate $24 million in increased earnings, $17 million in additional spending, and $5 million in new investments. Reducing dropouts would increase home sales by $32 million and car sales by $2 million. The new graduates would produce 200 new jobs and generate $29 million in economic growth, as well as $3 million in new tax revenue.

New research by Columbia University’s Hechinger Institute, combined with previous studies, indicates that a key component of reducing dropouts is the expansion of high quality alternative schools. In New York City (where 80 percent of students are low-income) providing alternative slots to 5 percent of the student population has helped increase the city’s graduation rate by 36 percent.  New York discovered that:

…alternative schools for at-risk students worked wonders with struggling students. Regular high schools graduated 19 percent of overage, undercredited students. At alternative schools, the graduation rates were 56 percent – right at the city average.  Once students switched to an alternative school, they came to school more often and began earning credits more quickly. The solution was obvious: open more alternative schools. Read the rest of this entry »