From time to time, we use the OK Policy blog to post contributions that offer interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This is the second of two posts from John Thompson,  an Oklahoma City teacher with 18 years of urban high school experience and an education blogger at thisweekineducation.com. He has a doctorate from Rutgers University, and is the author of Closing the Frontier:  Radical Responses in Oklahoma Politics. His first post looked at the national debate over education reform.

The law that could radically change Oklahoma’s school systems for good or for ill was  completely ignored in the latest debates between candidates for Governor and Secretary of Public Instruction on educational policy.   SB 2033, which passed in the final days of this past legislative  session in conjunction with the Oklahoma Race to the Top (RttT) grant application, has received almost no attention.  So maybe Oklahomans would like an overview of the federal education policy that prompted it.

I should first acknowledge my bias as a teacher in the lowest performing high school in Oklahoma, and as a believer that schools must respect students as whole social, emotional, and moral beings and not just a test score.  I served on the executive committee of Oklahoma City’s MAPS for KIDS, the product of a bipartisan coalition of business, labor, and the community, and which sought a humane learning culture for all.  Frankly I am embarrassed that the Chamber of Commerce tends to be more mindful of the dignity of my poor students of color than the educational bureaucracy. Read the rest of this entry »