John Thompson is a former Oklahoma historian and inner city teacher who is now an education writer focusing on inner city schools.

When Oklahoma’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver was granted, local news celebrated a new era of “freedom and autonomy,” apparently believing that standardized testing will become less ubiquitous. But the waiver does not mean that educators who are tired of standardizing testing should be smiling, or that we will begin “a whole new way of educating children”. Neither, however, does it mean that a right-wing conspiracy is poised to take over local schools.

Basically, the Obama Administration’s NCLB waivers were designed to relieve pressure to teach to the test for 90 percent of the nation’s schools, while doubling down on ‘bubble-in accountability’ for the most challenging 10 percent, and imposing new standards for evaluating teachers. It may or may not be possible, however, for a poor state like Oklahoma to successfully comply with the federal mandates. 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 »

Last month, we surveyed some of the budget cuts that state agencies were being forced to implement as result of the state’s revenue shortfalls. Since then, the grim news continues to spread deeper into core programs, affecting major services like education, social services, and infrastructure. Our intern, Matt Garder, provides this round-up of coverage from the state’s newspapers of some of the actions that state agencies, cities, and school boards have announced in recent weeks to address budget shortfall, as well as looming cuts on the horizon: Read the rest of this entry »