Quotes of the Day

As someone who has been connected to the cattle industry most of my life, I am reminded of an old cattleman saying: “You can’t starve a dollar out of a cow.” … If our state leaders and state school superintendent were in the cattle business, they would not only go broke but probably would be arrested for animal abuse. Starving education through lack of funding to force change in hopes of better performance will not work and is not working.

-Gary Rudick, retiring chief of the Tulsa Public Schools campus police department (Source: http://bit.ly/1i6KVoD)

The sad thing is I think people have become so … desensitized to hearing that kind of thing that it doesn’t bother them as much as I think it should. I think if it bothered people more we’d have more done about it.

-Former Tulsa police officer Marvin Blades Sr., on a report that Oklahoma ranks fifth highest in the nation for the rate of black homicide victims (Source: http://bit.ly/1i3yqtX)

It’s hard to give up an incentive tax break after 20 years, but it’s time to “give the taxpayers a break” and restore the gross production tax to the same as normal oil and gas wells.

-John A. Brock, the founder of several successful oil and gas exploration and production companies in Oklahoma (Source: http://bit.ly/1g8hhC1)

It defies credibility to say we can afford cutting taxes even deeper when class sizes are rising, corrections officers are risking their lives in overcrowded prisons, and we still don’t have enough foster homes to protect our most vulnerable children. These are preventable tragedies, but only if we stop the march of unnecessary tax cuts, take sensible steps to curb unnecessary tax breaks, and invest in Oklahomans.

-OK Policy Executive Director David Blatt, responding to news that Governor Fallin will propose another income tax cut this year (Source: http://bit.ly/1cYy02P)

All those tired arguments that across-the-board budget cuts would not hurt outcomes are completely unfounded.

-Rutgers University Professor Bruce D. Baker, who assessed numerous studies on the connections between school funding and student outcomes (Source: http://bit.ly/1fZSlMP)

Now we must develop progress, or rather, a program—and I can’t stay on this long—that will drive the nation to a guaranteed annual income. Now, early in the century this proposal would have been greeted with ridicule and denunciation as destructive of initiative and responsibility. At that time economic status was considered the measure of the individual’s abilities and talents. And in the thinking of that day, the absence of worldly goods indicated a want of industrious habits and moral fiber. We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operation of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. The poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our conscience today by being branded as inferior and incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

-Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in 1967 (Source: http://stanford.io/1cQ7zMw)

The pool of candidates is smaller now than I have seen in my entire career. This is a reflection of a toxic political climate where education is considered a liability, not an investment, by many of our policy makers. This is a self-imposed crisis due to a lack of leadership that should concern us all.

-Sand Springs Superintendent Lloyd Snow, whose District is among many in Oklahoma that are having trouble finding applicants for teacher and librarian positions (Source: http://bit.ly/1fQAhos)

To use a threat to ensure our participation seems to be the typical tactic of this state Department of Education. This isn’t the first threat we have received, and we will likely comply because of it. But why are we being asked to do the work of the vendors that are being paid in the neighborhood of $50 million?

– Sapulpa Superintendent and president of Tulsa County Superintendents Association Kevin Burr, reacting to the news that Oklahoma schools risk accreditation and fundingif they fail to participate in an upcoming computer exercise (Source: http://bit.ly/1cAqRph)

In Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, students outperformed Oklahoma students in NAEP math and reading proficiency (aside from fourth-grade reading in Texas). A much larger share of test takers in Arkansas and Texas got a high AP score.  This is a huge problem for Oklahoma’s long-term economic growth. Basically, the workforce produced by public schools in the average state is far more proficient in reading and math than in Oklahoma. This can offset the benefits of a pro-business tax and regulatory environment.

The Oklahoman Editorial Board

Every school district when it says ‘Where has our funding gone?’ can say it’s gone into the pockets of horizontal drillers. Every prison guard who hasn’t been able to get a raise can point to the same thing.

-Oklahoma Policy Institute Executive Director David Blatt, speaking about tax breaks for oil and gas drilling that have ballooned to cost Oklahoma more than $250 million this year (Source: http://bit.ly/1fxIrSq)