Tower of Debt (Guest Post: Camille Landry)

Camille Landry is a writer, activist, and social justice advocate who lives in Oklahoma City.  This post is part of our “Neglected Oklahoma” series, which tells the stories of Oklahomans in situations where the basic necessities of life are hard… Read more [More...]

Feed our starving educational system, Oklahoma (Guest Post: Bailey Perkins)

Bailey Perkins is an OK Policy Research Fellow and a second year Master of Public Administration student at the University of Oklahoma. She serves on the board of directors for the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy as the advocacy chairman… Read more [More...]

Action Items for Education: Focus on English Language Learners

What passes for an education policy debate in Oklahoma spends a lot of time on a few familiar subjects — education funding vs. tax cuts, vouchers and charters vs. traditional public schools, high-stakes testing vs. teacher and school independence. What’s… Read more [More...]

How Oklahoma’s A-F grading system discriminates against high-poverty schools — and how to fix it

The debate over Oklahoma’s A-F grading system has in large part centered on a debate over the effects of poverty on student performance. Whatever you think about how much we can expect schools to overcome the effects of poverty, one… Read more [More...]

New third-grade reading law could block thousands of special ed student from advancing to fourth grade

A major change in Oklahoma’s education system is about to kick in. Under new provisions of the Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA), third-grade students who do not attain a satisfactory score on a state standardized  reading test will be retained in… Read more [More...]

Do schools matter?

In a report released last month (and summarized on our blog here), researchers at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University found major flaws in Oklahoma’s A-F grading system for schools. The Fallin administration recently jumped to the defense… Read more [More...]

Flawed A-F school grading system won’t help to improve schools (Guest Post: Ryan Miskell)

Ryan Miskell is an OK Policy Research Fellow and a research associate with the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy. He is working on his Ph.D. in Education Leadership and Policy Studies from The University of Oklahoma. He is a contributing… Read more [More...]

Action Items for Oklahoma: Education

Oklahoma’s students show up at school bringing diverse skills and backgrounds. Some have supportive parents who read to them every night; others are still learning English. Some are provided with the best tutors; others don’t have enough to eat at home. Oklahoma has a duty to teach all of these children. This report recommends action items for Oklahoma to better fulfill that duty... Read more. [More...]

Report: Oklahoma has made the deepest school funding cuts in the nation

A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that Oklahoma has made the deepest cuts to school funding in the nation since the start of the recession. The report is a follow-up of last year’s study… Read more [More...]

Report confirms that for states, investing in education is key to prosperity

The best way for Oklahoma to grow its economy is by investing in a well-educated workforce, according to a new paper from the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), a project of the Economic Policy Institute. In “A Well-Educated Workforce… Read more [More...]