Ask an Oklahoma parent where our schools rank compared to other states and you’ll get the answer before you even finish the question. Fiftieth. They’ll say it the way you’d report the score of a game that ended badly. Not surprised or even angry anymore. Just certain.
We heard this repeatedly during our nine months of research this year. From Republicans and Democrats, Independents and Libertarians, from Tulsa and Jennings and Newcastle, from people who have kids in school and people whose kids finished a long time ago. Nobody argued with the number. Several people recited the slide to the bottom: Oklahoma was somewhere in the mid-30s not that long ago, and now it’s at the bottom. They had it down like a family story.
When we heard this response, we asked a follow-up question: Why?
Almost nobody had an answer.
That’s the strange thing about the school conversation in this state. Everyone knows the diagnosis but almost no one knows the cause. Unlike the price of groceries, which people are willing to blame on the national economy, nobody blames Oklahoma’s school ranking on anybody but the people who run Oklahoma.
The anger already has an address. It just doesn’t have a story.
So here is the story, as plainly as we can tell it. A school ranking isn’t unpredictable and uncontrollable like the weather. It’s the sum of a few thousand decisions made by a few hundred people. You get to hire or fire most of these people on November 3.
Somebody decided how much money goes into the funding formula each year, and whether a surplus goes to classrooms or to a tax cut. Somebody decided what a starting teacher makes, and therefore whether they stay in Oklahoma or drive across the state line for $10,000 more. Somebody decided what gets taught, what gets banned, and how much of a superintendent’s week goes to fighting about it instead of running a school. Somebody decided whether public dollars stay in public schools or if that public money gets turned into a voucher to go to a private school with no accountability to taxpayers.
All of it was decided for us. And it was decided by offices that are on your ballot in three weeks.
The Legislature writes the education budget. Every House seat and half of the Senate are on your ballot. The Governor signs that budget or vetoes it and appoints the State Board of Education, the body that sets standards, approves charters, and oversees every district in the state. The Governor is another open seat. Finally, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the person who runs the Department of Education day to day and chairs that board, is elected directly by you. It’s also on your ballot on November 3.
Here is the part that should give you some hope, because it’s not a theory. It actually happened.
In the spring of 2018, Oklahoma teachers had gone more than decade without a pay raise. Some classes met in trailers. Textbooks were held together with tape. Schools were forced to go four days a week instead of five. Teachers were leaving for Texas and Arkansas in numbers that made the news every week. And for years, the answer from politicians never came.
Then Oklahomans decided that they’d had enough. Teachers announced they were walking out. Parents and community members said they’d stand with them. And before the walkout even started, the Legislature was so scared they did something it hadn’t done in 28 years: they passed a tax package and put the money into our schools. This translated to about $6,000 more per teacher and some much needed funding for classrooms. When tens of thousands of Oklahomans filled the Capitol anyway, for nine school days in April, they were there to say the first step wasn’t the last one.
Was that package in 2018 enough? No. The ranking tells you it wasn’t. But that’s not the point of the story. The point is that the same building that had ignored this problem for a decade was forced to say yes in a matter of weeks, because the people it answers to showed up.
Consequences follow when we show up. April 2018 proves that.
We’re not going to tell you who to vote for. We’ll just tell you who is responsible for what job. A legislator decides whether the surplus goes to your kid’s classroom or somebody’s tax break. A governor decides who sits on the board that oversees every school in the state. A superintendent decides whether the Department of Education spends its week on teachers or on headlines.
Everybody knows the ranking, now you know who decided it. It’s time to make your plan to vote on November 3. If you can’t make it to the polls on the day, you can still decide from your kitchen table: absentee ballot requests close Monday, October 19, at 5 p.m. It takes two minutes at okvoterportal.okelections.gov.
Our schools. Our kids. Our state. Vote like it.
