Weekly Opinion EditorialOKLAHOMA NEEDS A SRAC COMMISSION!

by Steve Fair

Last week, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush spoke at the annual Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs Citizen Award’s dinner. Since leaving office Bush has been traveling the country pushing for education reform. He praised the proposed reforms that Governor Mary Fallin and the Oklahoma legislature are pushing.

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“Oklahoma has got it right in terms of comprehensive reforms,” Bush said. “If you put together a comprehensive strategy you can make the needle move. You can make a difference.” One of the proposals Bush mentioned is HB # 1456. Authored by State Representative Lee Denney, (R-Cushing) each of Oklahoma’s public schools would be given an annual grade of "A" to "F" based on student performance on state tests. Denney’s proposal passed the House on February 23rd with a vote of 65-32. It now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to pass and to be signed into law.

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"The new letter-grading system will provide a measurable, concrete way for parents to obtain a true apples-to-apples comparison between local schools." said Denney, who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on education.

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Florida was the first state — and is still the only one — to grade schools. On a smaller scale, some individual districts, including New York City, have modeled parts of their school grading systems after Florida. Since Florida began grading schools in 1999, the percentage of schools receiving A’s and B’s has more than tripled from 21 percent to 79 percent. The proportion of D and F schools dropped from 28 percent to 7 percent. The improvement came even as the state continually raised the standards on which the grades would be based, affording the schools little time or resources to adapt.

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“Lots of people thought grading schools would hurt public education. Instead, students, parents, teachers and principals rose to the challenge and exceeded expectations,” Bush said. Florida has also improved their student’s reading ability- at least according to the results on the standardized test. Seventy percent of Florida fourth-graders were reading at grade level in 2007, compared with 53 percent in 1998.

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But some Florida teachers believe the improvement is all smoke and mirrors. “Teachers are told, ‘You’re an F and you have a year to improve,’ How did they improve? They taught to the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test),” said one unnamed Florida teacher. Officials insist there’s no way to teach to the test because questions are not known in advance.

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One thing Bush failed to mention is that Florida has one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country. The dropout rate in Florida is ten percent points higher than the national average. That’s not to say that having teens graduate as functional illiterates is a better option, but throwing uneducated dropouts into society has an economic price. States with high dropout rates have higher costs in social programs, increased crime and incarceration rates.

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A major issue in public education is the lack of equity that many parents take in their child’s education. The reality is that many parents whose child can’t read don’t care. They are unengaged in their kid’s life. They could care less if the school gets an A or an F. . In reality, what would a concerned parent do when their school gets a failing grade- pull their child out of the school? Run up to the school and chew out the Superintendent? What good does that do? Giving out letter grades to Oklahoma schools is not a bad idea, but instead of trying to assess a school’s ability to teach memorization skills, the legislature should be working to fix the root problem in Oklahoma education. We have too many school districts and administrators!

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Oklahoma has more school districts than the state of Texas- 533 total. According to a statewide Sooner Poll conducted in January of 520 likely voters, just over 50 percent of those surveyed said Oklahoma has too many school districts. And while rural Oklahoma was not as supportive of consolidation as the urban areas, the numbers were not that much different. In the Oklahoma City metro area it was 57 percent and 53 percent in Tulsa, while the rest of the state was at 47 percent.

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Representative David Dank, (R-OKC) has a proposal that would allow smaller school district to share administrators. That’s a great idea, but the ‘layers’ of administration in larger districts should be addressed as well. These ‘layers’ are often unnecessary and more expensive to the taxpayer than a single administrator at a rural school.

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Oklahoma legislators should consider a School Realignment and Closure commission, like the military BRAC commission. Members could be appointed by the Governor and the legislature and given complete authority to realign and close school districts. There is no doubt the process would be controversial and emotional, but if Oklahoma wants to really reform education, it will not just give meaningless letter grades to schools who are already struggling to pay their bills.