Given a majority of state school districts have opened their doors, and before we get to today’s main event, a few things need pointing out.
One, according to WalletHub, which, far as I can tell, is a personal finance website and not an education one, Oklahoma ranks 50th in public education, in front of only New Mexico.
I don’t know if I buy it.
Perhaps we should go with the ranking of World Population Review, because we’re all the way up to 48th in that one. But that outfit could be wrong, too, so let’s check out U.S. News and World Report’s list.
Dang it, 48th again.
So, we can quibble.
But mostly, we suck.
How could that be?
Well, we have a state superintendent, perhaps you’ve heard of him, Ryan Walters, who’s been kicking teachers in the teeth since arrival, and if you don’t think morale makes all the difference in the world, or that ruthlessly bad behavior from folks who can take your job on the basis of a misunderstanding can, too, just stop reading now because you lack the comprehension skills to continue.
Nor do we spend any real money on it, ranking 48th in per-pupil spending, which is indeed a terrific way to judge the level at which our Republican legislative supermajorities value public education in the first place.
As a result, many, many, many teachers have departed to greener pastures or just quit, because why stick around when the state superintendent is a chaos agent who hates them and the legislature refuses to put students first.
Also, we should mention, the 2023-24 academic year included 4,676 emergency teacher certifications from June through December, breaking the previous state record of 4,574 set the previous year.
If I could find the 2024-25 numbers, I’d include them but I can’t. Either they’re not ready or the state education department’s holding them back, which, given its leadership, is a reasonable bet.
We should also mention our legislature’s spending hundreds of millions out of the state budget subsidizing private education and much of it’s padding the pockets of parents who were already affording private school in the first place.
Back to funding, because as Kelvin Sampson told me with great confidence back in the day, a truism I’ve realized to be undefeated, YOU ACHIEVE WHAT YOU EMPHASIZE.
Well, our disappointing state, led by disappointing Republican governors and disappointing Republican legislative supermajorities, do not emphasize public education.
That 48th-in-the-nation per-student spending — $11, 349 if you’re counting — is a simple math equation.
We spend almost $8 billion annually on public K-12 education to serve about 7000,000 students; divide it up and that’s what you get.
Mississippi spends more ($12,394), Alabama spends more ($13,461), Texas spends more ($14,257) and North Dakota spends a lot more ($18,486) even though its Republican supermajorities are larger than ours, you can look it up.
Just to finish up on North Dakota, because it’s head-spinning, its per pupil spending ranks 17th in the nation and for that, it ranks 16th in overall quality by WalletHub and 19th by World Population Review.
Also, because I was curious and checked, it has way too many school districts, just like we do: 147 for a population of about 800,00 against our 509 for about 4.1 million, meaning North Dakota actually has many more school districts per capita than we do.
Crazy.
To be fair, North Dakota’s per capita income is $70,966 and Oklahoma’s is $62,661, so the Peace Garden State — honestly, that’s what they call it — may have a bigger pie from which to pluck.
Nonetheless, priorities tend to get solved and non-priorities don’t and North Dakota’s made education a priority and Oklahoma hasn’t.
You know what else that means?
It means when Walters decries the alleged inefficiencies of school districts across the state, when he accuses so many of sitting on money and especially when he jumps in and demands that alleged extra dough be spent on meals or Bibles or anything else, he’s actually talking out of his ass, because we spend what we appropriate on public education and we get what we get for it, just as others, like North Dakota, spend what they appropriate and get what they get.
You achieve what you emphasize.
It’s an indictment of Walters, absolutely, but no more than it’s an indictment of our Republican supermajorities who, one, won’t spend the money and, two, can’t wait to send it to private schools instead.
It’s like we don’t have a chance.
How is it that everybody understands “you get what you pay for” but Republicans in the state house and senate, who deny it, I’m guessing, because kids can’t vote, nor lobby, nor run PACs, nor hand out campaign contributions from the energy sector, which hates paying taxes even as it takes credit for contributing billions to education when all it’s really done is pay the crazy low taxes it’s told the politicians it owns it’s willing to pay.
Did I digress?
Sorry.
Finally, to what this column’s really about. It’s …
Well, it wasn’t this.
Completely serious, when I sat down to write, the whole idea was to talk attorney general Gentner Drummond into finding an attorney of his own to represent the state school board, because the one it’s been using, Chad Kutmas, of Tulsa firm Noah Wohlgemuth, has walked away, the firm claiming, given the new dynamic of real debate among board members, it best withdraw representation.
Imagine that. So in the bag for Walters, Noah Wohlgemuth decided it can no longer advise a board Walters no longer fully controls.
Drummond must approve the board’s next outside hire, so why not just choose it himself, or is he worried taking Walters on so publicly might bleed the gubernatorial support of the crazies he courts every time he praises Donald Trump.
It would be so nice to see him step in and, once again, unequivocally do the right thing.
Yep, that was the plan, but I got stuck in education policy and, digesting the backwardness of it, couldn’t escape.
If only our legislators could dive in themselves, get stuck for a while and emerge realizing the obvious, that you achieve what you emphasize and emphasizing ain’t free.
So, school, across most of the state, is back in session.
May our students over-perform the support they receive from the folks minding, and funding, the system.
They shouldn’t have to.
But it’s their only chance.
Every time I see the stat that the state's per capita income is around $63,000, I am amazed. I've lived here for 30 years, teaching nearly all that time. I have it all: years of experience (I retired with 44 years teaching high school and college), a Master's degree, National Board Certification, extra pay aligned with teaching special education, being a Highly Qualified Teacher, named Teacher of the Year in my district twice, and I never earned close to $63,000! I retired in 2021, and you've captured why Oklahoma has an education problem. Having almost 5,000 emergency certifications is reprehensible, as are all the other factors you enumerated. Wake up, everybody, to these problems and find some solutions. Pronto!