Oklahoma educrats full of hot air

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings once said, "School choice is part of the strategy to give every child an excellent education."

Secretary Spellings will be the featured speaker tomorrow at a joint meeting of the Oklahoma House and Senate Education Committees. One of the reasons choice is so important -- and one hopes Secretary Spellings will mention this tomorrow -- is that, as Kevin Carey has pointed out, the folks in charge of Oklahoma's government-run schools aren't leveling with parents when it comes to school performance. Mr. Carey is the author of the OCPA study Hot Air: How Oklahoma Inflates Its Educational Progress Under No Child Left Behind.

For example, according to Mapping Oklahoma's Educational Progress 2008, a new publication from the U.S. Department of Education, only 27 percent of Oklahoma's fourth-graders are proficient in reading. But Oklahoma's education officials would have you believe an astonishing 88 percent of our fourth-graders are proficient in reading. They are full of hot air, as you will see if you read Mr. Carey's report.