Do Oklahomans want educational freedom?

“School freedom gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public school or private school which they believe best serves their needs.” 

Do Oklahomans support the idea? Click here.

Kamala-proofing Oklahoma’s children

[Guest post by Jonathan Small] 

If Oklahoma wants to stop the socialist and anti-American offensive being waged by politicians like Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, Oklahomans must act to “Kamala-proof” what is being taught to Oklahoma kids.

Consider the dangerous rules adopted by the Democrat leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives. Under those rules, House legislation will no longer refer to a father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, nephew, niece, husband, wife, etc. Instead, legislation will use phrases such as parent, child, sibling, parent-in-law, and child-in-law.

The new House rules even ban the use of the words “himself or herself” and instead mandate that “themself” will be used instead.

Democrats don’t want to “risk” referring to someone as male who wants to be referred to as female, regardless of biological reality. In fact, U.S. House Democrats and some Oklahoma Democrats are trying to force boys and men in girls’ bathrooms and males in girls’ sports.

To her credit, Oklahoma Congressman Stephanie Bice, a mother of two girls who represents Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District, saw right through the scheme and voted against this insane rule.

But don’t think this danger is confined to D.C. Indeed, Democrats in the Oklahoma House of Representatives tried a similar scheme this week and tried to bring a version of Pelosi’s rules to Oklahoma.

Where does such dangerous, anti-science, and destructive thinking start? It starts in big unions like the Oklahoma Education Association, which opposed Congressman Bice, endorsed far-left Democrat Kendra Horn as well as team Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and is proliferated in urban K-12 public schools and “higher-education.”

The assault on uplifting American values and our kids must be stopped. The best way to stop it is to give parents and students a lifeline out of environments that are trying to force socialist, anti-American views overtly and subversively on our kids.

Oklahoma Republican lawmakers can and should address this threat in this year's legislative session. They can do this by giving parents control over where their kids are required to go to school. 

Lawmakers can give any parent who wants it the option to change their child’s school to the public or private school of their choice by letting their tax dollars assigned for their child’s education follow the child to the school of the parent’s choice. We allow this kind of choice and parental control in many other government programs. It’s time for that to apply in K-12.

If we want to stop the spread of anti-American and anti-Oklahoma values in Oklahoma by the socialists in D.C., if we want to prevent rural Oklahoma from having to subsidize and be negatively impacted by the indoctrinating insanity going on in public education in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, it’s time to give control to parents and to Kamala-proof Oklahoma.

Inaction on parental choice is impossible

An overwhelming 74% of GOP primary voters believe the money should follow the child.

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

Oklahoma parents are demanding parental school choice and lawmakers are paying attention.

A new poll by Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates (CHS) found 61% of Oklahoma voters support school choice, which was defined as “the right to use tax dollars raised for their child’s education to send their child to the school of their choice whether it is public, private, online, or charter.”

Among Republicans primary voters, support reached 74%. Support was consistent in both urban and rural areas.

That strong support is no surprise, especially considering ongoing public-school closures. Those closures are wreaking havoc and destroying opportunity. This is evident in increased failure rates in academic courses and significant learning loss.

In August, an official from Tulsa Public Schools even told the State Board of Education that district officials expected “that our least-reached students will have lost approximately a year more learning than would have otherwise been the case because of the COVID-related interruptions. So if I’m a student who might otherwise have been predicted to be two years below grade level, we’re anticipating that that student will now be approximately three years below grade level.”

Some school officials now want to end state testing, ensuring parents will not be notified of a child’s learning loss.

Oklahomans’ support for school choice is not tied solely to COVID-19. Polls have found strong support for parental school choice repeatedly since 2014. And Oklahoma’s political leaders have embraced it.

In January 2019, House Speaker Charles McCall said lawmakers “must put parents back in charge of their children’s education and give underprivileged families more options and more opportunity to thrive.”

This year Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat endorsed raising the cap on Oklahoma’s tax-credit scholarship program, saying, “Where there are kids that lack opportunity, my heart pains for them. We need to make sure they are not forgotten.”

Gov. Kevin Stitt endorsed school choice in his 2020 State of the State speech, saying, “Let’s work together to make sure all students at all schools have access to an innovative, enriching curriculum, regardless of ZIP code.”

Yet, despite public support and the backing of legislative leaders, the bidding was done of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, socialist Bernie Sanders, and the OEA/NEA union, which heavily opposed both school choice and President Trump and instead backed Biden and Kendra Horn.

Thankfully for the most vulnerable, there is now no reason for delay. In addition to public support, GOP lawmakers also have the numbers on their side. Republicans now hold 82 of the 101 seats in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and 39 of the 48 seats in the Oklahoma Senate. It takes only 51 and 25 votes, respectively, to pass a bill in each chamber.

With this favorable environment for saving the lives and livelihoods of the most vulnerable through significant expansions of parental school choice, inaction will be impossible.

Support for Oklahoma ed reform hits new high

"While 2020 has ushered in many changes," writes pollster Pat McFerron, "one constant is that voters in Oklahoma continue to support school choice, including allowing parents to use tax dollars to send their children to private schools."

In a survey of 500 registered Oklahoma voters conducted Sept. 20-24, 2020 (margin of error: plus/minus 4.3%), respondents were asked:

"School choice gives parents the right to use tax dollars raised for their child’s education to send their child to the school of their choice—whether it is public, private, online, or charter—which best serves their needs. Generally speaking, do you favor or oppose the concept of school choice for Oklahoma? 

• Strongly Favor .......... 40%
• Somewhat Favor .......... 21%
• Somewhat Oppose .......... 9%
• Strongly Oppose .......... 24%
• Undecided .,........ 6%

"It looks as though the pandemic has strengthened the resolve of Republicans who now support school-choice by better than a three-to-one margin [72% to 23%]," McFerron writes, "while the issue divides Democrats more than we have ever seen [44% favor, 47% oppose]."

In sum, McFerron writes, "one thing is clear: Voters are now focused on reforming public education. They embrace fundamental reforms more now than at any time we have been polling—something that now dates back more than 30 years."

Anti-Christian discrimination reaches Oklahoma

Credit: The Weekly Standard

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

It’s no secret government officials often target traditional Christians for harassment, but Oklahomans often view that as a problem that happens in other states, not here. Sadly, that’s not true.

In 2010, lawmakers passed and the governor signed into law the Lindsey Nicole Henry (LNH) Scholarships for Students with Disabilities program. It provides state scholarships for certain students—those with special needs like autism, or foster children—to attend private schools.

A few things are required for schools to participate. The LNH law requires that participating private schools comply with the antidiscrimination provisions of a section of federal law that bars discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.”

Those are the only three categories listed. Yet, under the leadership of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister, the OSDE drafted new regulations that added “religion” and “sexual orientation” to that list.

As a result, private Christian schools are now being blackballed from serving LNH students.

When Altus Christian Academy and Christian Heritage Academy applied to serve LNH students, they were denied approval by the State Board of Education at the group’s October meeting.

Oklahoma State Board of Education member Kurt Bollenbach complained one of the schools required staff to be “mature Christian teachers,” which he declared was “discriminating against other religions or nonreligions.”

Bollenbach and Brad Clark, who serves as Hofmeister’s top attorney, also stressed the two schools' policies on sexual orientation.

Put another way, if they want to serve LNH students, Christian schools must be prepared to hire strident atheists and embrace all aspects of the LGBT agenda.

Bollenbach even declared Christian schools have the right to set hiring policies only “until they ask for state dollars.” But that is not true, because the LNH program does not force parents to attend any specific private schools. Instead, students attend by choice.

That’s one reason the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld the law in 2016, saying, “When the parents and not the government are the ones determining which private school offers the best learning environment for their child, the circuit between government and religion is broken.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has also upheld school-choice programs that allow students to attend private religious schools.

It’s notable that the LNH program operated for nine years without any problem before the OSDE concocted these new restrictions on schools’ policies regarding religion and sexual orientation.

The OSDE regulations are, in effect, a unilateral rewriting of Oklahoma law done outside the legislative process. Fortunately, the illegality of that action is apparent to all, and the agency will likely face lawsuits if it does not reverse course.

Even so, this incident highlights a sad fact: Citizens in conservative Oklahoma must be just as vigilant in monitoring their government’s actions as their blue-state counterparts.

Party of slavery opposes educational freedom

President Donald Trump is pictured here with rapper Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., better known by his stage name Lil Wayne, on October 29, 2020.

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

This year’s presidential campaigns are causing many people to have “aha” moments that defy partisan stereotypes.

Democratic candidate Joe Biden says he will repeal the tax cuts enacted under President Trump and add many new taxes. When analysts reviewed the combined state-federal tax rates that would result under Biden’s proposals, they found top rates would surge to 62 percent in New York, for example. That prompted Rapper 50 Cent to declare, “I don’t want to be 20 Cent.”

Rapper Lil Wayne in a recent tweet praised Trump for his work on criminal justice reform and inclusion of Wayne’s proposals that empower ownership in black communities.

Rapper Ice Cube reached out to both political parties to discuss his proposals to help black Americans. The Trump administration included some of Ice Cube’s ideas in the campaign’s agenda. Ice Cube lamented that all Democrats did was pay lip service with constant references to “minorities” and "people of color."

In Ice Cube’s video discussing the two parties’ response, he looked somber. That’s a common reaction for those confronted with reality. Nationwide, there’s often a glaring gap between what people have been told about the two political parties and reality.

Here are a few examples.

The Democratic Party was the party of slavery.

Several American Indian tribes took thousands of black slaves with them to their reservations in Oklahoma and then fought for the Confederacy to preserve slavery.

Democrats insist all Americans should have to give tax dollars to groups like Planned Parenthood, an organization whose founder specifically targeted black babies and whose mission today still places disproportionate attention on increasing abortions in minority communities.

“Progressives” decry the Electoral College, yet without the Electoral College, our nation would not have had Abraham Lincoln as president or the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation.

President Trump champions expanding parental school choice, while Joe Biden—who once said he didn’t want Delaware children forced into a “racial jungle”—wants to limit charter schools and opposes scholarship programs that help children attend private schools. Many families who benefit from those policies—including many minority households—are starting to notice.

Biden has also said, “Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” And Biden noted, “…unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community…”

The Trump administration has protected individuals and organizations from being required to facilitate practices they believe violate their faith. Biden’s team has declared they will force individuals and organizations to violate their faith, and the national Democratic Party platform even characterizes abiding by Biblical principles as attempts to “discriminate”.

Aha moments are mounting. We shall see what it means when the votes are finally cast.

Did the education system play a role in our current cultural unrest?

Protesters set up a guillotine outside the home of billionaire Jeff Bezos on June 28, 2020. A flyer promoting the march
on Bezos's home called for an end to his "abuse and profiteering" and to "abolish the police, the prisons, and Amazon."

In a recent survey, likely Oklahoma voters were asked: "Do you agree or disagree that the current cultural unrest is rooted in what our students have learned in the public education system?"

As you can see here, Republicans and Democrats differ sharply. 

Notable GOP support for school choice

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

In politics, as in retail, consumer demand drives product selection, only politicians offer policies rather than baked goods. So it’s notable that multiple speakers strongly advocated for school choice policies every night of the recent Republican National Convention.

That type of strong, vocal support only happens when politicians are certain a policy is both popular and beneficial, as several speakers demonstrated.

Survey research consistently shows strong support
for school choice among Oklahoma Republicans.

Sarah Hughes, whose eight-year-old son is a beneficiary of a Wisconsin school choice program, told national viewers her son “would have slipped through the cracks in public schools” but now has been provided the educational opportunity that will allow him “to succeed.”

Tera Myers, whose son has Down syndrome and is a beneficiary of an Ohio school-choice program, likewise noted her son says school choice “helped my dreams come true” and allowed him to become the “best I can be.”

Such stories are not outliers, nor are they isolated to places far from Oklahoma. Our state has seen dramatic success stories generated by school choice.

For example, in north Tulsa this year Crossover Preparatory Academy continued educating students through distance means when Tulsa Public Schools effectively threw in the towel, other than having online review of past content.

Many of the low-income, all-male and mostly minority students at Crossover Preparatory Academy in north Tulsa attend that private school because of a state tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations.

The benefits of their private-school education can be seen by comparing those students to their socio-economic counterparts still in Tulsa Public Schools. A TPS official recently told the State Board of Education that district now expects that kids “who might otherwise have been predicted to be two years below grade level” are instead going to be “approximately three years below grade level.”

The kids at Crossover still have opportunities thanks to education, but many kids in TPS do not and will pay the price for years.

Former state Rep. Jason Nelson, who helped create a state program that pays for children with special needs to attend private schools, has reported some parents “have told me that it saved their child’s life.” That is not hyperbole. Oklahoma’s school-choice programs have served children with special needs, teens recovering from addiction, survivors of horrendous childhood abuse, and more. School-choice has not only changed lives but saved them.

As the nation grapples with issues of inequality, one of the best paths forward is to expand school choice in Oklahoma and elsewhere. As Donald Trump Jr. bluntly noted, if officials really want to “help minorities in underserved communities,” the best option is to “let parents choose what school is best for their kids.”

Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to the president, noted at the RNC that education “is the great equalizer.” He’s right. It’s time we give all students of all races and economic backgrounds a greater chance at success through school choice.

School choice highlighted at RNC

At the recently concluded Republican National Convention, numerous speakers stressed the importance of school choice. The topic was mentioned every day of the convention, by multiple speakers.

Are House Republican leaders dishonest or ignorant?

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

If this year is like most election years, Oklahomans will receive campaign mailers from state Republicans decrying Washington, D.C.-style politics and proclaiming themselves fiscal conservatives. But in this year’s session—primarily because of House Republican leaders—lawmakers fully embraced D.C. politics and abandoned responsible financial stewardship.

Few things highlight this sad reality more than House Republicans’ decision to increase Oklahoma’s unfunded liability by advancing an unfunded “cost of living adjustment” (COLA) for retired state government workers—a transparent election-year ploy to buy votes with other people’s money.

The negative consequences for working families will be significant.

When Democrats controlled the Legislature, they also advanced unfunded COLAs in election years. That ultimately drained pensions so fast Oklahoma ranked 47th among the 50 states by 2007.

Between 2000 and 2010 the unfunded liability of Oklahoma’s state pensions increased from $6 billion to $16 billion. Things got so bad that by 2010 actuaries predicted the teachers’ retirement plan would never achieve fully funded status.

However, when the GOP won power, that first generation of Republican legislative leaders—who not only touted conservatism on the campaign trail but practiced it in office—began reforming pensions. One major reform, abandoned this year by House Republican “leaders,” was to ban the raiding of pension assets through unfunded COLAs.

Major progress has since been achieved, but—contrary to the fiscal fairy tales offered by some lawmakers—state pensions are still far from whole. Oklahoma’s government pensions started the year with $7.8 billion in unfunded liabilities. That figure is larger now thanks to the unfunded COLA.

The teachers’ retirement system, in particular, faces major challenges. The teachers’ system already had more money going out in benefit payments than what was coming in through employee and employer contributions. The system must make up the difference with investment earnings. Now, those earnings are reeling due to the stock-market collapse tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Teachers’ Retirement System of Oklahoma portfolio has declined by $1 billion since June 30, 2019, and its funded status has fallen from 72.3 percent to around 64 percent.

The unfunded COLA further drained system assets, adding an estimated $400 million in unfunded liability to the teachers’ system.

I am a CPA who previously served on the board of the Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System, so I understand what those numbers represent: reduced benefits for current teachers upon their retirement, diversion of funds from schools and other needs to retirement systems in the future, and tax increases for working families to cover unfunded liabilities (or some combination of all three).

When incumbent Republicans dismiss the hard financial realities created by their raid of pension assets—done amidst a global pandemic when the livelihoods of working Oklahoma families are being decimated—citizens must ask if those lawmakers are willfully ignorant of financial reality or deliberately misleading constituents. Those are the only two possible answers, and neither inspires voter confidence.

Lawmakers prop up OEA/NEA despite radicalism

If transgender reading day occurs at your child’s school, don’t just blame the OEA/NEA. Ask the Oklahoma Republicans who control the state legislature why they continue to preserve the union’s grip on local schools.

Unnecessary and burdensome, HB 1230 raises privacy concerns

Some thoughts on HB 1230, which places more strings on the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship program.

• Accountability is vitally important, but it makes no sense to impose upon a market an accountability system designed to regulate a monopoly. Government regulations are a pale imitation of the true accountability system—accountability to parents. As political scientist Greg Foster says, "there is no real need to regulate private schools, in choice programs or otherwise, for anything other than health and safety."
• This is especially true when one realizes that public schools are not accountable. Indeed, as one retired public school teacher puts it, "there is no entity in America that is less accountable than a government-run school system."
• Republicans believe in reducing, not increasing, red tape. President Donald Trump boasts of a “record number of regulations eliminated” while Gov. Kevin Stitt is aiming for a 25 percent reduction in regulations by the end of his term.
• Submitting extensive data to government officials to publish online raises serious privacy concerns:

• Just last month, for example, we learned that the Arizona Department of Education handed over a spreadsheet containing private data on participating school-choice families to a group that wants to shut down school-choice programs. "The sheet gave the names and email addresses of more than 7,000 parents, the grades their children are in, and the children’s disabilities (if any)," Dr. Forster writes. "While the private data had been superficially covered, mandatory steps to prevent the process from being reversed—revealing the data—had not been taken."
• The Oklahoma Department of Education (OSDE), similarly no fan of school choice, has also demonstrated a recent willingness to cooperate with the organized left.
• Oklahoma Watch reported on Feb. 14 that thousands of Oklahoma students received recruitment flyers in the mail from a virtual charter school and that "parents are furious about the school’s access to children’s names and home addresses." The school’s attorney, Drew Edmondson, said the school got the information from the OSDE website. "This is a violation of privacy and safety," says one Noble Public Schools board member. "We have received alarming complaints," says state Superintendent Joy Hofmeister.

• The only failed example of private-school choice in U.S. history is school vouchers in Louisiana, Dr. Forster writes, where, because of overregulation, participation rates by private schools were catastrophically low. "The problem was not any one obviously bad regulation. There was no 'poison pill.' Each individual regulation, by itself, was not a dealbreaker. The problem was the accumulated weight of many intrusive regulations, whose combined burden was far greater than expected. One important aspect of that was the clear signals that the schools got from the government that more regulations would be coming in the future. Private schools told the program’s evaluators that they didn’t want to sign up to be subject to unpredictable future creation of regulatory liabilities."
• Dr. Donnie Peal, executive director of the Oklahoma Private School Accreditation Commission (OPSAC), reminds us that Oklahoma private schools are already accountable to state and federal governmental entities as well as to OPSAC, which works in collaboration with and on behalf of the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Dr. Peal says HB 1230 is unnecessary.

UPDATES:

• "Legislation imposing new reporting mandates on a school-choice program has passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives," Ray Carter reported Feb. 19, "even though the legislation does not include specific student-privacy protections that ensure compliance with federal law."
• The day after HB1230 passed the House, the bill's author, state Rep. Mark McBride, flipped off and verbally attacked OCPA president Jonathan Small in the state Capitol building. As Small recounts the incident, McBride's words "included saying I was the 'f' word at least twice, calling me a piece of 's----' twice, saying I was worthless twice, twice referring to me as a derogatory word for male genitalia, and twice telling me to 'scat' like I was some sort of animal."
• Gov. Kevin Stitt signed HB 1230 into law.

Trump, Stitt both support tax-credit scholarships

"President Donald Trump urged Congress to advance a federal tax-credit scholarship during his State of the Union address Tuesday evening, just one day after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt urged state lawmakers to expand Oklahoma’s version of the same program," Ray Carter reports.

Stitt proclaims School Choice Week

Hats off to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt for celebrating the fact that "Oklahoma has many different types of public and nonpublic schools, as well as families who educate their children in the home."

Oklahoma education agency promotes progressive activism masquerading as civics

Oklahoma’s state superintendent—allegedly a Republican—is using the power of government to promote social-justice activism in public schools.

Trump 'loves vouchers,' while Biden, Sanders, Warren oppose

The NEA has candidate info here.

House Speaker: ‘Put parents back in charge’

Speaker Charles McCall

In a speech on the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives yesterday, Speaker Charles McCall called for increased education funding and teacher pay. Raucous applause and a standing ovation ensued. But then he added this nugget: "At the same time, we must put parents back in charge of their children's education and give underprivileged families more options and more opportunity to thrive."

Also on the House floor yesterday, Speaker Pro Tempore Harold Wright praised former state Rep. Jason Nelson for his work to enact the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Program for Children with Disabilities, saying the program has made a significant difference for the children who need it.

Oklahoma teacher says ‘Stitt is such a stereotype’

Oklahoma teachers favored Drew Edmondson over Kevin Stitt three to one in this month's gubernatorial election. One presumes that Jennifer Williams, an AP English teacher who believes that "Whites are sucking the life from America" and who is fed up with standard English and other systemic oppression, was one of the Edmondson backers. She is not a fan of Oklahoma Governor-elect Kevin Stitt:

Stitt is such a stereotype: White, male, "Christian," wealthy, cishet. He’s a poster child for the GOP. 

I'm not sure what to make of the quotation marks; is she saying that Stitt is, in fact, not a Christian?

Happily, most Stitt voters don't know what "cishet" means (it's a heterosexual who identifies with his actual gender).

Has support for Oklahoma teacher causes waned?

Dylan Goforth and Kassie McClung have an insightful story at The Frontier.

SoonerPoll: Oklahoma teachers favored Edmondson over Stitt three to one

"In a scientific online survey of Oklahoma teachers, chosen at random throughout the state, 63.7 percent would be voting for Edmondson and 21.6 percent for Stitt," SoonerPoll reports.

In the actual election, all voters (not just teachers) got to have their say. Kevin Stitt won 73 of 77 counties, racking up 54 percent of the statewide vote compared to Edmondson's 42 percent.