Norman parents point to 'another Sandusky event'

"The Valentine's Day arrest of a former Norman teacher's aide on a lewd molestation charge has some parents fuming," Randy Ellis reports in The Oklahoman.

Parents say for more than a decade they have warned Norman school administrators and local police about violent and inappropriate conduct toward children by Christopher Ray Flores while he was a teacher's aide at Norman's Wilson Elementary School. They claim their complaints were ignored and covered up.

"You have another Sandusky event," said Norman parent Kristofer Russow, referring to former Penn State University assistant football coach and convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky. "The warnings that we put out regarding this individual went completely unheeded."

Flores was charged with lewd molestation Feb. 13 after a relative complained Flores had molested her 9-year-old son.

Only 1 in 5 Americans say high-school graduates prepared for college

According to the latest Rasmussen survey, only 18 percent of likely U.S. voters believe most high school graduates have the skills needed for college.

Pre-K girls wander away from Guthrie school

Two pre-kindergarten students wandered away from a Guthrie elementary school, The Oklahoman reports.

'These lockdowns scare the children'

A retired schoolteacher, raised back east but now living in Edmond, magnanimously respects the right of poor benighted souls to possess firearms "for hunting and self-protection." But what's interesting for the purposes of this blog is what she says about lockdown drills: 

I've held too many in my career. I've had SWAT team practices in my schools after hours to prepare local police for a mass shooting. Do you know how difficult it is to explain to students that they need to practice hiding in their classrooms from those who possess weapons whose sole purpose is the mass shooting of the innocent? These lockdowns alone scare the children.

School Choice Week is in full swing

Here's my recent conversation with OETA's Dick Pryor.

Gov. Fallin proclaims School Choice Week

Recognizing the importance of traditional public schools, charter schools, and nonpublic schools (including home schools), Gov. Mary Fallin has proclaimed next week to be School Choice Week in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma parents already have some school choices, and here's hoping they will have many more in the future. Here's one 60-second reminder of why it's important:

OKC policy 'truly dismaying'

According to Ed Allen, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of the American Federation for Teachers, there's an unofficial policy in the Oklahoma City school district which prevents giving students any grade lower than a 50.

"Reports of a 50 percent grade rule are truly dismaying," the state's largest newspaper rightly says. "That practice would discourage students who actually do their course work and are graded accordingly."

'Public school finances make Enron look like a model of transparency'

So writes Robert Maranto in the Journal of School Choice, reviewing Marguerite Roza's book Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

Under our highly complex systems of school finance and resource allocations, policy-makers, educators, and taxpayers simply do not know what if any strategy drives particular spending decisions, or how costs and outcomes compare across programs. In public education we are all, quite literally, flying blind.

In 1912, Kentucky 8th-graders had to know stuff

How would today's 8th-graders perform on this test from a century ago?

Lockdown High?

Elementary-school children in Tulsa are learning how to handle school shootings, and in Oklahoma City the schools are considering implementing intruder drills or lockdown drills. "Will Newtown lead to 'Lockdown High," Gene Healy asks.

Meanwhile, KOKH FOX 25 in Oklahoma City, reporting on a renewed interest in homeschooling, quotes one Oklahoma mother as saying: "I know so many of my friends are homeschooling their kids because of the shootings, because it's terrifying to know those can be your kids."

Public money to private schools

One out of five Arizona students in public schools is now eligible for an Education Savings Account.

'It's not just for scary religious people anymore'

Homeschooling, that is.

Early ed boosters want to double down on failure

"Charles Murray and other social researchers are verifying what you can see on any shopping trip to Walmart—American culture has been coming apart for five decades now," writes the Indiana Policy Review Foundation.

Public education’s callousness to that fact is inexcusable. It not only failed to bolster the nuclear family but made it seem relative; that is, only one of several arrangements supposedly producing the same happy result. Nor did its managers see need to instill individual responsibility or draw the connection between liberty and economic well-being. The [Indianapolis] Star's answer, though, is we need more of the same, that we should extend the influence of an unrepentant education establishment over our children, and with it a collective-bargaining structure that makes meaningful reform impossible. So how many educrats and public-sector unionists does it take to replace a mother and father overwhelmed by ruinous taxation and destructive social forces? The Star would have us find out.