Oklahoma public school debate and proposal

 

Surely we still need public schools.  But golly, the results are disappointing.  Latest NAEP test scores show 8 points lost in 8^th grade math and other losses about 5 points nationwide.  10 points is a year’s schooling. Everybody is blaming this on COVID but the scores had improved through 2018 and have now fallen.  The decline started prior to COVID and continues. But the Dept of Defense schools on bases has not fallen.  My sister-in-law and niece, who teach on an army base, say they love teaching the kids there because of DISCIPLINE.  Any disturbance that sends a kid to the office alerts the commanding officer to call the parents.  That seems to be enough to get the student straight.  The other place where NAEP scores haven’t fallen is at some Catholic schools which do the NAEP tests.  They stayed open mostly during COVID.  The Lutheran school I am particularly acquainted with also saw no loss of test results—though they use another testing agency than NAEP. (7^th grade closed two weeks only during COVID) This school graduates 8^th graders with 11^th grade achievement scores every year.  One year all 22 students were labeled “college ready”.  The Lutheran Alumni students go on to public high school and are leaders throughout the high school.  Is this success due to cherry-picking the best students in the community?  No at allt. The student population has more minority students that the general population and scholarships help many of the kids attend.  This year there are 10 Dept.of Human Services custody foster children, and most are doing swell.  Likewise the Army base where my niece teaches has 47% Afro-American kids and scores better than the public schools in the city next door to the base.

            So my question is, “Do we need all that money and politics inserted into public schools?” Catholic and Lutheran schools educate elementary and middle school kids for less than half that of public schools. When I look at what these schools and charter schools do, they are much like the 1950s schools I attended when USA had schools far better than the rest of the world. Today we rank 28^th in science and 20^th in reading. We had one principal, small athletic facilities, parents very supportive, teachers that pulled you aside and assigned extra work if you excelled in some area, no-nonsense discipline environments where kids could learn as much as they could, and they taught ethics, politeness and math.  That makes successful citizens later.

            Governor Stitt has a proposal that seeks to instill some competition into public schools by having $3000 of the $13,000 spent per student follow the student wherever the parents wish the child to attend. His opponent is very much in bed with the teachers unions and educrats and says this “steals money’ from the public school districts although they would retain the $10,000 remainder when a student goes elsewhere and in some cases get to still count that student as one of their own.  Looks like a good deal all around to me.  Well, if Hoffmeister wins and the deal dies, it will surely drive parents to the doors of our 3 parochial schools in town. And Oklahoma continues 46^th in ranking.