Articles

This week, the Oklahoma City Public Schools is embarking on a listening tour. They have titled it, “The Great Conversation,” a phrase usually applied to the significant literary works of Western civilization.

In our state, opportunities to exercise school choice are pretty limited, unless you have money or fall into certain hard-to-educate (but not impossible-to-educate) categories, such as students with special needs. For most families, the options for parents and students are: pay for school choice, move into a public school district where schools are decent, or lie.

The radical environmental movement favors centralized, top-down control ... except when it doesn’t.

Yesterday, an attempt to advance the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact in the Oklahoma House of Representatives was withdrawn. The issue is unlikely to return in the current legislative session. So far, 10 states and the District of Columbia have enacted NPV legislation.

Fifty years ago the state of Oklahoma began collecting money for union dues from the paychecks of public school teachers. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected free of charge, to benefit the union activity and political agenda of both the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) and the Washington, D.C.-based National Education Association. As a matter of principle, politics do not belong in the paychecks of teachers.

The state of Kansas is on a “march to zero.” The state’s political leaders have decided to eliminate the state individual income tax for all income earned in Kansas.

Oklahoma’s shortage of public school teachers has been much in the news lately. Those in the education establishment say that solving the problem will require increased funding and greater teacher satisfaction (by limiting class sizes, for example).

Making college tuition-free for some Oklahomans while simultaneously saving the state money seems like a win-win to us.

If public schools lose 60 students total because of a school choice program, the education establishment will do everything it can to put a stop to it. But Oklahoma public schools lose 60 students every day as dropouts. The annual cost to taxpayers is a staggering $800 million—each and every year.

Oklahoma’s shortage of public school teachers has been much in the news lately. Those in the education establishment say that solving the problem will require increased funding and greater teacher satisfaction (by limiting class sizes, for example).