While several factors contribute to Oklahoma’s completely unacceptable ranking for public education, the lack of local leadership is among them.

This again became apparent when KOCO-TV recently held an Oklahoma superintendent roundtable to discuss education. Participants included superintendents from Enid, Oklahoma City, Mid-Del, Millwood, Putnam City, Edmond, and Yukon public schools.

The topics included the state’s new reading law, which requires early intervention and targeted focus on struggling readers, with retention as a last resort if a child would otherwise enter the fourth grade reading at roughly a second-grade level or worse.

One participating superintendent conceded, “There’s a large number of kids who are going to be retained.” But he seemed to suggest school leaders’ main concern should be making kids feel they are flourishing despite retention.

No one wants a child to feel like a failure, but we also don’t want to instill an unearned sense of accomplishment. For years, state schools have socially promoted children who cannot read, setting them on a path for long-term failure. Better to endure the wake-up call of possible retention than to proceed through higher grades unaware that you are badly trailing grade-level expectations.

The best way to help kids flourish is to actually teach them to read. If the participating superintendents believe that, they did not say so in plain English.

Similar laws have been implemented in Mississippi and Florida, and the results have been undeniable: More children have learned to read. The same thing occurred in Oklahoma from 2011 to 2014, when a similar reading law was in place here. That demonstrates there is no reason for thousands of children to be retained—unless school officials are willfully defiant and refuse to implement the science of reading.

One superintendent argued that recess should be counted as “instructional” time now that lawmakers have required a set amount of playtime for lower grades.

“If it’s important enough to make a law, it ought to be important enough to count as instruction,” the superintendent declared.

But recess mostly allows kids to get the wiggles out so they can better concentrate in the classroom. While recess provides learning benefits, playtime is not the same thing as doing math or learning to read. That some school administrators would so dramatically water down instructional time explains much about Oklahoma’s poor academic outcomes.

Similar defensiveness was notable when discussing state restrictions on student access to cell phones during class time. Local school officials could have long ago implemented that policy. They had the authority. But school leaders often refused, effectively demanding that a law be passed first.

We routinely hear local school officials complain about state “micromanagement.” Sadly, these superintendents’ comments demonstrate why so many state dictates have become necessary.