Oklahoma’s fourth-grade reading outcomes are among the worst in the nation.

We already know what to do about it. “There is no reason a child cannot read before they are in third grade,” State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister correctly pointed out in 2019. “But our teachers have to teach based on the science of reading, and that is not happening across this state. It is happening in pockets.”

She’s right. I commend to your attention OCPA’s recent policy brief, “A call to action: Changing the trajectory of reading in Oklahoma,” and our literacy website, ReadOK.org.

To solve the problem, let us pursue two lines of attack: direct and indirect. First, we can fix public schools and universities by passing laws to reform them. Second, we can go around them.

The Mississippi Miracle shows us that passing laws can, at least in part, have the desired effect. And indeed, OCPA president Jonathan Small has some excellent recommendations for Oklahoma state lawmakers to improve reading outcomes.

But let’s be realistic. We have to remember that Oklahoma’s education schools are a huge problem. There are ed school professors who “seek to disrupt whiteness” and who engage in all sorts of left-wing activism—while continuing to crank out teachers who cling to discredited methods of teaching reading. As Greg Forster pointed out in an OCPA policy paper (“Forming teachers: the education school challenge”), “the traditional reform agendas of the past generation—hector the schools to change their curricula, and shame them for participating in unscrupulous interest-group politics—have no results to show for all their work.”

Moreover, he says (“The science of reading and the art of teaching”), teachers are going to do what they’re going to do. They believe that these discredited methods work. “And when the classroom door closes, they’re going to do what they believe works.” 

That’s why the indirect route is so important. “We can fix schools—that is, traditional public schools—by going around them,” Heritage Foundation scholar Jay P. Greene has written (“Fix schools by not fixing schools”). We must expand access to other educational options. 

The main reason we should stop focusing on fixing traditional public schools is that, for the most part, they don’t want to be fixed. The people who make their living off of those schools have reasons for wanting schools to be as they are and have enormous political resources to fend off efforts to fundamentally change things. Trying to impose reforms like merit pay, centralized systems of teacher evaluation, new standards, new curriculum, new pedagogy, etc. on unwilling schools is largely a futile exercise. They have the political resources to block, dilute, or co-opt these efforts in most instances.

Therefore, we must empower parents to choose schools that enthusiastically embrace the science of reading rather than leaving their kids trapped in schools that are always kicking against the goads.

Oklahoma policymakers must constantly preserve, defend, and expand Oklahoma’s framework of universal educational choice. Not only for preschool through 12th grade, but also in higher education. As scholars on the left and right have argued, we must expand Oklahoma’s system of higher education vouchers.