Education

Charter schools outperform OKCPS despite similar poverty levels

November 20, 2025

Ray Carter

Proponents of school choice argue that student outcomes improve when families can select the learning environment that best fits their child. Opponents have dismissed the idea that one school may be better than another, arguing that demographics—particularly low-income status—largely determine a child’s academic destiny.

But data from this year’s state tests show that Oklahoma City-area students who embraced school choice by attending a public charter school were academically proficient at roughly twice the rate of their peers in the traditional Oklahoma City Public Schools district.

A recent newsletter from Fuel OKC, which works to expand quality schools and improve existing schools in the Oklahoma City area, noted that only 13 percent of students in the traditional Oklahoma City Public Schools district scored proficient or above across all Oklahoma School Testing Program (OSTP) test grades (third through eighth) and subjects—math, English Language Arts (ELA), and science—during the 2024-2025 school year.

In comparison, 28 percent of students in Oklahoma City public charter schools scored proficient or above across all OSTP-test grades.

“Even the city’s top-performing schools consistently have 20% or fewer students scoring proficient, underscoring widespread gaps in academic achievement,” the Fuel OKC newsletter stated. “A few schools are exceptions, including Dove Schools, John Rex, Stanley Hupfeld Academy at Western Village, and Santa Fe South, where proficiency rates range from 30% to 41%. These outliers highlight both what is possible and how much work remains for the majority of schools.”

Notably, the four schools highlighted as overachievers are all charter schools.

Chris Brewster, superintendent and founder of Santa Fe Charter Schools, said providing families with more education options is crucial.

“Opportunities for parents to choose the best school for their children are alive and well in OKC,” Brewster said. “Parents can be fully trusted to make decisions that are in the best interest of their kids. From my perspective as a charter leader, it is an honor to be given the chance to prove that academic outcomes are more about what the adults are doing in the classrooms than any other single factor. Charter schools in OKC are proving this every day.”

The data highlighted by Fuel OKC include 10 charter school systems serving Oklahoma City-area students: ASTEC Charter Schools, Dove Schools of OKC, Harding Charter Preparatory High School, Harding Fine Arts Academy, John Rex Charter School, KIPP OKC College Prep, Stanley Hupfeld Academy at Western Village, Santa Fe South Charter Schools, W.K. Jackson Leadership Academy, and Western Gateway Elementary School.

The income demographics of the students served at most of those charter schools are comparable to the income levels of students in the traditional Oklahoma City Public Schools system.

In the Oklahoma City Public Schools district, 91.4 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

Three charter schools serving Oklahoma City-area students serve a higher share of low-income students than the traditional Oklahoma City district.

At ASTEC, 96.3 percent of students are considered economically disadvantaged.

At Stanley Hupfeld Academy, 97.6 percent of students are low-income.

At Santa Fe South Charter Schools, 92.7 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

The student body at three other charter schools is overwhelmingly low-income, although not quite to the same degree as the traditional Oklahoma City district.

At KIPP OKC College Prep, 88.6 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

At Dove Schools, 83.1 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

At W.K. Jackson Leadership Academy, 82.2 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

Only three charters have student bodies with notably lower levels of low-income students than the Oklahoma City district, although a majority of students at all three districts come from families of very modest means.

At Harding Fine Arts Academy, 65.3 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

At Harding Charter Preparatory High School, 57.6 percent of students are economically disadvantaged.

At John Rex, 51.3 percent are economically disadvantaged.

The results from Oklahoma’s state tests are not the only data showing that students who access school choice often outperform demographically similar peers who remain in many traditional public schools.

The results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests showed that academic outcomes in Oklahoma have plunged despite massive spending increases for public schools.

But NAEP tests also found that private Catholic schools dramatically outperformed their public-school counterparts nationwide, even when serving low-income students.

Every two years, NAEP measures the educational achievement and progress of the nation’s fourth- and eighth-grade students in reading and mathematics, utilizing a representative sample of students in each state. NAEP scores are reported on a 0-to-500 scale.

Researchers say 10 points on a state’s NAEP scale score roughly equates to a year of learning.

While Oklahoma’s scale score on fourth-grade reading was 207, the score for fourth graders in Catholic schools nationwide was 230. That means Catholic school students are more than two grades ahead of the typical fourth grader in an Oklahoma public school.

NAEP results show that only 16 percent of economically disadvantaged Oklahoma fourth graders from all schools are proficient in reading.

A growing share of Oklahoma parents are now embracing school-choice opportunities in Oklahoma, with roughly one in four students being educated somewhere other than a geographically assigned traditional public school district. Families are embracing private school choice, charter schools, open enrollment to access other public schools, and homeschooling.

One program that is helping many families, particularly low-income families, access greater educational opportunities for their children is the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program. That program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition, with the largest credits going to those with the lowest income.

According to a Nov. 3 report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission, those applying for tax credit for the 2025-2026 school year included the families of 4,121 students who were shifting from public school to private school for the first time this year. Nearly 73 percent of those students came from lower-income and middle-class families with incomes of $150,000 or less.

Photo credit: Santa Fe South High School Facebook