Education

Oklahoma Democrats say public school improvement could take years—but want to block students’ emergency exit

January 30, 2026

Ray Carter

In recent years, academic outcomes in Oklahoma’s public schools have fallen even as funding has surged by billions. At the same time, many working families face financial struggles.

At a Jan. 29 press conference, House Democrats unveiled proposals they claim will help those families. A key plank: Democrats would eliminate a state program that helps low-income and working-class families afford a quality private education for their children.

“We’d like to repeal the Parent Choice Tax Credit,” said state Rep. Melissa Provenzano, D-Tulsa.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program provides refundable tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child to cover the cost of private school tuition. As with the public-school system, all Oklahomans can participate in the tax-credit program. However, unlike the public-school system, the greatest financial benefit is provided to families with the smallest incomes.

Families earning up to $75,000 can receive a $7,500 per-child refundable tax credit; those earning $75,001 to $150,000 get a credit of $7,000 per child; families with income from $150,001 to $225,000 qualify for a $6,500 credit; those earning $225,001 to $250,000 receive a $6,000 credit; and those earning $250,001 and up qualify for a credit of $5,000 per child.

The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program is currently capped at $250 million per year. In contrast, the state’s public school system received $9.5 billion in new revenue in the 2024-2025 school year. Combined with reserve funds, Oklahoma public schools reported having $14.1 billion in total revenue available during that school year.

House Democratic Leader Cyndi Munson of Oklahoma City claimed the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program is “subsidizing private education for those who can afford it more than anybody else in the state.”

Provenzano similarly claimed the program “overwhelmingly benefits the wealthier Oklahomans.”

But participation data show that most families benefiting from the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program are from low-income and middle-class families.

According to the most recent report from the Oklahoma Tax Commission, 39,846 children have benefited from the parental choice tax credit during the ongoing school year, with 56 percent of those children from families with incomes of $150,000 or less.

Those families are considered middle class or lower based on widely accepted metrics. The Pew Research Center defines middle-class earners as those with annual household incomes between two-thirds and double the national median household income, or $55,820 to $167,460.

According to Census data, the median household income in Oklahoma among married-couple families is $95,573, meaning half of Oklahoma families earn more than that amount, and the Census reports that the overwhelming majority of children in the state live with married parents or in two-adult households.

The children dismissed as wealthy by Democrats include 3,764 children who qualify for welfare benefits, are homeless, or are considered financially disadvantaged who are using the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program to attend private schools this year.

Among the thousands of families using the program to shift a child from public school to private school for the first time this year, Oklahoma Tax Commission data shows that 72 percent are from families with adjusted gross income of $150,000 or less.

But Democratic lawmakers suggested low-income and middle-class beneficiaries of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program are virtually nonexistent.

“Oklahomans are smart enough to know they have not received anything to help them,” Munson said.

Many working-class families have publicly said otherwise, repeatedly, since the program’s creation.

Emily McDonald, a widowed mother of three children, including a son with autism, is among those who have benefited from the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program.

“It really eases that burden from losing my husband because he was our primary breadwinner,” McDonald said in a February 2024 interview. “So losing him, financially, really made me struggle. That’s why having this tax credit is so important. I am a low-income family. And I can just tell you that it makes me really frustrated to hear some of the people talk about how it only benefits the rich. I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I am a single mother raising three children.”

Rachel Cooper, a mother raising five children following a divorce, has similarly been able to enroll four of her children in private school thanks to the Parental Choice Tax Credit program.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do that without the parental choice (program),” Cooper said in an interview earlier this month. “That is what gave us the opportunity for me to be able to have the freedom to apply and get them registered there.”

At a March 2025 rally at the Oklahoma Capitol, Collin Griffin, father of a student attending private school, pushed back against the narrative that all families using the tax-credit program are living lives of idle wealth.

“The narrative that the PCTC is mostly for the wealthy is not only wrong,” Griffin said, “it is harmful.”

Griffin said he and his wife have an income below $50,000 annually.

Ed Gray, a single parent who previously worked as a federal law enforcement agent, also spoke at the March 2025 rally and noted his son, diagnosed with special needs, is able to attend a private school devoted to those students thanks largely to Oklahoma’s school-choice programs.

“I could not have been able to afford the full tuition without significant hardship,” Gray said.

Dawn Cordova, an Enid mother whose husband was a Chief Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force for most of their married life, said the parental choice tax credit allowed her military family to enroll their daughter in an Enid private school.

“The tax credit has made it much easier to choose a private school option, and the way we look at it is these are our tax dollars anyway,” Cordova said in an interview posted by the American Federation for Children.

In a 2025 video produced by the American Federation for Children, parents Ryan and Mandy Driskill discussed how Oklahoma’s school-choice programs were helping rural families attend Corn Bible Academy, a private school in Clinton.

Ryan Driskill noted that “a lot of times ‘Christian school’ gets equated with ‘higher income’ or ‘higher status’ or something like that.”

“That’s definitely a misconception of private school, is that rich people go to private school,” Mandy Driskill said. “Because that’s not at all how it is out here.”

Ironically, Democratic lawmakers emphasized the financial struggles of many working-class Oklahoma families even as they called for gutting support for those families to access private education for their children.

“Across Oklahoma, families are working harder than ever before and falling further behind,” Munson said.

She also referenced a report “showing nearly 50 percent of working families, who are working more than one job, cannot afford to cover basic needs.”

Need for options greater than ever in Oklahoma

The Democratic push to strip working families of school-choice options comes as the need for school choice is greater than ever.

While Oklahoma public-school revenue has surged more than $3 billion since 2018, rising from $6.3 billion to $9.5 billion, academic outcomes have steadily fallen as spending has increased.

The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, showed that Oklahoma’s fourth-grade reading score has declined nine points since 2019, meaning today’s fourth graders are nearly a full grade behind their 2019 counterparts. Oklahoma’s score on fourth-grade reading was lower than the average in all but three states.

Results were even worse for children in the bottom 25 percent. Fourth-grade reading scores for that group have declined 13 points in Oklahoma since 2019, meaning those students lag more than a year behind their counterparts in prior fourth-grade classes.

Compared to 2015, reading scores for the bottom quarter of Oklahoma fourth-grade students have plunged 18 points, representing the loss of nearly two years’ worth of learning.

In contrast, private schools outperform public schools, even when serving low-income students. 

The gap between fourth graders in Oklahoma’s public schools and fourth graders attending private Catholic schools nationwide was dramatic, based on NAEP results.

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

The average black student at a Catholic school had a fourth-grade reading score on NAEP that was eight points higher than the statewide average for all students in Oklahoma. Hispanic Catholic students outscored Oklahoma students by 14 points on fourth-grade reading–meaning Hispanic students at private Catholic schools are nearly a grade-and-a-half ahead of the average Oklahoma student from all backgrounds.

Even as they called for ending a program that is helping thousands of working-class parents obtain a quality private-school education for their children, Democratic lawmakers also suggested there is little reason to expect significant improvement in public-school outcomes anytime soon.

At a second press conference held later the same day, Democrats discussed proposals to improve Oklahoma’s public-school reading outcomes by duplicating the approach Mississippi officials have used to become one of the nation’s leaders in grade-school literacy.

Democrats suggested Oklahomans will not see significant improvement for many years, and today’s grade-school students may graduate high school before that goal is achieved.

“Mississippi’s success was a marathon, not a sprint,” Provenzano said. “It took a decade-plus to achieve the successes that they’re experiencing and a lot of targeted, sustained investment in kids and services that wrap around them.”

“It was no miracle, what happened in Mississippi,” said state Sen. Mark Mann, D-Oklahoma City. “It was a commitment. It was an investment. And they waited and waited and waited.”

Democratic lawmakers suggested that Oklahomans overwhelmingly oppose school-choice programs that allow families to choose from multiple options for their children’s education, including public schools and private schools.

Polling data says otherwise.

A rolling poll by EdChoice currently shows that 62 percent of adults in Oklahoma, including 71 percent of school parents, support school vouchers.

And, in November 2025, a poll commissioned by the organization “yes. every kid. foundation,” showed that 67 percent of likely Oklahoma Republican primary voters view the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program favorably, and 64 percent support removing the cap. Furthermore, 53 percent of K-12 parents surveyed expressed interest in using the program (with 33 percent being “very interested”), while 13 percent reported they already use the program.

Democratic calls to defund school-choice programs that serve low-income and middle-class families not only run counter to broad public opinion, but will also face strong opposition from Gov. Kevin Stitt, who is expected to seek the elimination of the cap on the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program so that no families are turned away in coming years.

In a recent tweet on X, Stitt declared, “Oklahoma unleashed one of the strongest education freedom movements in the nation. And the results are clear: When parents have choices and schools compete, students win. We’re building an education system that puts families first and drives excellence across Oklahoma.”