A Democrat former state Senate candidate recently claimed that Oklahoma ranked 17th-best in the nation for its education system as recently as 2011, but now ranks near the very bottom of the 50 states.

In a recent column, Erin Brewer, an Oklahoma City Democrat who ran for state Senate in 2024, claimed, “This year’s grads started pre-K in 2011, the year Mary Fallin became governor. At the time, Oklahoma’s public schools were ranked 17th in the nation. (It’s OK if you need to read that again.) Today, our schools are ranked at the bottom—48th, 49th, or 50th depending on the study you reference.”

Brewer claimed the decline was the result of unified Republican control of Oklahoma state government since 2011 and urged Oklahomans to vote Democrat. Fallin’s predecessor was Brad Henry, a Democrat who served from 2003 to 2011.

The claim that Oklahoma ranked among the top half of the nation in education performance when Democrats held sway in Oklahoma politics is a talking point often tossed about on social media.

There’s just one problem with that claim: Oklahoma did not rank in the top half of states in any credible measure of academic outcomes in 2011. Not even close.

While Brewer’s column did not cite her source, the 17th-place ranking in 2011 appears to be a reference to the Quality Counts report issued by Education Week. But that ranking was not based on Oklahoma public schools’ academic outcomes. Instead, the ranking was based primarily on other factors, such as academic standards and teacher-development policies.

As The Oklahoman reported in a 2011 story, “Oklahoma’s education system continues to rise in the state rankings released every year by Education Week. However, actual student achievement remained among the worst in the nation.”

The Quality Counts report, which has since been discontinued, ranked states based on six major categories. The Oklahoman noted that “much of the reason for Oklahoma’s climb came from improved scores based on education policies, not education performance.”

In 2011, Quality Counts gave Oklahoma high marks for Standards Assessments and Accountability, which ranked ninth in the nation that year. Oklahoma also received a B-minus for policies that encourage quality among teachers, such as evaluations, licensing requirements, and ongoing professional development.

But when it came to K-12 achievement, the Quality Counts report gave Oklahoma a D in 2011 even as it ranked the state 17th overall.

Nation’s Report Card: Oklahoma Near the Bottom in Academic Outcomes

The results of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, which are administered in all 50 states, show that Oklahoma’s academic outcomes were nowhere near the top half of the country in 2011. NAEP is often referred to as "the Nation's Report Card" and is widely considered the “gold standard” for assessing educational performance.

However, contrary to the spin promoted by Brewer and other partisans, Oklahoma did experience significant improvement in academic outcomes during the early years of unified Republican control of state government.

In 2011, Oklahoma’s average fourth-grade reading score on NAEP was 215, which was lower than the average score of 220 for public school students nationwide. According to NAEP, only six states and the District of Columbia had a statistically meaningful lower average score that year.

By 2013, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma rose to 217. Although an improvement, that was still lower than the national average score of 221. Only six states and the District of Columbia scored lower.

But in 2015, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma surged to 222, which was above the national average score of 221 for public school students. At that point, Oklahoma outranked 13 other states, a dramatic surge in just two years.

The marked improvement in reading outcomes in Oklahoma coincided with the tenure of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi, who championed a third-grade reading law that provided early intervention to struggling readers and banned social promotion of third-grade students reading far below grade level, requiring those students to repeat a grade rather than enter fourth grade unprepared.

But in 2015, Barresi was replaced by Joy Hofmeister, an opponent of the reading law who successfully lobbied to have it gutted. Throughout Hofmeister’s eight years in office and beyond, reading outcomes in Oklahoma steadily declined.

By 2017, the average NAEP score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma had fallen back to 217. That was lower than the average national score of 221 for public school students. Only three states and the District of Columbia scored worse.

In 2019, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma fell further to 216. That was lower than the average score of 219. Only four states scored worse.

In 2022, Hofmeister’s final year in office, the average NAEP score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma was 208. That was lower than the average score of 216. Only one state scored worse, and Oklahoma’s score indicated students here were performing almost a year behind their peers nationwide.

By 2024, the average score of fourth-grade students in Oklahoma fell to 207. That was lower than the average score of 214. Only two states scored worse.

The trajectory of reading outcomes in Oklahoma schools contrasts sharply with Mississippi, which adopted a similar third-grade reading law around the same time Oklahoma first adopted its law. But where Oklahoma officials gutted their reading law, Mississippi officials kept theirs in place. Today, Mississippi is among the top 10 states in the nation for fourth-grade reading outcomes.

Academic Outcomes Down, School Spending Up

Notably, academic outcomes in Oklahoma have declined even as public-school funding has surged dramatically.

Since the 2017-2018 school year, new per-pupil revenue in Oklahoma public schools has increased by 51 percent, rising from $9,067 per student in 2018 to $13,736 per pupil last year, based on enrollment data and financial information reported by schools to the state’s Oklahoma Cost Accounting System (OCAS). Total funding has increased by more than $3 billion since 2018, but academic outcomes have gone down as school revenue has gone up.

And some sources indicate that per-pupil revenue may be even greater. The National Education Association, a teachers’ union, reported that Oklahoma had per-student revenue of $14,066 in the 2023-2024 school year when calculated using schools’ average daily attendance figures.

While academic outcomes have steadily declined in Oklahoma in recent years, particularly since the gutting of Oklahoma’s third-grade reading law and the learning loss created by COVID school shutdowns in 2020 and 2021, that doesn’t mean the state ranked anywhere near the top of the country in academic achievement in 2011.

Notably, while Brewer attributed Oklahoma’s poor outcomes to Republican control of state government, the one official most associated with academic decline was Hofmeister, who was elected to the office of state superintendent as a Republican in 2014 but switched parties to run for governor as a Democrat in 2022.

Public records show that Brewer was a financial contributor to Hofmeister’s Democratic gubernatorial campaign.