Not long ago, I off-handedly created a meme that went viral. It basically said that if Oklahomans worried more about the education of our children than who was going to be OU’s next head coach, we’d start taking our country back.
I don’t hate sports: I coached middle school girls softball for 3 years, the second oldest daughter was in a traveling basketball league several years, the next youngest girl played softball nearly all her time in elementary school and the two boys played a bit of baseball.
Here’s the problem: a focus on sports that eats into, or usurps academics, and that problem is enormous.
As a teacher I saw it often. In middle school I had a parent who literally told me she didn’t care about her child’s grades because he was going to play basketball and wouldn’t need an education.
An extension of this thought process comes to light when you talk to college professors. Many will tell you that, often, sports ‘stars’ will send surrogates to class for them so they don’t have to attend or do the work themselves. It’s all done with a wink and a nod and accepted as ‘the way it is’ because, well, sports and all the money athletics brings into the school. DON’T FORGET: money and power are the drivers of nearly every rotten thing.
As a high-school science teacher, I had a basketball star in my Ecology class one year. He did nothing but fall asleep in the back row. Consequently, he received the ‘F’ he deserved, making him ineligible for play that week. After the ineligible list was published, the mother called the principal and the principal called me into the office. I was to meet the mother before class – at 7am – each Wednesday morning to discuss what her son needed to do to stay on the eligible list for that week.
Three weeks of meetings and the student still wasn’t putting in enough effort to get above a ‘D’. During the last meeting, the mother told me that the reason the son wasn’t making the eligible list was because I was a racist (and this was in the early 90’s!) and she would have him moved to another class.
Of course the principal moved the boy to a class where he – and the rest of the team – could stay eligible. I never received an apology for the mother’s actions, nor was the child ever made to perform at grade level. Problem solved.
This example, frankly typified much of my teaching career in public schools, unfortunately – parents threw a fit, student got what they wanted and teacher was the one punished in the end.
Sports can teach valuable lessons, this is true, but not when sports become the idol of the school or the family and, sadly, this case is more often than not, while academics becomes relegated to last place.
Taxpayers don’t own their own property, in part, thanks to the MASSIVE school bond issues passed to create multi-million dollar sports facilities for high schools. School budgets strain disproportionately toward sports (in many schools) and administration, when those dollars could better used for tutors, more challenging curricula and teachers with Master’s degrees in subject areas – not courses on how to teach.
Yet, in a blind grope to increase academic output, the state and federal governments continually usurp power over parents and the community by creating law after law to the point that the hands of all those concerned become tied, making it impossible to create changes for the betterment of students even if they wanted to.
Look at Title 70 – the section of law referring to public education in Oklahoma – it is enormous and convoluted, to my point.
Truly, there are but two ways to ‘save’ public education: for governments to stop trying to control the practice – and for better or worse – hand it back to the communities to which it makes the most difference, and for parents to assume full responsibility for their own children.
But yet, human nature will never allow that to happen… governments necessarily want to control, human nature allows parents to let them and the cycle continues unabated.
Until we understand that PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY is the key to freedom and happiness and that this character trait – though it flies in the face of our lazy natures – is our ULTIMATE CONTROL over every aspect of our lives, human beings will forever be doomed to control by those who crave control and our system of public schools will never produce the results we expect.
I would like to say this as an opener to this piece: This is not a rebuke of Governor Stitt – there are many things our Governor has done of which we all approve – but there is a sincere lack of agreement in the area of ‘School Choice’ that needs to be addressed. I am not criticizing to criticize, but to make points I think EVERYONE – especially Republicans – should think about before blind acceptance of the concept of state-sponsored ‘school choice’ through yet another voucher system.
This is the section in which the Governor addressed Government Education – I have bolded the sections with which we take exception –
I have bolded and italicized the popular ‘buzz words’ used to create emotion around the topic of ‘school choice’ –
My comments are enclosed in parentheses.
(1.) We provided record funding for all public schools, including charter and rural schools.
These initial investments were good first steps for Oklahoma’s education turnaround, but there’s much more to do.
(1a.) Just 15% of Oklahoma high school graduates are ready for college in English, math, reading and science — less than one out of five.We can do better than 47th in the nation when it comes to our kids
(Democrats say this every time they want more funding for schools).
We’ve tiptoed around the edges for far too long. It’s clear the status quo isn’t working. We need to take bold steps. It will take courage, and it will take a desire to make a generational impact. This is our moment!
(There is always an emergency that requires government to act – Nancy Pelosi perfected this concept with ObamaCare.)
(2.) We know education is not one-size-fits-all, and I pledge to support any legislation that gives parents more school choice, because in Oklahoma, we need to fund students, not systems! ProTem Treat filed a bill called the Oklahoma Empowerment Act. It makes sure that money follows the student, and it would make us a national leader in school choice.
(Oklahomans were told this about the Lyndsey Nicole Henry Scholarship and our creation of charter schools, yet, we are STILL not apparently a ‘national leader in school choice’. When will that come? How many times will we be told this very thing?
Let me be clear: Oklahoma has a lot of great schools, but the results don’t lie. We need new ideas, more options, and higher standards for our kids
(Again, how many ‘new’ ideas are there? The more the government micromanages, the worse schools get because of the layers and layers of laws and rules).
This is just common sense.
(I’m missing the common sense part I guess.)
(3) We have a duty to make sure nothing stands in the way of an Oklahoma student achieving their full potential. There are roadblocks – literally. State law creates artificial barriers for school districts that don’t put our students first.
Our school transportation formula is outdated and broken. We desperately need to modernize it.
(What does ‘modernize’ mean? It is a word without definition in the government setting. Here, the word ‘modernize’ can only mean spending more money and/or ‘growing government’. Taxpayers should REQUIRE definitions for terms attached to their tax dollars.)
(4) Another roadblock in our current system keeps some of the best teachers out of the classroom. Right now, some talented teachers choose to leave the classroom to make more money as an administrator. Oklahoma students can’t be the best without the best teachers. That’s why I’m proposing matching funds so that our best teachers can make six figure salaries and stay in the classroom.
It’s the right thing to do for our teachers and for our kids!
(How do we know? What metrics are used to make this statement? Every year, Oklahoma continues and doubles-down on failed systems – stacking up laws and programs government schools should follow – yet we still languish at the ‘bottom’ of the NAEP – National Assessment of Educational Progress. This comment means absolutely nothing if not backed up by some kind of plan that doesn’t involve more failed government interventionist policies.)
Another way to support Oklahoma educators is to protect their paychecks from union bosses. The same unions that have pushed critical race theory and school closures intimidate new teachers into handing over part of their salaries. Liberal unions want to keep a stranglehold on their cut of teacher pay. Enough is enough! Every other profession lets you opt-in to health insurance and other benefits at work every year. Unions should be opt-in, not opt-out!
(ABSOLUTELY, but why – after years of lip service to this idea – has it NOT BEEN DONE?)
1. WHY DOES THE LEGISLATURE CONTINUE TO FUND FAILING PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
Seriously. Our Governor appears proud of all the funding poured into government schools but then directly follows that statement with DATA indicating that the majority of Oklahoma students are NOT READY FOR COLLEGE.
If you know education isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor, why make all private solutions (private and homeschools) public ones by infusing them with taxpayer dollars?
Doesn’t that create yet another extension of an already-broken system?
One major talking point for the bill has been, “This is voluntary, no one has to take the money” yet Senator Greg Treat, during his defense of SB1647 in the Senate Education Committee (where the bill only passed 8-7 with Treat and Majority Floor leader McCortney’s extra-committee voting) said numerous times that ‘state’ (government) money necessarily has to come with strings and that we couldn’t be worried about what might happen in the future. Hmmm…isn’t that why we have SO MANY LAWS with UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES?
Most recently, former Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter issued an opinion regarding an attempt to force private schools taking students on LNH scholarships to add ‘sex’ to their state-required discrimination policy.
However, several years after the passage of the LNH law—after State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister became head of the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE)—officials at OSDE rewrote the regulations governing the LNH program to also bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and religious affiliation. Those revisions were then approved by the State Board of Education, which at that time consisted of Hofmeister and members appointed by then-Gov. Mary Fallin.
The revised regulations effectively required private religious schools that adhere to traditional Christian teachings to nonetheless hire atheists and abandon student code-of-conduct requirements regarding sexuality and marriage if they accepted LNH students.
In November 2020, the revised OSDE regulations led the State Board of Education—by that time consisting mostly of Gov. Kevin Stitt appointees who were not involved in the earlier revision process—to initially reject the application of one private Christian school that sought to serve LNH students.
So, if a REPUBLICAN-appointed board is going to apply Obama-orginated Title IX guidanceto LNH-required anti-discrimination law (42 U.S.C. section 2000d), and a subsequent REPUBLICAN-appointed board acted on that change, what would happen under a DEMOCRAT Governor-appointed board?
Though AG Hunter’s opinion states that the State Board “lacked the statutory authority to impose additional requirements on participating schools” (among others) and Hofmeister said of the decision that the Board would “move forward in accordance with the opinion“, an opinion has only advisory effect – another Board may see things another way.
This goes for federal law as well. In 2016, the heads of the Department of Justice and the US Department of Education Office For Civil Rights sent a Dear Colleague letter to all state schools that they were adding transgender rights to Title IX law. Let’s not quibble about the fact that these Dear Colleague letters mean little to nothing, because states and schools have a history of following them like Supreme Court decisions. During his presidency, Trump rescinded this ‘guidance’ only to have Biden reinstate it not long after his inauguration. This introduced HUGE amounts of confusion into a system already generally overregulated and confused.
What ends up happening with this kind of thinking is not that the bottom gets elevated, but the top gets drug down. It’s like the ‘even the playing field’ idea – it’s a socialist notion.
You can’t continually take from others with more and give it to those who have less because eventually you have a society with no middle class (a CLASS-LESS society), which is what’s happening now.
If parents themselves won’t step up and take control over their child’s education, you can’t legislate or incentivize them to do so. I’ve written about this numerous, numerous times from the perspective of an education policy researcher and that of a former teacher.
We need to stop this kind of ‘equity’ thinking and concentrate on helping the majority of kids while letting non-profits and those who wish to volunteer their time (and there are lots of those thank goodness!) to help those that are – for whatever reason – not in a position to help themselves.
4. TEACHERS LEAVE THE CLASSROOM FOR A LOT OF REASONS, BUT MOSTLY BECAUSE ADMINISTRATORS WON’T ADMINISTRATE
How is government going to fix that? Administrators are already supposed to administrate, yet there are at least two bills I’ve seen in the legislature this year adding yet another law to Title 70 TO MAKE ADMINISTRATORS DO THEIR JOBS. How can adding yet another law fix that?
My contention has always been that the Conservative option is always the best – our state should stop writing school law, repeal a lot of existing school law and GET OUT OF THE WAY OF COMMUNITY CONTROL!
Why do you suppose charters aren’t working the way they were at the beginning of the charter movement? We legislated them to death too! I worked for a charter school that was GREAT when it started only to watch it get worse and worse every year to the point that it was no different than the neighborhood school.
1. Cut Bureaucracy Don’t Add To It – as ROPE showed with Common Core, Turning Around Failing Schools, and all the other pillars of Obama’s Education Reform system – BUREAUCRACY DOESN’T WORK, it simply impedes the process.
Instead of ADDING laws, REPEAL laws relating to government education. Webs of laws entangle and confuse those they are meant to control.
Republicans talk endlessly about ‘local control’ but rarely REMOVE state laws and mandates to allow schools to function according to community needs as addressed by local school boards. Could this be part of the reason parents finally quit participating in the process until recently?
In fact, it could be argued successfully that part of the reason school boards stopped addressing (or listening to) the needs of parents is that parent desires are often stymied or take a back seat to the need (or drive) to receive funding by following state and federal laws – the latter of which are not even Constitutional. As Republicans say they believe – but rarely follow – THE LESS GOVERNMENT the MORE INNOVATION, POSSIBILITY and OPPORTUNITY.
2. Provide tax credits for parents wanting to use other systems – Instead of taking money from parents and then ‘giving’ it back to them with strings created by the need for the state to be accountable to the money it gives parents – simply DON’T TAKE IT FROM PARENTS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
This seems up front enough but then the argument becomes – “what about parents who don’t pay into the system”?
To take from others to give to those without is REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – something, again, Republicans are ostensibly not for. It used to be that the poor were cared for by churches and communities – have churches shrunk because they have nothing to do now that the state does all their work for them?
3. Provide tax credit scholarships for taxpayers wanting a tax deduction and parents wishing to apply for a scholarship. Oklahoma has the Lyndsey Nicole Henry Scholarship for children with disabilities to attend schools other than their failing neighborhood school. Why not create another tax deduction scholarship for those who would like to pay in to ‘sponsor’ needy students?
4. Stop Funding Failing Schools – truly, what difference does it make if you take the money from the school to follow the kid when government schools STILL have no incentive to get better? Eventually – even with the benevolent hand of government guiding us – you’re eventually going to RUN OUT OF SCHOOLS TO RUN TO!
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*The evaluation, Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Final Report (587 pages, PDF), found that while the sites succeeded in implementing new measures of effectiveness and used them to inform a range of personnel decisions, the initiative did not lead to an overall improvement in student achievement or graduation rates. Although interim evaluations as of 2013-14 had found small improvements in grades 3 through 8 reading scores at some schools, the final report concludes that, as of the spring of 2015, the initiative had had no significant impact on students’ reading or math outcomes. https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-teacher-effectiveness-initiative-fell-short-study-finds
SB 1647 creates the Oklahoma Empowerment Account Program under an emergency declaration. As an Oklahoma homeschool mom, I oppose this legislation.
While I believe the state of Oklahoma’s public education is in a state of emergency, this legislation attempts to expand publicly funded education without addressing the actual issues with existing public education. Private schools and homeschooling families that participate in this government expansion will do so at the price of their own autonomy and constitutional freedom. This bill is being promoted as a silver-bullet solution, touted as not growing government and heralded as a champion of protecting private schools and homeschooling in Oklahoma—absurdities.
Supporters of this legislation claim the Oklahoma Empowerment Act (OEA) is the solution to the ills of public education.
It names an “Agency” to be created within the OK Department of Treasury and allows for private contracting of services (see Page 3 and Page 10). The “Agency”, remember that’s the Department of Treasury, will be in charge of creating and approving applicants and setting standards for educational vendors and determining qualified expenses for parents.
Not the OK State Department of Education, not the parents (their choice is limited to the approved vendors list), but the Treasury Department (or the contractor they hire).
You don’t ‘cure’ public education simply by re-assigning it to a new bureaucracy.
In fact, the only mention of the Department of Education comes on Page 8; their part is to report the cost per student enrolled in the OEA program to the Treasury Department. If the Department of Education can’t provide quality education via public schools, charter schools, and virtual schools, why would the Department of Treasury do any better at picking curriculum, programs, and schools to be participants in the OEA scheme?
The OEA is being labeled as an alternative to failed pubic education and promises on Page 15 that the program will not to expand the regulatory authority of the state beyond the means necessary to enforce requirements in the act. Geez, I wonder if it will be as limited and narrow as the US Congress’ use of the necessary and proper clause. From the text of SB 1647, there’s actually much expansion of the regulatory authority of the state already planned.
First, there’s a prohibition on “educational services providers” from sharing empowerment funds with parents (see Page 9). So parents can use funds to pay for a math tutor, but not themselves if they are teaching their children math? Each school and family that participates in the program will be subject to an audit.
Next, the state will approve educational service providers (see Page 9-10), so will homeschool families that want to participate have to be approved? What are the standards and when will those be available for review? What is the process to challenge rulings?
Finally, there will be random annual audits of 10% of OEA accounts, with cases of suspected fraud being referred to the Attorney General (see Page 11-12).
What protections are there for small private schools and parents from bureaucrats, armed with the power to audit and intimidate? What’s the oversight on the audits? And that’s just the “necessary to enforce” regulation authority that’s been disclosed, can you imagine how much more this program will grow government?
Supporters of this bill have made the outlandish claim that this government program actual protects private education and homeschooling. According to these “experts,” government intervention will increase the rights and freedoms of private businesses and individuals. It’s inconceivable, but if it wasn’t for this illogical headline I may have missed this conversation altogether.
I’ve homeschooled in several states, most of which have illiberal requirements.
For example, in Virginia homeschooling families must notify the state of their intent to homeschool. I had to verbally notify the school and filed a letter with the school district of my intent to homeschool my children.
In South Carolina homeschooling families are required to join associations that certify academic progress is being made to the state. I don’t know the history of these states’ homeschool laws, but I do know only Oklahoma has the constitutional right to homeschool. It is a major reason we choose to live in Oklahoma.
If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s to fight for what I believe in and never trust politicians who push radical agendas through invented emergencies.
Here’s the link to SB 1647 Oklahoma Empowerment Act . I encourage you to read it for yourself and tell your legislator to oppose this government power grab and FIX the publicly funded education system that already exists!
Bio, Emily Hladik:
I am a homeschool mom, creator of www.GreatAmericanStudies.com, and co-founder of Enid Freedom Fighters. I have a M.Ed., have been an adjunct instructor of history and political science, and married to my U.S. Marine (Ret.) husband for over 20 years.
As I worked at the capitol this week with legislators we hope to work with on parental rights legislation, I’d like to make sure you saw this from ParentalRights.org. You can find it online here. Stay engaged parents, your kids are your own! Tracey Montgomery, Parental Rights Director
Will you help us ride the wave?
“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” said Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in a debate on September 28, 2021. Those twelve words will live on in infamy in electoral politics. Mr. McAuliffe had led every poll until then. His party comfortably won the presidential election in Virginia by ten points just a year earlier.
But telling parents that they should not be in charge of their kids’ education was a monumental miscalculation, especially in a year when many parents saw what their kids’ education actually looked like through a Zoom window; in a year when school boards began adopting social engineering above education; in a fraught year involving masks, vaccines, and in-person versus remote; in a year when many parents learned that they have real options other than public schools, like homeschooling, pods, and micro-schools.
I live in Virginia and followed this election quite closely. If ever a moment could be pointed to when the momentum shifted, that debate was it. That single sentence may be the best example of a “Kinsley gaffe”—a phrase coined by journalist Michael Kinsley several years ago. “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”
Sometimes politicians mistakenly say what they really mean. This single truthful sentence tipped the first domino that led to the Virginia election earthquake.
And parents led the way. Parents who don’t agree that they should sit down and shut up. Parents who want to be involved in the education and lives of their children. Parents who want their schools to answer to them, not the other way around.
Parents like you and me.
The Parental Rights Foundation needs your help to keep this wave alive. Earlier this year we sued the District of Columbia when it passed an ordinance that allows children as young as 11 years old to receive vaccinations without their parents’ knowledge or consent—and then hides the fact from the parents.
Just last week,we sued Virginia over a new statutethat tells parents of faith that they may not consider religion when hiring a babysitter. That’s right: Virginia has become the ultimate nanny state, making it a human rights violation to want a babysitter caring for our children to share and support our religious beliefs and training.
Next month, I will be traveling to San Diego to the American Legislative Exchange Council to introduce a model fundamental parental rights bill that could be used to introduce similar statutes around the country .
The country is awakened to parental rights like never before.
Would you consider making your best donation to help us elevate our presence and ability to take advantage of this new momentum?
Wearing one of my other hats—my vice president of HSLDA Action hat—I interviewed Mr. McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin, after the gaffe but before the election, to decide whether HSLDA Action could endorse Mr. Youngkin. Referring to Mr. McAuliffe’s education statement, Mr. Youngkin said he believed parents should be deeply involved in the education of their children.
After talking about some of his education policy preferences, he enthusiastically referred to a Virginia statute that says parents have a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child. He said it as if he thought it would be a surprise to me.
It wasn’t a surprise.
Trying not to blow our own horn too loudly, I politely told him that we had been instrumental in drafting the bill that became the statute and in shepherding it through the Virginia legislature in 2013.
Would you consider helping us to bring bills like this to even more states in the coming year? And to prosecute lawsuits like the ones in D.C. and Virginia?
Moments like these rarely occur with such clarity. Parental rights have been on the defensive in many ways. But pendulums do swing, and when they do, we need to strike.
We need your help now more than ever.
For freedom’s sake,
James R. Mason President
PS: HSLDA Action did endorse Mr. Youngkin—and in case you haven’t heard, he won.
