A new report from Wallet Hub has Oklahoma ranked 50th out of 51 in public education in the U.S.
This ranking includes Washington D.C.
To read the full report, click here.
The report weighs in several areas such as reading and math scores, financial investment, and ACT and SAT media scores.
Mostly, Oklahoma ranks in the bottom 10, or even bottom three. Oklahoma only ranked more middle-of-the-road in security at 34th.
The newest Oklahoma Board of Education member, Becky Carson, brought this up in Thursday’s board meeting.
“Today it came out, well I don’t know if it was today, but it was recently announced that we are 50th in the states,” Carson said.
Carson sounded the alarm on the growing amount of emergency teaching certificates being staffed in public schools without the process of fully certifying those teachers being followed through.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters agreed with Carson and said a potential rule for this will be worked on in the future.
After Thursday’s board meeting, he commented on the ranking report:
“When you look at education rankings, a lot of these are ridiculous,” Walters said. “They love to take into account how much money we put in education. That’s never been an evaluation of mine of what makes a good education system, its outcomes.”
FOX23 reached out on Friday to State Representatives John Waldron (D-Tulsa) and Dick Lowe (R-Caddo County). Both are former educators and sit on the House Education Committee. Lowe is the chair of that committee.
“Without a question, we’re not happy with where we’re at in education in Oklahoma,” Said Rep. Lowe.
Lowe said the report puts an obvious light on areas of desperate need in Oklahoma’s education like teacher support and test scores. However, he questioned the fairness of this report, especially on ACT and SAT scores.
“If you look at one of their big parameters, they look at the ACT and SAT scores state wide,” Lowe said. “We’re one of the handful of states that require every graduate to take that. Now if we have students that are not going to college, they know they’re not, they’re going into the workforce or whatever skills they’re going into, they could care less about that test.”
Oklahoma is one of 27 states to require students to take the ACT before graduating. However, representative John Waldron said it’s more than just those scores. He said it’s a culture of respect for teachers that’s simply not there.
“It’s very hard to be a teacher these days,” said Waldron. “The pay does not keep up with the private sector, the demands put on the system are harder and harder. We have a state superintendent who wants to make the loyalty test part of teaching and require new teachers to take a citizenship test. Is that a culture of respect for teachers? And that’s a bad deal because if we aren’t teaching society to respect teachers, how can we expect students to respect them? If students aren’t respecting teachers, then how are we gonna have a society based on respect?”
Both Lawmakers agreed with what board member Carson said in Thursday’s board meeting.
“As I was looking at what she was saying, I thought, ‘Well you’re right on the money, you’re right on the money, that’s where our problem is,’” Said Rep. Lowe. “And I don’t think we have a lot of superintendents not trying to find a fully certified teacher out there but it’s hard to find them. It’s hard to find them.”
Oklahoma was ranked 17th in 2010 and 2011 in public education and it has since fallen rapidly.
“We slipped to 49th at the time of the teacher walkout and we raised taxes to pay for education investments then,” Rep. Waldron told FOX23. “I really appreciate the legislature for doing that because we stopped some of the bleeding. But in the last seven years, we have not advanced the needle, in fact we’ve fallen backwards and that’s because we haven’t had a clear policy on how we’re gonna advance public education. Maybe the leadership in the legislature hasn’t really tried to move the envelope so we’ve fallen backward.”