Educat ors Still Face Funding Shortfalls, Performance Hurdles (OK)

October 22, 2010

Steve Richert spends beautiful fall days talking to his former students, assessing their needs and making sure their transition to their new schools are as smooth as possible, but the process is one of the most painful he’s endured.

"Having been reared in this community, it was a very difficult situation for me to contemplate closing a school that I attended," the former superintendent for the Washita Heights School District said.

The district, between Corn and Colony in western Oklahoma, was annexed by Cordell Schools in May after voters decided the district could no longer survive. Richert was retained by Cordell as a liaison.

"My office is where it’s always been," Richert said on a recent weekday, "but it’s kind of discouraging to come over here, because there should be students and activities going on. There should be teachers, and I’m the only one here."

Richert said the process of closing his district was painful because it was healthy in every way but financially.

"We had no dropouts," he said. "We had 100 percent graduation. Our scores were above state averages. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t want to close the school."

Richert said he fears other rural schools in Oklahoma are on a similar ledge. It’s an assessment shared by others in the education community.

James White, superintendent of Piedmont Schools since July and the former assistan t superintendent for financial services for the state Board of Education, said funding has to be a priority for the next governor of Oklahoma and the next Legislature or other rural school districts will not survive.

"We are going to have to make education a priority and not stay at the bottom of the nation in funding our schools," White said. "Our educators do a great job with the funding they have, but it would be amazing to see what we could do if our schools were funded where they should be and the impact that would have on our students."

White referred to figures from the labor union National Education Association, which rank Oklahoma 46th in the nation in per-pupil funding and 42nd in the nation in average teacher salaries. He also addressed what many educators call the 2012 funding cliff, when federal stimulus money ends.

"Without federal stimulus money, schools would not have been able to survive these past few years," White said. "Unless something is done at the state level to make up for that, schools are going to be in very bad financial shape when that money runs out.

"Statewide you’ll see larger class sizes and a reduction in services."

Raising the bar

Schools also will see more teacher cuts on top of ones made in the last few years, he said. Costs at schools — classroom materials, utility bills, maintenance and upkeep and transportation — do not go down, White said.

According to state schools Superintendent Sandy Garrett’s "Investing in Oklahoma" report, the state in 2006 ranked 10th nationally on the quality of state academic standards because of its Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) curriculum, according to the latest Thomas B. Fordham Foundation report.

Scores, however, are still below the national average both in the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and mathematics and in overall ACT scores for 2009 graduates. Oklahoma’s average scaled NAEP score in math at grade 4 was 237 in 2009, lower than the nation’s score of 239. The state’s grade 8 score was 276 compared to 282 nationally. In reading, Oklahoma’s grade 4 score was 217, under the national average of 220. That puts Oklahoma among only 12 other states that fall below the national average in this area.

Garrett wrote in an e-mailed response to questions that in July 2009, the state Board of Education unanimously voted to raise the bar on student proficiency on all state math and reading exams to align proficiency levels closer to the NAEP and ensure proficiency standards were consistent across the grades.

The state board believes that has resulted in classroom teachers raising the bar on student expectations in their classroom, Garrett wrote.

"When it comes to the ACT, Oklahoma’s clear weakness is in the area of mathematics," Garrett wrote.

The state board long has advocated for parents to insist their students make the senior year meaningful and that it include a math course, she wrote.

"The majority of Oklahoma students take the ACT and they take it their senior year, when many are not enrolled in a math course. It should be noted that states that test a very large percentage of students tend to have an average score below the national average. That is the case in all states, not just Oklahoma,&am p;quot; she wrote.

ACT scores high

About three out of four Oklahoma seniors take the ACT, compared to only 43 percent nationally, she wrote. Yet the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University are reporting the average ACT score of their incoming freshmen is at an all-time high, and the Southern Regional Educational Board reports that Oklahoma and West Virginia (both at 20.7) have the highest average composite scores of all the ACT-dominant states in the region.

More students also are taking Advanced Placement courses, Garrett’s report show.

Oklahoma public schools recorded an increase of 2.1 percent in student participation in Advanced Placement courses in the 2008-09 school year, with 12,508 students taking a total of 20,811 exams. Of those, scores of 3, 4 or 5 (on the scale of 1-5) were recorded in 9,598 exams. That is significant as most universities will provide college credit to students achieving such scores, the report points out.