New Ok State Ed Bills

Yesterday the announcement of two bills that were filled in Oklahoma Legislature circled the twitter ranks. One pertained to the "parent trigger" and the other to unfunded or underfunded mandates. The parent trigger bill was supposedly bipartisan by having co-authors David Holt R-OKC and Jabar Shumate D-Tulsa. It calls for parents being able to change a school from public to charter if a school has a D or an F for two consecutive years or two out of three years on its state report card. 

I am all for parents having a say and having empowerment. I just don't think this is right way to do it. For starters parents have a right to run for school board election, go to those meetings, join and be active in parent groups, and talking face to face with administration and teachers. They also can volunteer if they have the time. A second problem is moving it to a charter. Why? What makes a charter a guarantee of success? When the A-F report cards were issued by percentage of letter grades public schools outperformed charter schools. Meaning a bigger % of public schools got A's than Charter schools. My next problem is, what happens if no change during charter school. Is there a place for the charter to go back to public if it fails? No, there is not. And why? Because basically this is just another attempt at our Republican controlled representatives to get funds to charter schools. Why because business can make money. They can invest on them and charter schools are quite the investment nation wide. My last problem is the use of A-F. After the recent independent study by a panel of experts shot holes all through the validity and reliability of the test I don't think we should use them for a basis of changing a whole school. If and when the grading system is upgraded it might be used for something but not now, not in its current state. On a side note, why is it a good idea for it to take 50% to completely change a school and its make up but 60% to pass a bond to build building, update infrastructure  and add technology, etc..

The second bill was one to create an Unfunded Mandate Relief program. This would require the SDE to make a listing of all mandates. It would then have to list out those that are not funded,0% funding, and those that are underfunded, 75%. If a mandate is unfunded or underfunded then a local school board has the option to opt out if you will of that mandate. Man does that put a lot of pressure on the legislature. 

I know where I would put my money if I had to bet which one of these has the best chance to pass. I hope that teachers and parents will be very active and stop this onslaught on public schools that is currently going on. It is desperately needed.