Patty Miller
The Edmond Sun
EDMOND —
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles covering Tuesday night’s town hall meeting on education reform and school choice issues in Oklahoma.
Five panelists participated in “Restoring American Exceptionalism,” a forum on school choice put on Tuesday in the University of Central Oklahoma’s Constitution Hall. The event was sponsored by Americans for Prosperity as part of National School Choice Week.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi was joined by Oklahoma state Sen. Gary Stanislawski, former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and the Friedman Foundation’s Jeff Reed.
Quoting Tony Bennett, Indiana state superintendent and fellow Chiefs for Change member, Barresi told the audience, “The failure to implement is the graveyard of all reform.”
Barresi explained her C-3 plan to continue to work with all stakeholders to assure each student in the state is college, career and citizen ready by the year 2020.
The plan builds on reforms passed last year with the help of the governor and the state Legislature.
The plan includes having an effective teacher in each classroom and an effective leader in each building.
“Our goal is to empower students to be successful in school, career and life, to empower parents by providing them with easy-to-understand information about their children and school and to empower educators to reach their full potential by giving them a full range of tools for support.
“I am a huge advocate of a parent’s right to choose the education that best suits the needs of their children,” Barresi said.
“In a free country, with so many exceptional school offerings, there is no reason a child’s education should be bound by his parent’s income level or his geographical location.”
Barresi told audience members recent studies show Oklahoma’s students are ranked near the bottom when compared to other countries in math and literacy.
“Massachusetts is in position 20 while Oklahoma is in position 83, ranked with third-world countries,” Barresi said.
“We have children leaving high school reading on a sixth-grade level and can’t do fractions.”
Allowing more choice will help reverse this trend, Barresi said.
“It will reward schools that are doing a good job of educating students to state standards and will hold accountable those schools that are not meeting performance goals,” Barresi said.
“Competition and choice options must expand,” Barresi said. “Parents deserve the right to say where their child can go to school.”
Barresi founded the first charter school in Oklahoma, Independence Charter Middle School in Oklahoma City, and went on to start the Harding Charter Preparatory High School in the inner city.
This year, Harding went from 193rd to 68th in Newsweek’s ranking of the best high schools in the country.
Addressing the importance of Oklahoma’s role in education, Stuart Jolly, Oklahoma state director for Americans for Prosperity, said, “We must celebrate what Oklahoma has done and what it is doing. Focus is the key. Schools must be run for the benefit of the students, and we must focus on educating students.”
Both former Gov. Brad Henry and Gov. Mary Fallin have signed school choice legislation.
In 2010 Henry signed the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Act, allowing parents of special needs students to apply for scholarship money from the State Department of Education to send their children to schools where their needs could best be met. In 2011 Mary Fallin signed the Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act, allowing businesses and individuals to donate to scholarship funds in exchange for tax credits and allowing special needs or low-income students to apply for scholarships.
pmiller@edmondsun.com | 341-2121, ext. 171
