Public comments on proposed changes to Consolidated State Plan, 2025
Today, I submitted my public comments on the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s proposed amendments to the state’s Consolidated State Plan to update compliance with state and federal laws - namely, Senate Bill 711 (2025) and the Every Student Succeeds Act (2016).
The online form provided by the OSDE (https://oklahoma.gov/education/essa-amendment.html) could only handle the first two pages of my letter, which grew into a white paper over the last week, so I emailed it to the members of the State Board of Education, our State Superintendent, my Representative and Senator, and our Governor. These issues are important to all of us, and more input is needed before board members approve Oklahoma’s new plan for state compliance with federal law. There’s still time to get your input in but it is due tomorrow, August 8.
My bottom line: The changes under consideration now do almost nothing to improve the academic success of every student and could further harm Oklahoma’s economic development efforts. Three main points:
Sadly, amendments proposed do little to improve the academic success of every student and could further harm the state’s economic development by abandoning the goal of scoring “among the top 20 highest-performing states on the NAEP.”
New factors for the A-F Report Card relating to “teacher effectiveness” are proposed to account for 11-14% of any school’s state report card grade during a severe teacher shortage not caused by public schools.
No details are provided for how about $10.5 million in federal school-improvement funding will be split among an estimated 111 Oklahoma schools in 42 districts. This annual amount has gone to mostly the same schools for a decade with no evaluation of ROI.
Proposed effective date (page 79 of 160): “Beginning of 2025-26 School Year.”
