Sometimes, reading the news leads to surprising revelations in just a little research. As local and state leaders navigate the river of issues flooding Oklahoma’s public schools - some only coming to light in the last month - substantive discussions were held this week in several interim studies by legislators and in the monthly State Board of Education meeting. Swimming in the river of news this week was the headline, “‘We’re not Houston.’ FWISD takeover brings uncertainty, calls to listen to residents.” The article was about the Texas Education Agency (TEA) taking over the Fort Worth Independent School District, the tenth largest district in Texas.

While there are valid reasons for general opposition to standardized tests, they constitute one of few accountability measures available to policymakers, local board members, and K-12 patrons in every state. When those measures are consistent over five years and a school has not improved, what should happen? Not in one or two years but maybe five or eleven years of low performance? Oklahoma is required to meet the same federal requirements as Texas but legislators and the TEA have been busy developing and adapting their accountability and improvement systems over the last decade and Oklahoma has not. Most Oklahoma schools designated for the 2024 school-improvement list (88 of 111 schools labeled “Comprehensive Support and Improvement,” CSI) have received federal funding to improve their schools for each of the last ten years. They remain chronically low performing today. Texas goes further to label their lowest-performing schools as “Academically Unacceptable.” Bet that gets stakeholders’ attention!

Naturally, I had to see data I’d not seen before, and was suprised at Texas’ A-F accountability system that is full of actionable reports that the TEA provides the public. It is SO FAR beyond what Oklahoma citizens can access on our schools that it ought to be a primary mission to emulate it. I’ll share just a few screenshots (because it is available here). Note the content in the boxed areas (right). Good luck finding this in the Oklahoma School Report Cards. … It’s there if you know where to look. It’s easier to find on the original “report cards” from the Oklahoma Educational Indicators Program available from the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, which may be in process of updating these on a better platform. 😊

The Texas Accountability Overview offers four years of data for each at-risk school. Academic performance reports span three years of data and feature other tools including ways to compare schools and a direct link to each school’s comprehensive, printable “report card,” which is not available to Oklahomans. The good news is that Oklahoma’s State Department of Education did upgrade its A-F platform last year to provide a means to compare schools. But I didn’t know that until this week because most things were top-secret under Supt. Walters – whether good or bad.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath (pictured above) began the “second-largest takeover in Texas history” with Fort Worth ISD on October 23 “after the now-closed Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade failed to meet state academic standards five years in a row.” In the coming months, state appointees will replace locally elected officials for the 70,000-student district that has 10,000 employees serving 131 schools. Morath explained, “State law requires that Texas’ top education leader either close a persistently failing campus after five consecutive years of F academic accountability grades or initiate a districtwide intervention."

It’s a simple plan, but not an easy one. Oklahoma has tried to take over districts a few times, most recently in 2021 when the State Board of Education took control of Western Heights Public Schools – but that was for financial reasons, not academic ones. Oklahoma’s 111 CSI schools were serving 70,778 students in 2024. The 2025 CSI list should be designated by the state of Oklahoma in the coming weeks. Thankfully, we have a new team on the data but they are busy repairing the ship of state. Since little was done to address chronically low-performing schools the last three years, the need for actionable data now is great.

Analysis by Wendy S. Pratt, Oct. 27, 2025

NEW: Comparison modal on the Oklahoma School Report Cards platform!