24-04-2025
Oklahoma school districts should resist efforts to cut back needed programs
Marnie Taylor, the president & CEO of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits, recently explained how nonprofits that often receive support from federal grants, are contributing critical services for families, schools and our social infrastructure. However, due to presidential executive orders, they could face a 'sweeping funding freeze for nonprofit work.' In partnership with other organizations, the National Council of Nonprofits ― of which the center is a member ― filed an injunction to pause the funding freeze.
In my opinion, it would be impossible to stabilize and then improve our state's urban schools without the holistic, research-based contributions from nonprofits. That is one reason why I admire the Oklahoma center, and the National Council of Nonprofits, for resisting the funding freeze.
I also would be surprised if high-challenge school districts took the risk of standing up for what works for children. Not surprisingly, but understandably, the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) will be reducing its partnerships that provide essential services for its poorest children of color, in order to focus on 'critical grade-level benchmarks.'
For instance, Tulsa will be reducing high-impact tutoring, even though it is far more effective than the approaches, like benchmark testing, that Tulsa seems to be prioritizing.
In other words, the Tulsa district seems to be giving into pressure to jack up test scores, regardless of whether those scores reflect real, long-term learning.
At a time when chronic absenteeism is out of control, the Tulsa district will reduce the number of campuses served by City Year by 50%, thus shifting away from tackling 'learning loss,' and Growing Together, which coordinates and manages wraparound services for students. It will cut the Whole School-Whole Child program, which 'provides targeted supports for students who are identified by teachers and school staff as at risk for dropping out.'
Yes, Tulsa has to struggle with managing multiple initiatives in order to effectively promote student achievement metrics. But why would it cut proven policies in order to expand policies that are likely to improve accountability metrics but are much less likely to increase meaningful student learning?
I agree with school board member Jennettie Marshall that these changes will reduce both teacher and student retention in high-challenge schools.
We should also note that while the Tulsa district is reducing its investments in Reading Partners, Union Public Schools in Tulsa, which is praised across the nation for its full-service community schools, has no plans to reduce its relationships with them.
More: Poor math and reading skills in our public schools must improve — and quickly | Opinion
I also agree with James Heckman, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics at the University of Chicago, who grew up in Oklahoma City. In 2013, Heckman warned against the standardized test-driven policies that had been taking off across the nation, especially in Tulsa. As I explained in 2014, in "The Myth of Achievement Tests," Heckman, and his co-authors, John Eric Humphries and Tim Kautz, showed that "faith in tests deceives students and policy makers and conceals major social problems.' Instead of test-driven school improvement efforts, they call for programs to support families and parenting.
In 2025, Heckman and his co-author, Alison Baulos, published "Instead of Panicking over Test Scores, Let's Rethink How We Measure Learning and Student Success.' They urge us to 'pause some tests and redirect resources toward more meaningful ways to promote and assess student learning.' They don't oppose the use of tests as one measure when used for diagnostic purposes; those metrics 'may be valuable for tracking large-scale trends — such as monitoring recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.' However, 'the current overreliance on tests is costly in many ways and is not an effective strategy for improving education as a whole.' And, 'standardized tests often conceal more than they reveal.'
Heckman and Baulos explain that each year, 'America spends roughly $2 billion on standardized achievement tests at the national and state levels.' Testing consumes 'millions of hours of school time' and produces 'waves of stress, as well as increasing students' skepticism regarding school, and 'burnout.' And, they 'often prompt low student motivation.'
Moreover, 'this focus on standardized testing reduces education to a technocratic exercise, overlooking the complexity of how students truly learn and grow.' And they 'crowd out curiosity, engagement and socioemotional development.'
Again, I don't want to be too critical of Tulsa and other districts who are reluctant to resist state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters and the Trump administration in a meaningful way. When the Tulsa district, and to a somewhat lesser extent Oklahoma City Public Schools, complied with teach-to-the-test mandates, I didn't know anyone in OKCPS who didn't expect that high-stakes testing would cause more harm than good. In my frequent trips to Tulsa, almost every expert and teacher who I met had deep misgivings about their teacher evaluation tests, driven by Value-Added Models (VAMS) that used invalid and unreliable metrics to punish or even fire teachers.
Sure enough, research documented the failure of those VAM models.
There was hope that 'benchmark tests,' especially in the early years, could be used for diagnostic, not accountability, purposes. But by increasing the number of tests, benchmark testing could further undermine learning cultures; they also might jack up test scores while undermining reading for comprehension, even lowering long-term outcomes.
And that brings me back to the need for all of us to stand with nonprofits. In my experience, only they can bolster the confidence of leaders in the Tulsa and OKC districts, so they could commit to the team efforts required to improve schools with intense concentrations of extreme poverty, as opposed to low-incomes, who have endured multiple traumas, and come from neighborhoods that lack social capital.
More: Let's celebrate what's right with Oklahoma's public schools
I understand today's schools face a combination of challenges: years of failed corporate reforms, the legacy of COVID, the rise of social media, underfunding, and right-wing attacks.
Some say today's urban schools may be facing challenges that are as intimidating as those we faced in the crack-and-gangs era in the 1980s.
But at some point, education leaders must openly join with nonprofits, and treat the poorest children of color as students, not test scores.
John Thompson is a former Oklahoma City Public Schools teacher.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: School programs essential despite threats of federal cuts | Opinion
