Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs

As observers of Oklahoma’s public-policy scene are keenly aware, the field of workers’ compensation reform is littered with the remains of failed reforms of years past.

Here’s an eye-opening school statistic for you: Only half of Oklahoma’s public education employees are teachers. The bureaucracy is now so big, it takes up half the system. It’s the blob that ate the schools.

Teachers’ unions, and the lousy teachers they protect, have become the central villain in the epic drama of education reform. And well they deserve the role—teachers’ unions exist to fatten themselves by destroying children’s lives.

Oklahoma public schools that violate the civil rights of students risk losing federal education funds, U.S. Department of Education official Jim Bradshaw told CapitolBeatOK recently.

That information may be of particular interest to advocates of, and families with, special-needs schoolchildren—the beneficiaries of a new state law intended to improve their educational options. While state money is involved in the new statute, federal civil rights provisions could still apply.

In July 2010, the National Education Association (NEA) “decided that $3 million was just the right amo

Around America, the month of January saw a dramatic surge of school choice proposals in at least four states, programs designed actually to empower parents in deed, not merely in rhetorical flouris

Recent news reports informed us the U.S. Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year.

School vouchers, like the Republican Party, are back in a big way. The question for vouchers, as for the GOP, is: Have they learned their lesson?

Just a few years ago, the smart people were declaring vouchers dead. “An Idea Whose Time Has Gone: Conservatives Abandon Their Support for School Vouchers” declared the headline of a much-discussed article in Washington Monthly. The article declared that vouchers were on the way out, permanently.

Oklahoma is fast becoming a national leader in offering families school choice, thanks to its charter schools and the new scholarship program for children with disabilities. Gov.

On March 15 in Oklahoma City, the past met the future.

Carrying signs that read “Stop the War on Workers,” “Collective Bargaining: Backbone of the Middle Class,” and “Don’t Dismantle Public Education,” hundreds of Oklahoma schoolteachers rallied at the state capitol. They expressed concern over school spending, pension reforms, and legislation making it easier to fire bad teachers.

How much should a college education cost?