Oklahoma Public School Question

[Backin82]

I didn't attend public schools in Oklahoma, so I'm hoping to get some insight from those that have navigated this topic already.

We recently started our kids in a fantastic public school district in Oklahoma, and initially felt really good about that decision. We wanted to do our part to support our local public school, and wanted to believe in public education as a whole. My wife and I are both public school kids, and we have many family members that are past or current public educators.

For the most part, our public school experience has been positive. However, even with a 10/10 public school rating, our oldest one is finishing each year by the end of the first semester, and is bored af because the curriculum is so watered down and slow paced. While I would like to think our child is very intelligent, I can't help but think that the standards for public school are just incredibly low based on the little we've seen so far. There's almost zero academic challenges, even though our child is in the "gifted/talented" program.

The only data I have to make objective decisions are national academic rankings (Oklahoma is low) and my own personal experience growing up in a more academically challenging public school system (on the East coast). My siblings told me when we moved to Oklahoma that it felt like going back two grades (across 3 different siblings who were in school at the time we moved).

So... It would seem Oklahoma public education is really, really bad.

My questions are,
1. Is this a normal experience for halfway intelligent people in Oklahoma? Are other people having the same problem?
2. If so, any advice on how to resolve the immediate challenge with our current kids? Are some schools actually more robust than others? Are we just in a bad district?
3. Are we doomed to simply seek a private school option in order to get a halfway decent education in this state?

Maybe my wife and I have simply been too naïve. We wanted to believe that public schools still worked. Based on our experience, I'd say that they are closer to a glorified daycare with some basic academic standards.

We really like all the teachers and administrators that we have at their current school. They seem like great, hard-working people. But the system seems mostly focused on securing funding, not teaching.

We want to do what's best for society, but we also don't want our kids to suffer a terrible educational existence. Oklahoma appears to force that conundrum, and it's really discouraging.

TL;DR - Are Oklahoma public schools really this bad?

 

[JTOSU]

Unfortunately, there are some under-performing schools…in every state. However, I think are some excellent public schools in Oklahoma that offer a wide-curriculum and challenges for a diversity of students and abilities.

I don’t know where you live, but in the Tulsa area…Booker T Washington and Jenks are great schools. For trade specific learning and engineering, Memorial HS (Tulsa Public) is strong. Bixby has recently really upgraded their school system and becoming one of the best (credit to Rob Miller).

 

[Backin82]

Unfortunately, there are some under-performing schools…in every state. However, I think are some excellent public schools in Oklahoma that offer a wide-curriculum and challenges for a diversity of students and abilities.

I don’t know where you live, but in the Tulsa area…Booker T Washington and Jenks are great schools. For trade specific learning and engineering, Memorial HS (Tulsa Public) is strong. Bixby has recently really upgraded their school system and becoming one of the best (credit to Rob Miller).

The "problem" is that we're in a (supposedly) excellent district. We moved here specifically for the public school. But it's not close to offering what we hoped. Maybe that would change as the kids get further along, but our current experience doesn't give us much hope.

Again, this is nothing against the actual educators. Our teachers have been amazing so far. But the system, the curriculum, the over-reliance on tablets, the disciplinary issues, and the class sizes have us worried that we'll need to abandon public to get any sort of legit education in Oklahoma.

 

[osuwhit]

My questions are,
1. Is this a normal experience for halfway intelligent people in Oklahoma? Are other people having the same problem?
2. If so, any advice on how to resolve the immediate challenge with our current kids? Are some schools actually more robust than others? Are we just in a bad district?
3. Are we doomed to simply seek a private school option in order to get a halfway decent education in this state?

I'll answer these in order, but I'll start out by letting you know that my oldest is in second grade. So, consider that in my answers. We are also in a similar situation. I'm the Watchdog Dad Coordinator at my son's school. So, I get a lot of extra time in and around the school. It is also a leading district in the state.

1. Yes. Through my own observation, I've found the pace to be boring when considering the level the kids are at. My son lost one of his closest friends because his parents were upset with the first grade teacher's efforts. So, they put him in private school. One day my son's class was on the Watchdog Dad schedule, so of course I was going to drop in there for that period. The class was going over spelling words and my son was missing. Turns out, there's a really good hiding spot in that classroom and he was reading Harry Potter because he was bored. He got a 10/10 on the spelling test.
2. I wish I had advice. So far, my son has had a really really awful kindergarten teacher, an excellent kindergarten teacher (we red shirtted him), a mediocre first grade teacher, and a mediocre second grade teacher. Not a good trend.
3. I'm not sure. I'm not really sold the private school options are worth it, at least where I'm at.

 

[Backin82]

I'll answer these in order, but I'll start out by letting you know that my oldest is in second grade. So, consider that in my answers. We are also in a similar situation. I'm the Watchdog Dad Coordinator at my son's school. So, I get a lot of extra time in and around the school. It is also a leading district in the state.

1. Yes. Through my own observation, I've found the pace to be boring when considering the level the kids are at. My son lost one of his closest friends because his parents were upset with the first grade teacher's efforts. So, they put him in private school. One day my son's class was on the Watchdog Dad schedule, so of course I was going to drop in there for that period. The class was going over spelling words and my son was missing. Turns out, there's a really good hiding spot in that classroom and he was reading Harry Potter because he was bored. He got a 10/10 on the spelling test.
2. I wish I had advice. So far, my son has had a really really awful kindergarten teacher, an excellent kindergarten teacher (we red shirtted him), a mediocre first grade teacher, and a mediocre second grade teacher. Not a good trend.
3. I'm not sure. I'm not really sold the private school options are worth it, at least where I'm at.

Our daughter is also in second grade, and this somewhat tracks with our experience (except for the teachers, they've both been excellent).

Perhaps our biggest objection is that (for both years in public school) the teachers reward our daughter for excellent performance by giving her tablet time and candy. Neither of those rewards are beneficial for our daughter. Maybe once a week or something, but not every day! It's probably the one thing that we blatantly reject about her public school education. The rest is ok. It's just a very low bar. But the tablet time and candy reward system (and frequency at which it is given) is really.......problematic.

The other bottleneck is probably class sizes. The teachers seem to spend most of their time dealing with the 3-4 bad kids, so the good kids sit and do nothing while the teacher handles the others. Our daughter got upset one morning, because she forgot to wear her fuzzy jacket. We asked why that was a big deal, and she said, "I won't be able to sleep if I don't have my fuzzy jacket." She apparently spends a lot of time sleeping on her desk, because the teacher is dealing with disciplinary stuff, and she's getting 110 on every test, still. It's like... What do you do with that?

I mean, I get it. School is boring at times. But I don't remember being bored or having nothing to do for entire days for multiple days a week like my daughter is currently experiencing. Something is really "off" about that to me.