Robby Korth

As state funding for higher education has risen across the country, Oklahoma has been one of five states that’s seen a decline in the last five years.

Oklahoma lawmakers want to turn the tide on a statewide teacher shortage.

Legislators have filed a flurry of bills to take up when they re-convene in February.

Currently the state has 3,000 emergency certified teachers, educators who are allowed to teach on a temporary basis even though they don’t have all the necessary training. In 2010, there were only 32.

Parents and teachers in Oklahoma school districts with four-day weeks gathered at the state capitol Monday to ask lawmakers not to adopt rules they say would effectively end abbreviated school weeks.

Of Oklahoma’s more than 500 school districts, about 100 go to school only four days a week. The practice has exploded in recent years because of a change in how the state measures school years, saying students need to be in class for 1,080 hours rather than 180 days each year.

Thousands of gifted and talented minority students aren’t identified by their schools in Oklahoma, according to a report published last month.

Anywhere between 19,000 and 60,000 students – mostly black and Latino children – aren’t identified as gifted and talented, according to the report published by Purdue University’s Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute. 

A third of Oklahoma schools’ performance is slipping, based on metrics released by the State Department of Education Monday.

Of about 1,500 schools assigned grades on the annual report card, 493 saw a decrease in their overall letter grades. Only 234 schools saw an increase in performance, while a vast majority had no change.

The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education are asking lawmakers for a $125 million budget increase during the 2020 legislative session.

The regents voted unanimously Thursday morning to pass a budget request that would increase the state’s appropriation to colleges and universities to $927 million. The request, formally called the system’s “budget needs,” serves as a wishlist. Historically, state lawmakers have not granted the requests.

StateImpact Oklahoma, a collaboration of NPR member stations in Oklahoma, has added a new reporter to their team.

Robby Korth joined StateImpact in October and will be focusing on education issues. He is an Oklahoma and Arkansas native, growing up in Ardmore and Fayetteville. After graduating from the University of Nebraska with a Journalism degree, Robby reported for several newspapers, most recently covering higher education and other topics for The Roanoke Times in southwest Virginia.