|
Listen to this article here
|
Sign-Up for a free subscription to The Black Wall Street Times‘ daily newsletter, Black Editors’ Edition (BEE) – our curated news selections & opinions by us for you.
Reading Time 1 min 15 sec
By BWSTimes Staff
Oklahoma State Senator Kevin Matthews met with a group of young professionals Friday morning at La Madeleine’s French Bakery & Café on Cherry Street in Tulsa.
Education policy dominated the discussion. “I believe public education is under attack,” Sen. Matthews stated. He theorized that his Republican colleagues don’t support public education because their children are either enrolled in private schools or are being home-schooled.
Matthews believes this creates a divide between many Republican congressmen and their many constituents, whose children generally attend public schools. Sen. Matthews explained, “There is a philosophical difference in how Republicans view education and how Democrats view education.”
He continued discussing Oklahoma’s education system by listing successful public schools, like Booker T. Washington High School (a magnet school) and Thomas Edison High School, both schools producing decades of academic excellence.
Booker T. Washington is one of the few schools in Tulsa and has an International Baccalaureate program.
Its status as a magnet school allows it to use a rigorous selection process in which students are accepted primarily based on their above-average standardized testing scores.
Sen. Matthews also explained that the A – F School Grading System may be out of date and the system may not be an accurate measurement of a school’s success.
Oklahoma public schools were ranked 46th in the nation with a D+ grade in 2016, according to Education Week.
The discussion extended naturally from education to the school-to-prison pipeline. Oklahoma has one of the highest incarceration rates for women in the United States.
This is exacerbated by the profit model of privatized prisons. While President Obama attempted to curb the use of federal private prisons, but those gains were swiftly eliminated by a memo from current Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was controversially appointed by President Donald Trump. Because of the current administration’s reversal Black, Brown, and poor Oklahomans will be disproportionately affected.