by Andrea Egger
Oklahoma parents are on the receiving end of a full-court press about how children here are among the nation’s worst readers.
Who is behind the public awareness campaigns filling Facebook and Instagram feeds and space on local television, radio and print media right now?
A philanthropist and retired oil and gas operator from Tulsa.
At 95, John Brock said he has put aside his other longtime education projects for what he sees as a kind of Hail Mary effort to drive home the fundamental importance of improving early literacy.
“The prize is on hold. We’re working this” Brock said, in the Midtown office where he still goes to work five days a week. “If you can’t read, you can’t work. This is the most important aspect of education. And we have a lot of people who can’t read.”
For more than 20 years, Brock’s philanthropy focused on recognizing famous people, including Khan Academy founder Sal Khan and psychologist and then-Spelman College president Beverly Daniel Tatum, with the Brock Prize for Educational Innovation. The goal, Brock said, is to import Oklahoma innovative ideas to education through an annual symposium held in Tulsa.
Additionally, he has held numerous chairs and professorships in education and engineering at Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Tulsa.
While he’s focused on influencing lawmakers, his ad campaign, run under the banner of the recently formed Oklahoma Education Impact Initiative, focuses solely on parents.
“Oklahoma’s current reading laws are not enough for real reading success. Help our kids. Tell your legislators to strengthen Oklahoma’s reading laws,” says an OKEII social media ad circulating this week.
The text in the ad reads: “Teachers are working. But they need more support,” and lists lesson coaches, early screening, intervention and “retention, if needed,” as possible state policy solutions.
Step 1 was to make parents aware of the gravity of the situation and the important role they play at home in their child’s literacy development, according to one of Brock’s most influential advisors at OKEII.
“We have to change the paradigm,” Brock said.
Policy advisor developed
A New report The University of Oklahoma’s Oklahoma Center for Education Policy tracked the decline in student outcomes from the top half of the state in both reading and math throughout the 1990s, to last year’s lowest level on record, 48th in the nation.
It is based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress Outcomes, which is considered the gold standard for comparing student performance over time and across states.
“Oklahoma’s educational outcomes actually rank among the worst in the nation,” wrote Adam Tyner, a researcher at the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy. “This low ranking is consistent across subjects and grades. Oklahoma ranks near the bottom nationally in 4th grade and 8th grade reading and math, indicating systemic, not isolated, weaknesses.”
Dan Hamlin, a colleague and fellow academic at OU, served as OKEII’s research advisor.
His policy brief on holding students off grade level by the end of third grade, as well as television interviews he has done since becoming Gov. Kevin Stitt’s education secretary in October, are still featured on OKEII’s website.
“I’ll tell you what I found fascinating when I met him,” Hamlin said when asked about his relationship with Brock and OKII. “Usually, when you meet rich people who want to get into the education system, they already know what they want. He was just like, ‘What do I know?’ I thought that was a refreshing approach, especially for his stature and age and experience.
“I think he just loves Oklahoma and feels pretty strongly that we need to have better educational outcomes for our kids to be able to follow their dreams and get better results,” Hamlin said. “I think that’s what drives him and why they set up OKEII.”
OKEII’s remaining research advisors are both at OSU — Kathryn Curry, professor of higher education and Williams chair who previously served as Stitt’s secretary of education, and Jentre Olsen, assistant professor and Brock chair of innovative educational leadership.
Hamlin said he met Brock because of his work on education policy for Gov. He already had a well-established relationship with Stitt’s staff.
He had to step down as Brock’s research adviser when he took a gubernatorial cabinet position, but he said the advice he gave Brock is now being carried across the state in ad campaigns.
“I definitely emphasized the importance of early literacy to them, because interestingly, Oklahomans identify reading and writing as most in need of improvement in general population surveys,” Hamlin said. “I told him, if this organization is able to make education more part of the conversation here in Oklahoma, I thought it would be helpful.”
Price tag for public awareness
The little-known Oklahoma Education Impact Initiative is the name of every Brock ad to parents.
Ed Harris, head of the organization, said most of them are paid for by the Brock Family Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit best known for funding the $50,000 Brock Prize for Education Innovation.
It was founded in 2000 by Brock and his late wife Donnie.
OKEII’s campaign to raise public awareness of early literacy and state policy proposals is also a family affair, as Harris, an OSU professor emeritus of educational leadership, is Brock’s son-in-law.
“We think education is not a cure-all, but it is very important to any society,” Harris said. “The better the education, the better the society. “My research at OSU was related to culture. In my opinion, unless there is a change in mindset or culture, nothing will change.”
Feeling a sense of ownership in helping Oklahomans, especially parents, address early literacy challenges is something she and Brock Brock’s other son-in-law, David Downing, a retired advertising executive, sought help with.
“I’m not a political person at all,” Harris said. “My brother-in-law and I donate our time. John is 95 years old, and whether he has another day or five more years, this is what he wants to do. Right now, we know there are a lot of people who want to improve education in Oklahoma. In the political and non-political arenas, people know it hasn’t been this good for a while.”
In compliance with IRS rules, Brock said he pays for ads that include a call to action — in this case, to contact lawmakers to urge them to adopt new education policies to improve student outcomes in general — through contributions to People for Opportunity, a 501(c)(4) organization.
Unlike a 501(c)(3) organization, this type of social welfare organization is sometimes referred to as a dark money political group because it is allowed to engage in lobbying and is not required to publicly disclose its donors.
Unlike Harris, Brock is far from apolitical.
He pays for the lobbying services of former state lawmaker Greg Piatt of Ardmore, has donated frequently to candidates’ campaigns over the years, and is on the board of trustees of the conservative policy advocacy organization Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which shares some leadership with People for Opportunity.
But he said he doesn’t see the issue of early literacy — or the money he’s spending to shine a spotlight on it — as particularly political.
Has the ad campaign price tag reached $1 million yet?
“Not quite, but if anyone wants to join forces, that would be great,” Brock said with a smile.
Policy advocacy
Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, is chairman of the Oklahoma State Senate Education Committee and a candidate for the office of state superintendent.
According to him, the session will be a chicken-or-egg debate on the impact of OKEII advertising on policy discussions, but he said the effort is laudable.
“There’s this moment in time where all these bills have been filed and gubernatorial candidates are talking about literacy policies,” Pugh said. “I know the advocacy groups and I know Mr. Brock and I know where his passion is and I see this as an opportunity to build on that momentum. It’s great, and I’m not thinking about it in terms of politics or policy, just in terms of practicality. We’re not going to get it right until you start with the basic principle that kids are homeschooled and they’re ready to show social words from an older age and show them older. This is him recognizing that we can put more pressure on teachers. No.”
Brock is quick to say that his decades-long focus on how children are educated in Oklahoma is likely given that his grandfather, aunt, wife and daughter were all teachers.
He said the policies he’s advocating for — science-based strategies for teaching reading, raising the minimum instructional days to the national average of 180, keeping teacher pay competitive with neighboring states Texas, Arkansas and Kansas, and creating bonuses for high-performing teachers and, yes, mandating third-grade reading — should be mandated. the teacher
This is what school administrators see as a major obstacle to Brock’s progress.
“If we had them, we wouldn’t need the law,” Brock said.
One administrator who has publicly criticized some of the early literacy policy proposals under consideration is Terry Saul, superintendent of the 1,250-student Sequoyah Public School District just north of Claremore.
Saul said he sees OKEII’s advertising campaign as “a good cause, because it’s definitely going to make our parents see their big role in early reading.”
But he said he and many other school administrators are resistant to suggestions that Oklahoma could replicate the so-called Mississippi Miracle, where fourth-graders’ reading proficiency rates the rose 49th in 2013 to top-tier national rankings by 2024.
“It’s based on experience,” Saul said. “It’s based on the experience of non-engagement, mandated reading policies of the past and then withdrawing funding for teacher training and student aid. Why did legislators stop retention? It’s not because of us — it was the parents’ resistance to not retaining their child — and now they can get a tax credit and take their child to a private school if they don’t want to be retained.”
this Article appeared first Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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“Oklahoma WatchA oklahomawatch.org, A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering public-policy issues facing the state.” With Creative Commons License
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Photo credit: John Brock pauses for a photo in his mid-town Tulsa office. (Rip Stell/Oklahoma Watch)
