How Ineffective Programs Continue to Waste Taxpayer Dollars Post-Strong Readers Act
The recently released Oklahoma State Department of Education’s 2025 Public School Report Cards lay bare a system in distress: a D in academic achievement, with just 26% of students proficient in English Language Arts (ELA) and math, and 30% in science.
Graduation rates stagnate at 82% for the class of 2025—well below the state’s 90% goal—while chronic absenteeism grips 19% of students, earning another D. Academic growth inched up by 3% to 56% across ELA, math, and science, but these marginal gains mask deeper failures. With 697,186 students enrolled statewide and an approved $4 billion budget for FY27, this data demands scrutiny of the choices perpetuating low proficiency, especially in literacy.
Building on my prior critique of framing Southern literacy surges as partisan wins, Oklahoma’s stagnation stems from entrenched inertia, not politics: insiders leveraging the Reading Sufficiency Act and now the Strong Readers Act’s flexibility to approve the same ineffective hybrids that have wasted $250 million over the past decade. Now, amid calls to reinstate third-grade retention, education insiders exploit the Strong Readers Act’s leniency, approving ineffective hybrids. Six months post-enactment on May 27, 2025, these report cards confirm no turnaround, with $20–40 million funneled into programs favoring whole-word guesswork over explicit phonics. Let’s examine Oklahoma’s approved curriculum, expose how bureaucracy perpetuated this, and chart a path to reform centered on vetted, knowledge-building materials and practical teacher training.
The Retention Debate: Essential, But Moot Without Foundations
Amid growing calls from state leaders to reinstate third-grade literacy-based retention in the 2026 legislative session—echoed in outlets like NonDoc, KOSU, and OCPA Think, and inspired by Mississippi’s model—reformers aim to hold back students failing reading benchmarks after interventions. This debate revives the 2011 Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA) amendments under Senate Bill 346, which mandated retention for unsatisfactory scores, modeled after Florida’s foundational mastery policy. Yet, House Bill 2625 in 2014—slipped in during Common Core repeal—overrode Gov. Mary Fallin’s veto amid anti-testing backlash, attaching exemptions that replaced strict gates with optional “probationary promotions,” diluting effectiveness and plummeting retentions to near zero despite warnings of eroded accountability (The Oklahoman, 2016).
While crucial, as underscored by ExcelinEd’s analysis of Oklahoma’s gaps in retention principles like intensive interventions and promotion pathways, reinstatement risks being punitive without addressing how kids learn to read—as cautioned in critiques from OICA and Okmulgee Times, which argue against simply holding back students to inflate later metrics. Opponents highlight social harms and bottlenecks, but the core issue is systemic: underserved students suffer most from inadequate early instruction fostering learned helplessness (Sutherland & Sanger, 2017), while our entrenched bureaucracy continues to guide a majority of districts toward ineffective curriculum programs, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on hybrids that perpetuate the cycle.
Mississippi’s 32% NAEP proficiency surge since 2013 proves retention thrives atop robust phonics, not shaky foundations. Oklahoma’s 74% ELA non-proficiency underscores this: 2026 reforms must mandate vetted curricula blending phonics with content knowledge, plus embedded coaching to build teacher efficacy and student automaticity through repeated exposures (Kilpatrick, 2015). Without it, it’s policy theater, punishing kids for adult failures rather than ensuring mastery.
What the Strong Readers Act Really Is—And Why It Falls Short
The Strong Readers Act (SB 841, effective July 1, 2025) renamed and bolstered the RSA with key reforms: banning three-cueing starting this school year, requiring universal K-3 screening, mandating Student Literacy Improvement Plans (SLIPs) within 30 days for deficiencies, tying promotions to proficiency, and incentivizing teacher micro-credentials in SoR (reflected on certificates upon completion of approved training).
It also requires comprehensive SoR assessments for teacher candidates in early childhood, elementary, and special education programs starting in 2025–26, to measure skills in the five elements of reading (70 O.S. § 1210.508C; OSDE, 2025b); although some Oklahoma universities, like OPSU, are evading this by restructuring programs—absorbing elementary education into generic degrees to avoid the reading certification test—amid whistleblower revelations of continued reliance on outdated methods like Reading Recovery, despite faculty efforts to update courses to SoR (OCPA, 2025).
The Act’s requirements for instruction and curriculum are clear: evidence-based practices emphasizing phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension in a structured sequence, with materials aligned to SoR to prevent reading difficulties from the start. It mandates evidence-aligned practices, with materials that support structured phonics over cueing or whole-word methods.
Yet, current adopted list of approved curriculum programs falls short of these requirements, approving basal hybrids that retain whole-word roots and cueing elements rather than programs designed for explicit instruction. As detailed on the OSDE’s High-Quality Instructional Materials page, the list includes evaluation details and pricing, but The Reading League Compass rated the Oklahoma curriculum review “No” for evidence-aligned reading, as rubrics ignore core SoR principles like orthographic mapping (The Reading League Compass, 2025).
This self-certification allows the OSDE to greenlight high-dollar mainstream national publishers, whose programs—often cloaked in the rhetoric of balanced approaches—prioritize broad market appeal over rigorous, localized innovation, effectively sidelining the potential for true local control in favor of standardized mediocrity. As a result, over 300 Oklahoma districts use Wonders, Into Reading, and myView—basals with mixed or low efficacy (OSDE, 2025)—stagnating progress.
The Act’s good intentions are undermined by implementation without fidelity, as Oklahoma education has fought on the wrong side of the reading wars for over a decade, with many true SoR advocates pushed out and the remaining experts rooted in Balanced Literacy foundations. The new administration’s experience in secondary and workforce issues leads to deference on literacy, allowing the old guard to limit bold shifts—evident in the slow rollout, where district plans weren’t due until August 2025 and full Structured Literacy integration through MTSS is targeted for 2032, per OSDE guidance (OSDE, 2025e). This protracted timeline, amid ongoing university evasions, risks perpetuating outdated practices rather than accelerating SoR adoption.
Oklahoma’s Bureaucratic Betrayal: The 2021 Adopted List Failure
The State Textbook Committee’s 2021–2027 cycle adopted list for PK–5 ELA undermines the Reading Sufficiency Act’s (RSA) foundational commitment to effective literacy instruction—and now the Strong Readers Act’s enhanced science-based mandates—by endorsing programs that fall short of rigorous SoR standards (OSDE, 2021b). Rated as “Exemplifies Quality” or “Approaching,” the list channels taxpayer funds into expensive basal programs of questionable efficacy, such as Wonders (#1), myView (#2), and Into Reading (#3), while marginalizing truly SoR-focused alternatives like CKLA (ranked “approaching” at #12) and perpetuating outdated approaches that contribute to Oklahoma’s persistent D in academic achievement (OSDE, 2021b).
The incentive for these mainstream choices? They offer broad market appeal, comprehensive packages with built-in assessments and digital tools that ease administrative burdens for districts, and lucrative vendor relationships—often prioritizing familiarity and sales pitches over proven efficacy, as seen in the dominance of publishers like McGraw-Hill (Wonders) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Into Reading), despite known weaknesses in phonics integration. The Reading League Compass highlights how the evaluation rubrics fail to emphasize evidence-aligned reading practices, permitting hybrid materials to prevail even with the cueing ban in place and earning a stark “No” rating for evidence-alignment (The Reading League Compass, 2021).
The drafting process, starting in early 2021, involved appointed committee reviews guided by OSDE staff evaluations, but ignored calls for exclusive SoR alignment, as the Compass “No” rating confirms. After the Strong Readers Act’s passage in May 2025, OSDE could have revisited or supplemented the list with SoR-focused options to align with the RSA’s strengthened requirements, but instead deferred to the existing hybrids, allowing the old guard—rooted in Balanced Literacy—to guide early implementation. At the OU Policy Conference in October 2025, when pressed on the process, the literacy panel noted the committee is appointed but omitted how OSDE reviews heavily influence choices. This post-Act inaction perpetuates the betrayal, with $20–40 million funneled to ineffective programs since July 2025.
It could be easy to brush aside these concerns with the advent of the interim administration; however, Lindel Fields’ approval of a $1 million allocation for Imagine Reading in October 2025 OSBE meeting—a program with only “potentially positive” What Works Clearinghouse rating and modest 0.16 effect size for comprehension, lacking strong phonics evidence (What Works Clearinghouse, 2024; OSDE, 2025c)—shows how even new leadership is deferring to old habits.
This entrenched bureaucracy has locked in the bad list we have now, but with the next adoption cycle approaching, we must ensure the forming committee comprises SoR experts, not extensions of the old guard currently advising and guiding OSDE through these crucial early steps. Without this shift, the new list will repeat past mistakes, wasting more taxpayer dollars and stranding students in ineffective instruction—jeopardizing what could be Oklahoma’s literacy turnaround.
Conclusion: Oklahoma’s Literacy Turnaround Starts Now
The 2025 report cards’ D grades aren’t just numbers—they represent hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma kids trapped in a system that favors compliance over competence, wasting $250 million on hybrids while stranding 73% of third-graders in failure (National Reading Panel, 2000; Oklahoma Policy Institute, 2022). We’ve seen how the old guard’s grip on curriculum and teacher prep perpetuates this cycle, but the Strong Readers Act gives us the tools to break it—if we demand fidelity.
Parents and school boards: Scrutinize your district’s choices—do they prioritize explicit phonics or outdated guesswork? Legislators: Mandate SoR experts for the 2026 textbook committee and tie funding to overhauling F-rated teacher prep programs at universities. Let’s see this state report card for what it is, proof that what we’re doing does not work. Evidence-based education is every child’s right. With the 2026 cycle looming, let’s unite to claim it—turning Oklahoma’s D into an A for all.
References
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Editors Note: This story first appeared yesterday on Straight Up on Substack an email and online site by Tulsa Today Publisher David Arnett. This story republished again here with permission by the author.