2022 EDUCATION ANDWORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES STATE ISSUES
Early Childhood Education The Chamber steadfastly supports early childhood education and full funding of pre-K and kindergarten programs. Targeted spending on our youngest children is simply a smart investment. The Chamber supports legislative initiatives to maintain early childhood education programs. Long-Term, Strategic Education Funding The Chamber supports development of a long- term, strategic plan that will enable improvement in classroom teaching and academic performance. This should include increasing the minimum number of instructional hours, currently 1,080 hours, required for a complete school year. We also support ongoing funding to enable schools to achieve targeted classroom sizes. Teacher Preparation, Recruitment and Retention Oklahoma has a teacher shortage. Oklahoma needs to improve our teacher preparation pipeline systems to train, attract and retain more high-quality teachers. We support legislation to: • Reward teacher performance and experience • Incentivize teachers to work in high priority areas and receive training to help them prepare for challenges facing students such as being English Language Learners living in high poverty and from urban areas • Grow alternative pathways, such as Teach for America, that enhance the diversity of the teaching profession • Provide additional pre- and post-school year training for alternatively certified teachers • Support specialized training initiatives such as the Foundation for OKCPS Bilingual & Diversity
Teacher Pipeline program and UCO’s Urban Teacher Preparation Academy • Increase access to STEM education and training opportunities Longitudinal Data System The business community encourages development and implementation of a new pre-K to 20 longitudinal data system that will measure performance and progress. A working system would measure the progress, challenges, and success of our education systems from early childhood through higher education and into employment. Accurate data would enhance critical programmatic and funding decisions. Learning Loss Due to the Pandemic The Chamber acknowledges challenges of the pandemic, including remote learning and technology access, led to learning loss for many students. We know that prior to the pandemic not enough students were achieving advanced or proficient test scores and 2020-21 test scores indicate lower performance. It is urgent to dramatically improve learning at all levels. The Chamber supports sustained help for additional and enhanced learning opportunities that utilize recognized best practices. We believe it is important to help students catch-up by having more time on-task, including longer school days and additional instruction days. Public Charter Schools The Chamber supports charter schools and education choices. Charter schools are public schools and are required to adhere to Oklahoma statutes and performance standards. We support creating high- quality charter schools and enabling successful charter
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