Features
Education was the primary component of Brad Henry’s gubernatorial crusade when he hit the trail in 2002, and though the Governor was elected nearly eight years ago, he’s yet to stop campaigning.
When Henry took office in January 2003, Oklahoma was suffering a revenue crisis hailed by many as the state’s worst. Such a financial climate would test any political mission, let alone a public policy that called for increased teacher pay and benefits, and extra spending through new programs proposed for state schools, colleges and universities.
Henry is leaving office amid much of the wild political fanfare present when he joined. In the final stretch to vacating office, Henry closed out his last legislative session in late May, after discussions to produce a $6.7 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year were nearly derailed.
Throughout his two terms, Henry pestered legislators and challenged both educators and students, increasing expectations and accountability for both.
“My whole approach to education is all about children,” he says. “Our children are our future leaders, and our goal should be to make sure that every child in Oklahoma has every opportunity to succeed and every opportunity to go to college.”
Cutting Edge
Among the first orders of education business when he took office, Henry in 2003 appointed the Economic Development Generating Excellence, or EDGE, task force, a panel of public and private leaders who later recommended establishing a $1 billion research endowment to fund projects and private-public partnerships throughout the state.
With conservative estimates on the return of monies invested in the endowment, Henry says the state could “give out $40-$50 million in research grants every year,” to “universities, businesses and entrepreneurs who have a good idea.”
Alfred G. Striz was among those with an idea in need of funding. Striz, a professor at the school of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Engineering, applied for EDGE funding with a plan that involved the research, testing and production of unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used for commercial applications. Striz’s pre-proposal application was approved by the EDGE Policy Board, although his project wasn’t among those finally approved for funding.
Since its formation, the EDGE Endowment Grant is among the most sought funding sources for researchers in Oklahoma’s aerospace and high-tech industries, says Striz, who expects to apply for the grant again in the future.
“They’re huge. What you have is a real boost to the companies that are involved,” Striz says, adding that the EDGE program helps combine the resources available on public campuses and in the private sector. “In our case, it’s a combination of the university doing the research and some of the development, but also the companies who already have developed stuff… all getting together and working together.”
By working together, schools, researchers and companies have the best chance of establishing new industry in the state, Striz says, especially in fields – like his commercial UAV program – that are so cutting edge, they don’t exist until built.
Universities and colleges benefit from the research component, but also in “workforce development,” which Striz says extends beyond where a classroom ends.
“You’re training students for a future in research and development in the industry, and that’s a good thing,” he says, noting that the educational and economic benefits of such research funding don’t just apply to the major research universities like OU and Oklahoma State University. High level academic institutions.
“It goes further than that. We’re also interested in getting vo-tech involved,” he says. “Somebody needs to train the people that are going to be working on these things to service them and to maintain them. In aviation, in our case, somebody needs to train the pilots that fly these things remotely. It’s larger than just higher education.
“We have a lot of advantages in Oklahoma because the labor force is cheap, we have good laws for startup companies,” he continues, the state’s really supportive. We have a really good climate here in Oklahoma.”
The legislature in 2006 invested the first $150 million in the endowment, which is a far cry from the amount Henry and the taskforce hoped for, unfinished business that Henry laments as he prepares to leave office.
“I’m disappointed that we haven’t found a permanent funding mechanism for the EDGE research endowment,” he says. “I made sure we had the initial deposit of $150 million, which I was only able to do because we had some years with big surpluses, but I’ve been pushing the legislature every year to help dedicate a revenue source so that we can initially reach that billion-dollar mark.”
Bright, Young Minds
While higher education and increasing the state’s number of college graduates has been a cornerstone of his education policy, Henry, in his 2010 State of the State Address, noted the importance of focusing on the state’s youngest students, strides that have led to the adoption of both full-day kindergarten and a voluntary pre-K program that he said is becoming a model for other states throughout the country.
Henry says it’s easy to lose focus on investing in early childhood education because the dividends aren’t immediately felt.
“We’re not going to see the fruits of those efforts this year or next year, or two or five years down the road,” he says, adding that the state might not feel the effects for a decade or even a generation, when it will “really begin to transform” the state, and its perception around the country.
“I predict people will be looking at Oklahoma from every corner of this nation, saying, ‘What’s going on? We want to be like Oklahoma,’” he says, “and that’s just a big, big thing.”
Ace Up His Sleeve
In 2005, Henry signed House Bill 1020 and Senate Bill 982, which funded teacher pay raises and the Achieving Classroom Experience. The ACE Initiative added course requirements for high school students and required incoming freshman in 2008-09 to pass four of six end-of-instruction exams in certain core subject areas before they were given diplomas.
Henry says that creating a “higher stakes environment” helps students raise the bar for academic standards. One of the ACE Initiative’s biggest changes was the inclusion of end-of-instruction exams, rather than end-of-semester exams, which Henry says didn’t offer much consequence to teachers or students whether passed or failed.
“The teachers really didn’t like it because the students didn’t put as much effort into it and didn’t score as high,” he says, adding that switching the type of testing requires that schools offer remediation to help students pass the tests.
“It’s not enough just to make these exams high-stakes, so if you fail you don’t graduate. It was more than just, ‘You have to pass these exams to graduate,’” Henry says. “If you have trouble we’re going to help you, and we’re going to make sure you know this so you have a basic knowledge of these core subjects that are critical in terms of going to college, or even if you choose not to go to college.”
But college preparation is a big component of what the ACE Initiative was designed for, the governor says. The program required freshman entering in 2006-07 to complete a college preparatory curriculum. Parents may opt their children out of the program, but tuition waivers for up to six credit hours a semester are given to high school seniors who meet certain eligibility requirements for concurrent enrollment. Henry says the number of high school students concurrently enrolled in college or university courses has increased to roughly 50,000 from 29,000 since the initiative has been active.
“It’s been pretty amazing,” he says. “For the first time in 2005, students could take a college course tuition free, and so it gave them incentive to do that, even some students who didn’t think they’d go to college.”
The tuition waivers gave many students that were unsure of attending college a “free shot” at trying out university education, and Henry says many of them did well and were inspired to continue their education after high school.
“The bottom line for me is education is the number one priority of the state of Oklahoma. And within education, our priority is to create more college graduates,” he says.
Taking A Chance
The state’s budget shortfall shaped the 2002 gubernatorial race, and Henry was an early and vocal proponent of enacting a state lottery to bring more black to Oklahoma’s balance sheets.
Funding – “Just getting more dollars in the classrooms, to the students” – was just one of a number of challenges facing education when he took office, Henry recalls.
“I set about very early on to try and provide new revenue sources for education and specifically for the classroom through the education lottery.”
After taking office in 2003, Henry moved quickly on proposing and organizing support for the Oklahoma Education Lottery, which faced strong opposition politically – largely along party lines in the state House of Representatives, which rejected the Governor’s efforts – and on moral grounds, by groups like the Baptist General Convention.
Henry managed to put the vote to the people in November 2004, through State Questions 705 and 706, which amended the state constitution to authorize the lottery and create a corresponding trust fund. Voters in all 77 counties overwhelmingly approved the measure, and the first lottery tickets went on sale in October 2005.
The act stipulates that 35 percent of lottery revenues be directed to education, which has since brought in more than $330 million.
“When I first came into office, we were facing at that time the worst budget shortfall in our state’s history, and now we’re leaving on one even worse,” Henry says. “But we’ve gotten through both of those.”
Bonds Abound
Henry also led the legislature through a $475 million capital improvements bond that added buildings, classrooms, laboratories and equipment to “every college and university” throughout the state, a “pool of projects” Henry says is still currently active. Along with the capital improvements bond, Henry pushed to fund an endowed chairs program that matches private donations dollar-for-dollar with public funds.
“Prior to the endowed chair program, it was difficult for our colleges and universities to compete for the best and brightest professors around the country – around the world, really,” Henry says. “That really makes a big difference. If you really want to improve the quality of education, you’ve got to start with the educators.”
First, Foremost
Both through influencing her husband and on her own, First Lady Kim Henry has helped make an indelible mark on education in Oklahoma. In the classroom for 10 years, Kim Henry spent most of her teaching career in Shawnee, where she taught high school history, economics and government, both regular coursework and advanced placement curriculum.
In the classroom, Kim Henry learned that raising expectations yielded elevated results, a theme mirrored in her husband’s education policy and perspective.
“One thing that I found, especially working with teenagers – and this is a generalization, it’s not all kids – I found a good portion of your kids will only do what’s expected,” she says from her office at Sarkeys Foundation in Norman, where she serves as executive director. “They won’t go the extra mile, they just do the bare minimum to get by, and if you raise those expectations, the kids perform at what you expect them to do.”
Both Kim and Gov. Henry agree that teachers are the first and primary component of education reform, a first building block in a framework for students to find high-paying jobs and help fuel the state’s economy.
“We always talk about, ‘We need to bring more jobs in Oklahoma,’ but really the number one thing businesses look at before they move, relocate or build in a state is the number of college graduates. Do you have your work force up to par for what I’m going to need?,” Kim Henry says, adding that the benefits to quality of life extend beyond simple economics.
“Go out on the street, stop somebody and ask them to name three people that have really changed your life,” she says. “I bet for the vast majority of people, one of those three will be a teacher.”
Henry agrees.
“It’s pretty academic,” he says. “College graduates earn more money in their careers; they are less likely to end up in prison; they are less likely to end up on social programs; less likely to end up on drugs or a life of crime and more likely to contribute to society through taxes, through philanthropic giving and so forth.”
From a fiscal and economic standpoint, Henry says the challenges facing his successor “remain to be seen.” He is disappointed by the lack of a permanent funding mechanism for the EDGE endowment, but is optimistic whoever is elected to the governor’s post in November will see the value in making it a source for research and entrepreneurial enterprise. Henry was able to raise teacher pay, but fell short of his goal to match Oklahoma salaries with the regional average.
“We got within $1,000,” he says. “Of course it would be nice to get to the national average, but the goal is to get to the regional average. We were on track, we were $1,000 short, and couldn’t quite make it. I’m disappointed in that.”
Henry will leave office this winter, and while his capitol contributions might be over in a direct, formal sense, he doesn’t expect to stop the campaign.
“This is beyond my control, and the people will ultimately decide, but I hope that I’m remembered as the education governor and the governor who really made strides in education through funding and reforms.”
When Henry took office in January 2003, Oklahoma was suffering a revenue crisis hailed by many as the state’s worst. Such a financial climate would test any political mission, let alone a public policy that called for increased teacher pay and benefits, and extra spending through new programs proposed for state schools, colleges and universities.
Henry is leaving office amid much of the wild political fanfare present when he joined. In the final stretch to vacating office, Henry closed out his last legislative session in late May, after discussions to produce a $6.7 billion budget for the 2011 fiscal year were nearly derailed.
Throughout his two terms, Henry pestered legislators and challenged both educators and students, increasing expectations and accountability for both.
“My whole approach to education is all about children,” he says. “Our children are our future leaders, and our goal should be to make sure that every child in Oklahoma has every opportunity to succeed and every opportunity to go to college.”
Cutting Edge
Among the first orders of education business when he took office, Henry in 2003 appointed the Economic Development Generating Excellence, or EDGE, task force, a panel of public and private leaders who later recommended establishing a $1 billion research endowment to fund projects and private-public partnerships throughout the state.
With conservative estimates on the return of monies invested in the endowment, Henry says the state could “give out $40-$50 million in research grants every year,” to “universities, businesses and entrepreneurs who have a good idea.”
Alfred G. Striz was among those with an idea in need of funding. Striz, a professor at the school of aerospace and mechanical engineering at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Engineering, applied for EDGE funding with a plan that involved the research, testing and production of unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used for commercial applications. Striz’s pre-proposal application was approved by the EDGE Policy Board, although his project wasn’t among those finally approved for funding.
Since its formation, the EDGE Endowment Grant is among the most sought funding sources for researchers in Oklahoma’s aerospace and high-tech industries, says Striz, who expects to apply for the grant again in the future.
“They’re huge. What you have is a real boost to the companies that are involved,” Striz says, adding that the EDGE program helps combine the resources available on public campuses and in the private sector. “In our case, it’s a combination of the university doing the research and some of the development, but also the companies who already have developed stuff… all getting together and working together.”
By working together, schools, researchers and companies have the best chance of establishing new industry in the state, Striz says, especially in fields – like his commercial UAV program – that are so cutting edge, they don’t exist until built.
Universities and colleges benefit from the research component, but also in “workforce development,” which Striz says extends beyond where a classroom ends.
“You’re training students for a future in research and development in the industry, and that’s a good thing,” he says, noting that the educational and economic benefits of such research funding don’t just apply to the major research universities like OU and Oklahoma State University. High level academic institutions.
“It goes further than that. We’re also interested in getting vo-tech involved,” he says. “Somebody needs to train the people that are going to be working on these things to service them and to maintain them. In aviation, in our case, somebody needs to train the pilots that fly these things remotely. It’s larger than just higher education.
“We have a lot of advantages in Oklahoma because the labor force is cheap, we have good laws for startup companies,” he continues, the state’s really supportive. We have a really good climate here in Oklahoma.”
The legislature in 2006 invested the first $150 million in the endowment, which is a far cry from the amount Henry and the taskforce hoped for, unfinished business that Henry laments as he prepares to leave office.
“I’m disappointed that we haven’t found a permanent funding mechanism for the EDGE research endowment,” he says. “I made sure we had the initial deposit of $150 million, which I was only able to do because we had some years with big surpluses, but I’ve been pushing the legislature every year to help dedicate a revenue source so that we can initially reach that billion-dollar mark.”
Bright, Young Minds
While higher education and increasing the state’s number of college graduates has been a cornerstone of his education policy, Henry, in his 2010 State of the State Address, noted the importance of focusing on the state’s youngest students, strides that have led to the adoption of both full-day kindergarten and a voluntary pre-K program that he said is becoming a model for other states throughout the country.
Henry says it’s easy to lose focus on investing in early childhood education because the dividends aren’t immediately felt.
“We’re not going to see the fruits of those efforts this year or next year, or two or five years down the road,” he says, adding that the state might not feel the effects for a decade or even a generation, when it will “really begin to transform” the state, and its perception around the country.
“I predict people will be looking at Oklahoma from every corner of this nation, saying, ‘What’s going on? We want to be like Oklahoma,’” he says, “and that’s just a big, big thing.”
Ace Up His Sleeve
In 2005, Henry signed House Bill 1020 and Senate Bill 982, which funded teacher pay raises and the Achieving Classroom Experience. The ACE Initiative added course requirements for high school students and required incoming freshman in 2008-09 to pass four of six end-of-instruction exams in certain core subject areas before they were given diplomas.
Henry says that creating a “higher stakes environment” helps students raise the bar for academic standards. One of the ACE Initiative’s biggest changes was the inclusion of end-of-instruction exams, rather than end-of-semester exams, which Henry says didn’t offer much consequence to teachers or students whether passed or failed.
“The teachers really didn’t like it because the students didn’t put as much effort into it and didn’t score as high,” he says, adding that switching the type of testing requires that schools offer remediation to help students pass the tests.
“It’s not enough just to make these exams high-stakes, so if you fail you don’t graduate. It was more than just, ‘You have to pass these exams to graduate,’” Henry says. “If you have trouble we’re going to help you, and we’re going to make sure you know this so you have a basic knowledge of these core subjects that are critical in terms of going to college, or even if you choose not to go to college.”
But college preparation is a big component of what the ACE Initiative was designed for, the governor says. The program required freshman entering in 2006-07 to complete a college preparatory curriculum. Parents may opt their children out of the program, but tuition waivers for up to six credit hours a semester are given to high school seniors who meet certain eligibility requirements for concurrent enrollment. Henry says the number of high school students concurrently enrolled in college or university courses has increased to roughly 50,000 from 29,000 since the initiative has been active.
“It’s been pretty amazing,” he says. “For the first time in 2005, students could take a college course tuition free, and so it gave them incentive to do that, even some students who didn’t think they’d go to college.”
The tuition waivers gave many students that were unsure of attending college a “free shot” at trying out university education, and Henry says many of them did well and were inspired to continue their education after high school.
“The bottom line for me is education is the number one priority of the state of Oklahoma. And within education, our priority is to create more college graduates,” he says.
Taking A Chance
The state’s budget shortfall shaped the 2002 gubernatorial race, and Henry was an early and vocal proponent of enacting a state lottery to bring more black to Oklahoma’s balance sheets.
Funding – “Just getting more dollars in the classrooms, to the students” – was just one of a number of challenges facing education when he took office, Henry recalls.
“I set about very early on to try and provide new revenue sources for education and specifically for the classroom through the education lottery.”
After taking office in 2003, Henry moved quickly on proposing and organizing support for the Oklahoma Education Lottery, which faced strong opposition politically – largely along party lines in the state House of Representatives, which rejected the Governor’s efforts – and on moral grounds, by groups like the Baptist General Convention.
Henry managed to put the vote to the people in November 2004, through State Questions 705 and 706, which amended the state constitution to authorize the lottery and create a corresponding trust fund. Voters in all 77 counties overwhelmingly approved the measure, and the first lottery tickets went on sale in October 2005.
The act stipulates that 35 percent of lottery revenues be directed to education, which has since brought in more than $330 million.
“When I first came into office, we were facing at that time the worst budget shortfall in our state’s history, and now we’re leaving on one even worse,” Henry says. “But we’ve gotten through both of those.”
Bonds Abound
Henry also led the legislature through a $475 million capital improvements bond that added buildings, classrooms, laboratories and equipment to “every college and university” throughout the state, a “pool of projects” Henry says is still currently active. Along with the capital improvements bond, Henry pushed to fund an endowed chairs program that matches private donations dollar-for-dollar with public funds.
“Prior to the endowed chair program, it was difficult for our colleges and universities to compete for the best and brightest professors around the country – around the world, really,” Henry says. “That really makes a big difference. If you really want to improve the quality of education, you’ve got to start with the educators.”
First, Foremost
Both through influencing her husband and on her own, First Lady Kim Henry has helped make an indelible mark on education in Oklahoma. In the classroom for 10 years, Kim Henry spent most of her teaching career in Shawnee, where she taught high school history, economics and government, both regular coursework and advanced placement curriculum.
In the classroom, Kim Henry learned that raising expectations yielded elevated results, a theme mirrored in her husband’s education policy and perspective.
“One thing that I found, especially working with teenagers – and this is a generalization, it’s not all kids – I found a good portion of your kids will only do what’s expected,” she says from her office at Sarkeys Foundation in Norman, where she serves as executive director. “They won’t go the extra mile, they just do the bare minimum to get by, and if you raise those expectations, the kids perform at what you expect them to do.”
Both Kim and Gov. Henry agree that teachers are the first and primary component of education reform, a first building block in a framework for students to find high-paying jobs and help fuel the state’s economy.
“We always talk about, ‘We need to bring more jobs in Oklahoma,’ but really the number one thing businesses look at before they move, relocate or build in a state is the number of college graduates. Do you have your work force up to par for what I’m going to need?,” Kim Henry says, adding that the benefits to quality of life extend beyond simple economics.
“Go out on the street, stop somebody and ask them to name three people that have really changed your life,” she says. “I bet for the vast majority of people, one of those three will be a teacher.”
Henry agrees.
“It’s pretty academic,” he says. “College graduates earn more money in their careers; they are less likely to end up in prison; they are less likely to end up on social programs; less likely to end up on drugs or a life of crime and more likely to contribute to society through taxes, through philanthropic giving and so forth.”
From a fiscal and economic standpoint, Henry says the challenges facing his successor “remain to be seen.” He is disappointed by the lack of a permanent funding mechanism for the EDGE endowment, but is optimistic whoever is elected to the governor’s post in November will see the value in making it a source for research and entrepreneurial enterprise. Henry was able to raise teacher pay, but fell short of his goal to match Oklahoma salaries with the regional average.
“We got within $1,000,” he says. “Of course it would be nice to get to the national average, but the goal is to get to the regional average. We were on track, we were $1,000 short, and couldn’t quite make it. I’m disappointed in that.”
Henry will leave office this winter, and while his capitol contributions might be over in a direct, formal sense, he doesn’t expect to stop the campaign.
“This is beyond my control, and the people will ultimately decide, but I hope that I’m remembered as the education governor and the governor who really made strides in education through funding and reforms.”
