ImpactTulsa, a collaborative partnership between several entities seeking to ensure a high-quality education for all Tulsa-area students, released its second annual report on Wednesday.
The organization hosted an event Wednesday evening at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center to discuss the report’s findings. Area superintendents, philanthropists, business people and representatives of other education-related organizations attended the event.
The organization’s areas of focus are kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading proficiency, eighth-grade math proficiency, high school completion college- and career-ready, postsecondary enrollment and postsecondary completion.
“The goal has to be using the data to put the right kind of information in the hands of practitioners, funders and the community in general,” said ImpactTulsa CEO Kathy Taylor. “If we use it to identify what works, we can have a real discussion about how we change outcomes instead of stigmatizing schools.”
People are also reading…
Among the findings in the 2015 report is that only about 60 percent of Tulsa-area children in kindergarten can read at or above grade level within the first few months of school.
“Higher-income students are almost twice as likely to be reading at grade-level as their lower-income peers,” the report states.
In the region, only 44 percent of economically disadvantaged children are ready for school, compared to 80 percent of their more-affluent peers, the report says.
According to the report, at least 3,000 eligible Tulsa-area 4-year-olds are not accessing available prekindergarten programs.
John Tapogna, with ECONorthwest, has worked with ImpactTulsa on the data it has collected. ECONorthwest is a consulting firm specializing in economics, finance and planning.
Tapogna presented the data Wednesday and pointed out that Tulsa has a nationally recognized public prekindergarten program and needs to figure out how to take full advantage of it.
“This region has to get a handle on that prekindergarten enrollment,” he said. “That is low-hanging fruit.”
“I would say if there is a Job 1, this is Job 1 — to figure out how to get those kids enrolled,” Tapogna said, referring to the 3,000 eligible children who are not enrolled in the program.
The report also finds that although third-grade reading scores improved slightly from 2014 to 2015 — with the percentage of third graders deemed “at risk” falling from 18 percent to 16 percent and those who are proficient climbing from 44 percent to 45 percent — there is still an achievement gap.
“Students of color score far below their white peers,” the report states. Low-income readers score approximately one full grade level below their higher-income counterparts, the report adds.
Other findings in the report include:
- Graduation rates in the Tulsa area are on par with the rest of the country, but a substantial gap exists between traditional high schools in the community, with rates ranging from 44 percent to 99 percent.
- An enrollment snapshot in the spring 2015 semester shows that only 42 percent of students from the class of 2013 are still enrolled in a postsecondary institution roughly a year and a half after graduating from high school.
- Only 53 percent of the graduating class of 2014 completed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms, which are required to receive any form of financial aid to a postsecondary institution.
ImpactTulsa refers to itself as a “collective impact” organization. It launched last year and is a partnership of 15 area school districts, six post-secondary institutions and an array of local leaders from the education, business, civic, nonprofit, philanthropy and faith communities.
The idea came from Cincinnati, where a similar initiative called the StrivePartnership brought together leaders to support education. This led to the national Strive Together network that is now in place, of which ImpactTulsa is a part. The network includes more than 60 cities that have such partnerships.
For more information, visit impacttulsa.com.
