Multiple long-term educational indicators show clear increases since the federal Department of Education was created in 1979.

By 2020, the percent of adults 18-24 with a high school diploma or alternative credential had increased to 94.3 from 83.9 in 1980. The National Center for Education Statistics reported public high school graduation rates of 87% nationally and 81% in Oklahoma.

Scores on the NAEP long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments, typically administered to 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students nationwide every four years, have also increased over the past five decades, except for the 10th and 25th percentile reading and 10th percentile mathematics scores for 13-year-olds, which decreased.

The average reading score for 13-year-olds is only one point above the 1971 score; however, reading and mathematics scores for 9- and 13-year-olds peaked well above their 1970s scores in 2012 before declining.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Education An Overview of the U.S. Department of Education: History and Purpose
• Statista Percentage of young adults who have completed high school in the United States from 1980 to 2020
• National Center for Education Statistics Public High School Graduation Rates
• National Center for Education Statistics Reading and Mathematics Score Trends
• The Nations Report Card Average Scores and Percentiles

The post Has every educational statistic gotten worse since the Department of Education was created? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Political candidates and outside groups are ramping up their efforts to reach voters ahead of the Aug. 25 runoff election. 

Outside groups, including political action committees and social welfare organizations, have reported spending at least $9.7 million since July 1. Candidates have spent about $4 million over that period to reach voters. 

Most of the advertising money has been spent on the GOP runoff for governor, where Attorney General Gentner Drummond and former state senator Mike Mazzei are vying for the party’s nomination. 

Several advertisements make claims that warrant additional scrutiny. Here’s what the public record shows: 

Tax Hikes 

The Claim: Put Oklahoma 1st, a Virginia-based super PAC that formed less than three weeks ago, has spent at least $2.6 million on television advertisements opposing Mazzei. The group alleges that Mazzei supported more than $500 million in new taxes while serving in the state Senate.

The Facts: In 2016, Mazzei introduced Senate Bill 1073, which proposed delaying a planned top-rate income tax reduction from 5.25 to 5%. 

Mazzei cited lower-than-expected state revenue collections as the motivation for the bill, arguing that implementing the tax cut could lead to reduced funding for education and other state services.

“As a fiscal conservative, I would much rather delay a tax cut than vote to increase taxes and start new taxes,” Mazzei said in a statement after the bill advanced out of the Senate Finance Committee. 

The bill ultimately stalled after failing to receive a hearing in the full Senate. 

Defending Trump

The Claim: School Freedom Fund Oklahoma, a Washington, D.C.-based super PAC, has spent more than $3 million on television ads and mailers opposing Drummond. The group sent a series of mailers to Republican voters in August claiming that Drummond refused to defend President Donald Trump from impeachment. 

The Facts: Drummond, who was elected attorney general in 2022, appeared before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee on Jan. 10, 2024, to testify on border security and Oklahoma’s efforts to crack down on illicit marijuana grows. 

During the hearing, former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, asked Drummond and two other Republican attorneys general in attendance if they believed Trump’s 2019 impeachment was warranted. Drummond said, “It’s outside my lane. I’m just a simple attorney general from Oklahoma.” 

Swalwell also asked the attorneys general if Trump should have been impeached in 2021 for incitement of an insurrection. Drummond said, “I don’t have an opinion on that matter.” 

Backing State Farm

The Claim: Drummond’s campaign aired a television advertisement claiming that Mazzei has sided with State Farm. An ongoing lawsuit alleges that State Farm systematically underpaid valid wind- and hail-damage claims from Oklahoma homeowners. 

The Facts: There is no public record of Mazzei supporting State Farm, though he has criticized Drummond’s decision to sue the company. 

In an interview with News on 6 in July, Mazzei said the lawsuits came too late and were politically motivated. He said a recent law change, which requires proposed insurance rate increases to be publicly posted and reviewed by the Oklahoma Insurance Department, will help slow premium rate increases. 

Donations to Democrats 

The Claim: Mazzei’s campaign has run ads claiming that Drummond has donated to at least 11 Oklahoma Democrats since 2004. 

The Facts: Campaign finance records show Drummond occasionally supported Democratic candidates in the 2000s and 2010s. 

Drummond’s most recent reported contribution to an Oklahoma Democratic candidate is $500 to Rep. John Waldron in 2017. However, most of his political contributions have gone to Republicans. 

During the Aug. 3 GOP gubernatorial runoff debate, Drummond said he made the donations to bolster his business, Blue Sky Bank. 

“Just like President Trump gave to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, I’ve given money to colleagues who are in business with me,” Drummond said. 

Federal Election Commission records show that Drummond donated $1,000 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Drummond has said several times that his wife, Wendy, made the donation in error on a joint account and that it was promptly refunded. Documentation of the refund, processed on Sept. 8, 2020, was presented during the debate.

Gender Transition Surgeries

The Claim: The Mazzei campaign ran a television ad that claims Drummond refused to enforce a law banning gender transition surgeries for minors. 

The Facts: On May 1, 2023, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed Senate Bill 613 into law. The law, among other provisions, prohibits Oklahoma health care providers from providing gender transition procedures to minors. It specifies that violators could face criminal charges and civil penalties. 

One day later, the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Oklahoma and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the bill’s constitutionality. On May 18, 2023, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office agreed to a nonenforcement agreement while the challenge moved through the courts. In a statement, the attorney general’s office said the temporary delay was necessary to protect the state’s defense. 

The attorney general’s office defended the law in the federal courts. In October 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma upheld the law, allowing it to be enforced. 

On Aug. 7, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed that decision. Drummond applauded the court’s decision in a press release the same day. 

Inola Smelter 

The Claim: Put Oklahoma 1st sent mailers to Republican voters alleging that Mazzei wants to use $1 billion of taxpayer money to build a foreign-owned aluminum smelter.

The Facts: Last year, Oklahoma lawmakers passed House Bill 2781, which established a $255 million rebate program for Global Emirates Aluminum to build an aluminum smelter in Inola. 

To qualify, the company must invest at least $2 billion in Oklahoma and create at least 700 direct jobs in the first year. That number increases to 1,000 jobs in the second year, which must be maintained through 2045 to receive the full incentive package. 

The U.S. Department of Energy has also pledged $500 million toward the project. The proposed smelter is majority-foreign-owned, with Global Emirates Aluminum, a state-owned enterprise of the United Arab Emirates, holding a controlling 60% interest. Century Aluminum, a Chicago-based aluminum producer, has a 40% stake. 

Mazzei was critical of the smelter project early on in his gubernatorial run, calling it a waste of tax dollars during a March 30 gubernatorial forum. He shifted his position in late May, saying he fully supported the project and its potential to bring jobs and industry to Oklahoma. 

On June 2, Drummond filed a lawsuit in Rogers County District Court seeking to stop construction of the smelter, arguing that its emissions would harm nearby residents. The case was transferred to federal court on July 21, where it remains pending. 

Keaton Ross covers democracy and criminal justice for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at (405) 831-9753 or Kross@Oklahomawatch.org. Follow him on Twitter at @_KeatonRoss.

The post Tax Hikes, Democrat Donations and Defending Trump: Fact-Checking Claims Made in Runoff Election Ads appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Andrea Eger breaks down what is driving the massive spike in Oklahomans’ electricity bills, while Jake Ramsey examines the lack of legal recourse for tenants dealing with negligent landlords failing to provide essential services. Plus, Brenna Witchey details Oklahoma’s controversial felony murder doctrine, which allows minors to be sentenced to prison for homicides they didn’t directly commit. Catch these stories and more on the latest Long Story Short with Shaun Witt.

The post Utility Shock, Housing Protections and Juvenile Murder Laws appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Republican state superintendent candidates Robert Franklin and James Taylor faced off in a debate Monday evening televised on News 9 in Oklahoma City and News on 6 in Tulsa. The candidates had different takes on topics ranging from what’s needed to improve student results in reading, private school vouchers and the role of religion in public schools.

Franklin, a part-time lecturer at the University of Oklahoma, retired associate superintendent at Tulsa Technology Center and former public school administrator and teacher, and Taylor, a longtime pastor with a church in Norman and current history teacher at Little Axe High School, will appear on the Aug. 25 Republican runoff ballot. The winner will face Democrat Jennettie Marshall in the Nov. 3 general election. 

Both Taylor and Franklin made claims that warrant additional scrutiny. Here are the facts, categorized by topic: 

Improving student literacy

The Claim: Taylor said the so-called “Mississippi Miracle,” a slate of comprehensive early literacy reforms implemented there since 2013, now credited with dramatic improvements in student test scores, originated in Oklahoma but was later gutted. 

“Mississippi just did what we initially started,” he said during Monday evening’s debate. 

The Facts: Since 2013, Mississippi lawmakers have mandated that only scientifically based strategies, including phonics, be used to teach reading in public schools; that third-graders who do not pass the state test be held back; and that new literacy coach positions be created in schools across the state. Those reforms are widely credited with closing Mississippi’s student achievement gap with the rest of the nation, even as that state has remained the poorest in the nation. 

By comparison, Oklahoma lawmakers passed a mandatory third-grade reading retention law in 2011 called the Reading Sufficiency Act, but quickly added a provision to allow students who failed the test to be promoted to fourth grade if recommended by a team of educators and parents, which resulted in far fewer students being retained. Lawmakers fully reinstated a strict third-grade retention mandate, with limited exemptions, that is set to take effect in 2027-28.

The Claim: Taylor said Lindel Fields, who was appointed state superintendent in October after Ryan Walters’ resignation, should be “enforcing” new reading instruction requirements from the state legislature.

The Facts: The host of new requirements in the Strong Readers Act, passed with Senate Bill 1778, came with a gradual phase-in. The requirement that third-graders who don’t pass the state reading test and don’t qualify for an exemption be held back, as well as a new requirement for schools to give second graders the state’s third-grade reading test unless their parents opt out, won’t kick in until 2027-28.

The Claim: In calling for even more funding to provide additional personnel for these positions, Taylor said the Oklahoma Legislature added funding for 20 reading specialists, “but that’s not enough.”

The Facts: The Oklahoma Legislature did not fund new reading specialists, which are local school employees with advanced training in literacy who diagnose students’ reading difficulties, provide students with targeted interventions, and coach classroom teachers. Instead, lawmakers invested $5 million to expand the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s Help Elevate Reading Outcomes for Every Student literacy coaching team from five to 24 reading coaches and six regional supervisors. Placed regionally across the state, HEROES team members’ mission is to support school districts in implementing the requirements of the Strong Readers Act, by developing or improving sustainable and systemic literacy programming.

The Claim: In addition to mandating science-based reading instruction methods, Taylor said the Oklahoma Legislature also has restored mandatory instruction in cursive writing and he believes that will contribute to higher reading scores for students. 

The Facts: House Bill 3727 was signed into law by Governor Kevin Stitt in April 2024 and took effect beginning with the 2024–25 school year. That law requires all public schools, including charter schools, to begin cursive instruction in Grade 3 with the goal of ensuring students can read cursive and write it legibly by the end of the fifth grade.

Private school vouchers

The Claim: When asked his stance on the Parental Choice Tax Credit, Franklin said he thought the program picked winners and losers. He didn’t suggest any changes, but said the state should analyze its goals and expectations before any future expansion.  

The Facts: The program operates on a first-come, first-served basis, although low-income families get earlier access to apply. The program has broad income eligibility limits. Families with incomes below $75,000 can get the maximum credit of $7,500 per child. The credit steps down across several income levels, reaching $5,000 per child for incomes above $250,000. There is no upper income cap. The state’s median household income is $65,000. 

The Claim: Taylor said the tax credit program has accountability built into it. He said parents do not see the money and instead have to go to school to countersign the tax credit award checks for their children. The schools have already been vetted by the state, Taylor said. 

The Facts: Taylor is correct on the check endorsement process and the state’s requirement for participating private schools to be accredited, although the law gives them until 2027 to obtain accreditation. 

The Claim: Taylor said many parents have children in private schools that aren’t getting the Parental Choice Tax Credit. 

The Facts: Demand for the tax credit has been high, and was among the reasons Republican lawmakers recently raised annual, maximum funding from $250 million to $275 million. The latest data from the Oklahoma Tax Commission shows 39,629 students qualified for the tax credit for 2026-27.

Personal history

The Claim: A moderator asked Taylor, who was terminated from his teaching position with Oklahoma City Public Schools in November 2021 because he refused to wear a mask, why voters should trust him. Taylor said that it was illegal for the district to institute a mandatory mask policy and he was forced to choose between violating the law and losing his job. 

The Facts: Gov. Kevin Stitt signed Senate Bill 658 into law, which took effect on July 1, 2021, albeit with a swift legal challenge. Among other provisions, it prohibited school boards from implementing a mask mandate unless a state of emergency is in effect. 

Sean McDaniel, then-superintendent of OKCPS, instituted a district-wide mask mandate on Aug. 13, 2021. He said that SB 658 applied only to school boards, not superintendents, and that he was within his rights to take executive action. The rule, which allowed for teachers to request a medical exemption, remained in effect until March 1, 2022. 

Taylor and five other teachers showed up to the first day of school on Aug. 16, 2021, and refused to wear a mask, so they were sent home and placed on paid administrative leave. Nine days later, McDaniel recommended their termination. 

On Sept. 1, 2021, Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai temporarily delayed implementation of the SB 658 provision restricting district mask mandates. In September 2022, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down that portion of the law, ruling that it unconstitutionally restricted school districts from acting independently. 

In August 2023, Taylor and five other teachers filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Oklahoma City Public Schools. The case remains open, according to online court records. 

Local control vs. state control

The Claim: As Taylor expressed his support for local school districts determining what is needed for their students, he said schools currently choose their curriculum, teachers, and other resources. 

The Facts: School districts do select their own curriculum, but the content must closely follow Oklahoma Academic Standards, which the state board of education reviews every six years.

The Claim: Franklin said he’s never touted school consolidation or a move to countywide superintendents and elected school boards. Instead, he said the state needs to invest in long-term data systems to analyze what is happening in each school. He said Oklahoma has started to work on that. 

The Facts: In recent press interviews, Franklin has instead touted the idea of designating regional service centers with shared resources for smaller, rural school districts, such as physical, speech and occupational therapists, as well as information technology and chief financial officer services. Oklahoma School Report Cards and the Oklahoma Office of Educational Quality and Accountability currently track school performance data.

Post-Walters administration

The Claim: Asked how he would restore confidence in the state superintendent’s office following Ryan Walters, Taylor said his opposition to critical race theory is one of his successes, and he helped the attorney general’s office defend House Bill 1775.

The Facts: In a federal lawsuit challenging House Bill 1775, Taylor filed an affidavit in support of the law. In his affidavit, Taylor stated he read the law several times and didn’t find it vague or overly broad and it wouldn’t hinder him from teaching history. A federal judge in 2024 enjoined portions of the law for being unclear. The lawsuit, filed in 2021, is ongoing. 

Religion in schools

The Claim: Taylor quoted John Adams as saying, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” and said that Adams was not speaking about religion in general, but Christianity in particular.

The Facts: Scholars disagree. As a Deist — spiritual but not dogmatic — Adams was a fervent believer in religious freedom. Although Adams occasionally made positive references to Christianity, he was not an advocate of any particular religion. Other Adams quotes on religion read, in part, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,” “The divinity of Jesus is a convenient cover for absurdity,” and “The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish nation or a Mohammedan nation.”

The Claim: Franklin said that religious instruction was an undue burden on teachers who were simultaneously tasked with teaching math and English, and suggested that the teaching of religion should be left to family and religious leaders.

The Facts: Opinions vary widely on teaching religion in schools. Some argue that dedicated religious instruction can teach empathy when taught from an academic, non-devotional perspective. Others argue that religion should not be taught by non-specialists because there may be bias toward the instructor’s religion and may overlook non-spiritual perspectives. 

Federal grants

The Claim: Franklin claimed that the prior administration under Ryan Walters did not chase federal dollars. He added that the federal money went to other states and that Oklahoma should have applied for the grants as well.

The Facts: Franklin is correct. In 2023, the Tulsa World reported that Walters vowed not to apply for federal grants that run counter to Oklahoma values. A longtime grant writer told the publication that the Oklahoma State Department of Education had not applied for a single grant and that the list of grants Walters provided to legislators was from his predecessor, Joy Hofmeister.

It is unclear how much grant money Oklahoma lost out on because the prior administration did not seek federal grants.

Success stories

Claim: Franklin cited a Union Public Schools program, through which he said the 2023 or 2024 National Teacher of the Year, Rebecka Peterson, teaches high schoolers aspiring to be teachers pedagogy, school discipline, and classroom management, and they intern in classrooms across the school district.  

Facts: Peterson was the 2020-2021 Union Teacher of the Year, 2022 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year in 2023. She runs the Future Educator program at Union High School in Tulsa. The first cohort of students graduated this year. 

Claim: Taylor cited a CareerTech in Drumright that offers a teacher preparation program for high school students. 

Facts: Central Tech’s campus in Drumright will offer a new career program for high school juniors and seniors called Teacher Prep beginning this fall. 

The post From the Mississippi Miracle to Consolidation and Cursive: Fact-Checking the Oklahoma State Superintendent Runoff Debate appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Oklahoma has the 48th highest female life expectancy among the states and the District of Columbia at 76.5 years, according to the most recently available state-by-state federal report.

The life expectancy for women in Oklahoma is 3.7 years less than the 2022 national average of 80.2 years.

On average, women live longer than men due to biological, behavioral, and social factors. For example, men are more likely to die from heart disease and suicide.

The male life expectancy in Oklahoma is the 44th highest at 71.3 years, bringing the state’s average across both sexes to No. 45 at 73.8 years – 3.7 years less than the national average.

The national life expectancy in 2024 increased to 79 years. COVID-19, which was the 4th leading cause of death in 2022, dropped to No.15. Heart disease and cancer remained the top leading causes

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• National Vital Statistics Report U.S. State Life Tables, 2022
• National Center for Health Statistics Life Expectancy
• Harvard Health Publishing Why men often die earlier than women
• CDC Life Expectancy
• National Center for Health Statistics Mortality in the United States, 2022

The post Is Oklahoma among the states with the shortest life expectancies for women? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

High schoolers in the 80s were told to just say no to drugs. Studies show that didn’t work. 

Now, Oklahoma’s Attorney General wants to try something different.

On July 8, the Office of Attorney General Drummond invited school districts to participate in the Botvin LifeSkills Training program at no cost through his Oklahoma READY initiative. The program was selected because of its evidence-based approach and prior research on its results.

The Numbers Are Grim 

Children in Oklahoma have higher substance use rates than the national average in many categories, including cigarettes, marijuana, illicit drugs and opioids, according to the 2021-2023 Behavioral Health Barometer. The only category that is below the national average is alcohol use. 

Drummond’s initiative uses opioid abatement grants as stipends to aid participating school districts in implementing the program, making it effectively free if a school district has a person who can serve as a facilitator. 

Being a facilitator means attending an eight-hour training, then going into classrooms and teaching the LifeSkills curriculum to a variety of age groups. The program, when adhered to, has proven effective at reducing substance use, according to a 2025 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. 

But educators have a lot on their plate. Counselors, in districts that have them at all, are outnumbered, and President Donald Trump’s early 2025 funding cuts ended programs such as the University of Oklahoma’s PRIME that brought counselors to rural schools, according to reporting by The Oklahoman.

While the Oklahoma READY Initiative offers a curriculum with glowing reviews, it can’t conduct parent outreach or address the need for more direct intervention, which often requires more employees.

Free Isn’t Always Easy 

Rachel May, a substance abuse counselor at Stillwater Public Schools, described the predicament as a puzzle with four parts: manpower, fidelity to programming, time, and money. 

“Teachers being trained in that would be amazing, and it makes a lot of sense to be structured into what they’re doing,” May said. “However, they are required to do so much that sometimes I kind of wonder like, is that something else on their plate that’s hard to manage?”

A Cart Full of Props 

May can be found pushing her cart of props into classrooms all over the Stillwater Public School District throughout the school year. She lugs around a model brain and tubes of chemicals to discuss substance use with students. 

She dismantles the brain to show children what parts of theirs are still developing. She displays the chemicals to show what’s really in vapes. It’s not fruit juice; the kinds of chemicals found in insect killers and floor cleaners. 

Her teaching method emphasizes increased knowledge, not scare tactics. She’ll spend six hours a day for four days going from class to class, making sure all students in just one grade level receive her lesson on a topic.

Stillwater’s data collection method for students receiving substance abuse counseling wasn’t solidified across the district for the first two years of May’s employment. While the data is a little shaky because of that, she said the school has had a decrease in substance abuse-related offenses by students in the last three years. 

May was hired using COVID relief funds.  Since then, the district has had to apply for grants to maintain her employment. While there are a lot of options when it comes to addressing substance abuse among children, district decisions can be money-motivated.

Before Drummond’s Oklahoma READY Initiative was introduced, Adair High School had already been implementing the program using opioid abatement grant money. 

The school’s facilitator, Keni Burns, said she’s had a very positive experience with Botvin LifeSkills. She recalled hearing students in the hallway discussing why nicotine is bad for them after one of her lessons. 

“It got their brains working, so I think that that’s a positive because they are having honest conversations about those things and they don’t just talk about it to talk about it,” she said. 

The Oklahoma READY Initiative uses the same funds that Adair was already using to pay for Botvin. The school is currently in the process of being switched over to the Oklahoma READY Initiative, according to Deputy Press Secretary for the Attorney General’s Office Carrie Burkhart. 

Switching to the Oklahoma READY Initiative will free up the money Adair is using for the Botvin program. This will enable them to pay for other opioid-prevention models, such as hiring a part-time counselor, Burkhart said.

What the Curriculum Can’t Do 

Craig Zettle, senior vice president of the Lifeskills Training program, said the curriculum is a universal model. It’s aimed at informing kids who have no experience with substances and those who have experimented. 

Botvin LifeSkills Training would not be harmful to a thrill-seeking adolescent in the ways that other programming might be, but some young people do need extra support in the form of counseling, Zettle said. 

The Missing Piece

University of Central Oklahoma substance abuse studies professor LaDonna McCune said having a licensed substance abuse counselor on hand is vital. 

“You might get into that and start working with these young people and not realize the degree of help that they need,” McCune said. “Just educating them is just like the tip of the bucket; they really need someone who can give them good referral information or could set up some counseling for them and their families.”

From 2021 to 2023, 18.4% of children aged 12 to 17 surveyed for the Behavioral Health Barometer in Oklahoma reported having a substance use disorder in the past year.   

Oklahoma READY will be offered to middle and high school students. While that is the target age group of the survey, May said that for many students, their first interaction with substances occurs in fourth grade. The most common drug used by children in Oklahoma is marijuana. 

A 2024 survey of school resource officers throughout Oklahoma showed 92% of respondents reported an increase in marijuana-related incidents after its medical legalization in 2018, with about one-sixth saying students obtain marijuana with their own medical card and one-third attributing access to parents. May estimated the sources were evenly split.

School resource officers are another intervention point for youth substance abuse. May works closely with Stillwater resource officers to connect children who break the rules with other forms of counseling. Lisa Hale, the local regional director for the National Association of School Resource Officers, said that she emphasizes educating students on the “why” behind the rules.

Incorporating third-party educational services, such as Key Choices, into the school day can also be an effective way to intervene. Founded by Catherine Crawford, the free program emphasizes a child’s autonomy and choice in experimenting with substances and the outcomes of their participation. Teachers contracted with Crawford can be requested by schools. They’ll then teach multiple lessons over the course of a week. 

Tackling substance abuse among Oklahoma youth has to be a team effort that includes parents, McCune and Crawford said, especially when it comes to addressing generational substance abuse. 

McCune recalled the most effective program she worked in: the first-time offender program at the Mid-Del Youth and Family Center. 

She said some parents were angry the first time they had to attend, but by the end of the program, they expressed that they didn’t feel judged. Instead, they felt supported along with their child. 

Although that group is outside school, it equally demonstrates the importance of parental involvement, adherence to programming and the necessity of proper staffing that creates positive impacts.

Facilitators who administer the Botvin LifeSkills program are continually reminded of the fidelity required for the program to work, Zettle said. While there may not be someone monitoring every lesson, facilitators are reminded to ensure they cover every point. 

“By and large I’ve found in my experience that, when facilitators implement the program, they’re kind of coming at it from a place that they wanna do the best they can for the youth they work with,” Zettle said. “So in that case, fidelity tends to be pretty high.”

Balancing fidelity to the program without encroaching on lesson time in other core subjects might prove difficult in smaller districts where teachers are already spread thin, and counselors are nonexistent. 

“Our school has way more supports and options for families than a lot of other little schools, especially in rural Oklahoma,” May said. “Sometimes I think like, man, even with all these supports it’s this hard, I can’t imagine what those other little schools are doing.” 

The results are dependent on the availability of facilitators and adherence to the program. Oklahoma continues to experience a deficit in trained substance abuse counselors in general, McCune said. 

Obtaining the funding to employ substance abuse counselors and school resource officers may be another hurdle districts face in holistically addressing student substance abuse. 

“It’s so important that other schools know there’s grant funding out there,” May said. “Sometimes it’s work, but it’s worth it.” 

Editor’s note: This story was updated Tuesday, Aug. 18, to correct the name of the Oklahoma READY drug prevention program.

Brenna Witchey is a reporting intern at Oklahoma Watch. Contact her at bwitchey@oklahomawatch.org.

The post Oklahoma Kids Use Drugs at Higher Rates Than the National Average. A New Initiative Wants to Change That. appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

In 1997, Allstate Insurance Company launched a test program in Albuquerque, N.M., titled the Claim Core Process Redesign, to modify its process for assessing wind- and hail-related roof damage claims.

In May that year, initial test results suggested wild success: claim payout costs had dropped by 50% or more, yielding greater savings for the company than originally predicted. A subsequent report comparing data from before, during, and after the test confirmed sharp reductions in costs and even more dramatic gains in the number of policyholders whose claims were closed without any payment at all.

Before the test, Allstate paid out on 75.9% of wind claims and 82.8% of hail claims. After the test, they paid out on 29.2% of wind claims and 11.1% of hail claims.

In other words, a whole lot more policyholders were having their claims denied entirely.

The initial reports on the Albuquerque test expressed giddy corporate excitement with big-font claims of “Awesome!” and “Wow!” next to profit data graphs, even as one document took quiet note of policyholders who had been denied.

“Initial customer feedback on the process has been positive, although there are some disappointed customers who expected full roof replacements,” the report read.

Details of the Albuquerque test came to light in the motions in a 2023 roof-claim lawsuit in Oklahoma, a case that aligns perfectly with the saga of roof claims that began to draw public attention when Oklahoma Watch broke the story of Hursh v. State Farm in December.

On May 21, 2022, a storm hit the Rogers County home of Laurie Edin and Thomas Utzig. An Allstate adjuster approved a replacement only to be overruled by remote Allstate managers. An independent adjuster estimated damages at $21,000; Edin and Utzig retained two Oklahoma City law firms: Whitten Burrage and The Marr Law Firm.

In the past year, for the sheer volume of cases they handle, Reggie and Hannah Whitten of Whitten Burrage and Jeff Marr of The Marr Law Firm have become synonymous with the ongoing roof-claim saga. The number of cases changes daily, but as the saga unfolded and as Attorney General Gentner Drummond intervened on behalf of the state and filed lawsuits against both State Farm and Allstate, Whitten Burrage has accumulated more than 1,000 cases across Oklahoma, and The Marr Law Firm counts approximately 200 cases.

In the latest development, as the battle over discovery orders heats up in cases litigated across the state, Whitten Burrage and The Marr Law Firm have been hired to represent Oklahoma on the AG’s State Farm and Allstate cases, respectively.

After months of refusing to speak publicly about cases that have burst into national news and been featured in political debates and campaigns, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are now speaking openly about their lives and work. For the first time, they are revealing what is contained in secret documents that, like the Epstein Files, reveal the scope and nature of the scheme that has left Oklahoma homeowners demanding answers.

Treated Like the Enemy

Reggie Whitten hailed from Seminole, attended OU Law, and cut his teeth as an insurance litigator by assisting on cases for a prominent insurance defense trial lawyer while he was still in law school.

Whitten went on to defend insurance companies for two decades, traveling the state to offer courses on how they could avoid bad-faith claims. Things were different in those days, Whitten said. He recalled that he would turn over claim files to plaintiffs even without a subpoena, and he said that most of his corporate clients felt empathy with policyholders and sought ways to pay out on complex, catastrophic claims.

“The business was different back then,” Whitten said. “The world has changed a lot.”

He noticed a shift around 1990, not a jump from black to white but a gradual drift toward greed. His staff picked up on it first: his insurance company clients were finagling a 20% reduction in his fees.

The big change came in 2020.

“I was used to seeing one thing from State Farm; this was different,” Whitten said.

Rather than a single case, he began to notice a cluster of complaints from insureds regarding wind and hail roof claims. Roofers were joking online that anyone insured by State Farm was likely to be denied. It was new, Whitten said, and, ironically, it was a little like hailstorms in that something that had formerly hit only occasionally now seemed to be happening every day.

“You didn’t have to be a genius to see the change, the sheer numbers of it,” Whitten said.

It would take a years-long legal battle to begin to work out what happened, and for years after that, Whitten Burrage lawyers would be prevented by protective orders from publicly discussing what they had learned.

Now they are winning the right to speak.

Whitten’s daughter, Hannah Whitten, who joined her father’s firm in 2022, made no effort to disguise the fact that she finds State Farm’s behavior reprehensible.

“There was a scheme,” Hannah Whitten said. “That’s a fact, not an opinion. It’s documented.”

Previous reporting has been limited to noting that State Farm launched a wind and hail initiative in 2020 as a test program in Dallas and quickly expanded it to many other states.

Hannah Whitten offered further detail from secret documents: 2020 marked the launch of a remote evaluation process for claims. That is, claims were evaluated by people out of state who never saw the roof on which they passed judgment.

Put otherwise, Hannah Whitten said, State Farm told their local, front-line claim adjusters that they no longer had the authority to award total roof replacements for wind and hail damage.

“The most sinister tactic State Farm developed was robbing adjusters of settlement authority and only reviewing adjusters who were approving claims,” Hannah Whitten said. “The only time a manager is reviewing your work is if you are granting too many roofs.”

Furthermore, the documents revealed a metric. If, as an adjuster, you approved too many roofs, you would be forced to sit down with your manager to discuss your future with the company, Hannah Whitten said.

Beyond the logistics of the scheme, the Whitten Burrage lawyers had begun to learn just how much money State Farm had made from the wind-and-hail initiative.

“They tracked it,” Reggie Whitten said, describing what he’d seen in the secret documents. “Charts, graphs, bells and whistles. They achieved their goal in a pilot program in Dallas County, Texas.”

The documents showed that in the first year, 2020, State Farm counted more than $1 billion in corporate savings at the expense of policyholders, Reggie Whitten said. How much State Farm has made in the years since has not yet been calculated.

Oklahoma Watch reported that the first 125 cases Whitten Burrage took on were settled in 2024. Of those, the settlement amount of just one case was known: $3 million.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” Hannah Whitten said.

That Hail Damage is Not Hail Damage

In May 2025, Senators Josh Hawley, R-MO, and Andy Kim, D-NJ, hosted a hearing on insurance claims practices featuring extensive testimony from policyholders and whistleblower adjustors from State Farm and Allstate.

Allstate adjuster Nick Schroeder described what would happen when he submitted legitimate roof claims to remote managers.

“If there is something they disagree with, they would say to remove it,” Schroeder said. “It’s, you know, ‘That hail damage isn’t hail damage, take it off.’”

For Jeff Marr of The Marr Law Firm, that kind of thing struck a familiar tone. He was quick to point out that what State Farm had been accused of doing in Oklahoma was not new and was directly linked to advice the insurance industry had received from several colossal consulting firms.

“There is not really anything that one of them is doing that the other is not,” Marr said. “If it’s State Farm in the lead, or Allstate, they switch off. They are visited by the same people, whether it’s McKinsey or Accenture; they make the rounds.”

Marr learned to decode the cryptic system of euphemisms and acronyms that the industry used to veil its schemes, he said.

It arguably began, Marr said, when McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm that has been associated with the savings and loan scandal, Enron, and the opioid epidemic, was asked to advise Allstate on its claim-handling practices, according to a 2007 affidavit of Allstate Assistant Vice-President Christine Sullivan.

For several months in late 1993, Sullivan said, McKinsey prepared a “fact-gathering” report totaling 12,929 pages, based on data from Tucson, Arizona; Miami, Florida; Troy, Michigan; and Oklahoma City.

Several years later, Allstate tested what it called the process, the Claim Core Process Redesign, in Albuquerque, N.M.

“The process is the scheme,” Marr said.

Opportunity Dollars

Materials embedded in court documents reveal that McKinsey had identified “opportunity dollars,” that is, areas of claim handling where profits could be increased. A presentation delivered at an April 18, 1997, Allstate brand meeting cited the evaluation of roof damage in wind and hail claims as their largest area of opportunity.

Marr offered translation of various examples of what he called “McKinsey-speak.”

When reports cited “insufficient coverage analysis,” it meant that Allstate should have looked harder for ways to deny coverage,” Marr said.

“Improper scoping of damages” meant the company looked too hard for things to pay out on, Marr said.

“Poor identification of subrogation opportunity,” Marr said, was another way of saying reimbursement, and meant that companies should seek others to pay them back when they were found to have owed a claim.

Now-unveiled documents revealed that one of the largest challenges of the so-called process was ensuring that Allstate employees adhered to its measures.

“It is critical that performance management measures be focused and have the teeth to drive behavior,” one document said.

“Strictly following the process is essential to capturing the economic opportunity,” said another.

Marr said he identified two aspects of the scheme that he found particularly galling.

First, another consulting company, Haag Engineering, a century-old technical consulting firm, was called upon to devise an alternate definition of hail. Applying Haag’s materials, Allstate blasted out head-scratching bits of double-speak to its employees.

“It’s better to know what is not hail damage than to know what is,” one document said.

Allstate employees attended seminars to absorb Haag Engineering reports explaining that smeared granules and impact marks spread across a roof were not hail damage, while pits and soft spots, like a bruise on an apple, were hail damage.

“They called these training sessions recalibration,” Marr said. “I called it hail reeducation camp.”

Second, as lawsuits began to question the hail standards, yet another consulting giant, Accenture, advised claiming that the hail standards they prescribed were consistent with nationwide industry standards, Marr said. After years of legal squabbling over these standards, a State Farm case revealed that the standards had appeared out of thin air.

“State Farm states that based on a diligent investigation to date it has not identified any responsive documents related to Accenture’s work for State Farm,” a court document read.

In other words, they made it up.

“It’s the damnedest thing I ever saw,” Marr said.

State Farm and Allstate did not respond to requests for on-the-record interviews.

27,764 Denials

“State Farm has internally implemented hidden, secretive, restrictive definitions of hail damage, specifically,” Hannah Whitten said. “What Haag Engineering was saying in 2006 is exactly what adjusters are telling roofers today, in 2026.”

The 2020 launch of the State Farm wind and hail initiative in Dallas and the 1997 Allstate Albuquerque test of the Claim Core Process Redesign appear to be examples of history not repeating but rhyming, as Mark Twain once wrote.

Of many facts that Reggie and Hannah Whitten were now willing to address openly, one stuck out to them as particularly egregious.

State Farm Senior Leader and Director of Property and Casualty Operations Nicole Manduca, described in open court as the ringleader of the wind and hail initiative, had announced a goal of 50% reduction in payouts. On social media, Manduca subsequently boasted of success.

A 50% reduction represented billions of dollars, Reggie Whitten said.

For Hannah Whitten, what was egregious about Manduca’s goal was that arbitrary profit targets were applied to claims that resulted from random weather catastrophes.

“You have no idea which policyholders are going to file a claim next year,” Hannah Whitten said. “What size will the claims be? How old is their roof? Is it Class 4 shingles, or Class 3? Is it repair or replace? You never know.”

The corporate attitude, she said, was clearly aimed at secretly reducing coverage.

The Whittens did not yet know how much money the wind-and-hail initiative netted in total, but they did know how much State Farm thought it was saving. A document to which they had gained access revealed that the insurance giant believed it was saving $15,000 per denied policyholder.

In Oklahoma alone, between 2019 and 2024, 27,764 policyholders were entirely denied on claims of wind and hail damage, according to a State Farm petition in the Hursh case. An unknown portion of an additional 91,588 claims were partially denied.

In addition, the Whittens learned that leadership changes at State Farm had not slowed the scheme’s growth. Rather, Hannah Whitten said, they had doubled down.

“Executives didn’t just rubber stamp the scheme,” Hannah Whitten said. “They were sitting in meetings, developing it. The executives are part and parcel of the scheme.”

For Reggie Whitten, a two-fold goal of the quest to expose the secret documents could be expressed by a phrase with chilling associations: follow the money.

As to the money, Reggie Whitten was hesitant to hazard a premature guess at a total figure for what he characterized as State Farm’s ill-gotten gains, because although many documents have become available and can be described, some have been hidden deep inside document dumps of hundreds of thousands of pages.

“We’ll be able to do that when we get through all of the documents we already have,” Reggie Whitten said.

As to where the trail of money led, Reggie Whitten was more forceful. He said that documents now in their possession revealed that the planning and execution of the scheme permeated the company, and implicated the man who, in 2024, was promoted from CFO to CEO, becoming just the sixth chief executive in State Farm’s 104-year history.

“The involvement in the scheme goes all the way to the top,” Reggie Whitten said. “At trial, we will prove that State Farm CEO Jon Farney is intimately involved in the scheme.”

Judge Sets Trial Date

The Oklahoma roof claim saga and the battle over secret documents are reaching a fever pitch.

On August 4, an impatient Oklahoma District Court Judge Amy Palumbo, who has presided over the symbolic Hursh matter for a year, made it clear that State Farm is tap dancing on her last nerve. In an hour-long hearing in which she complained of having to babysit the insurance giant, she offered a heated characterization of the company’s legal strategy.

“It’s kick the can down the road, we’ll just blow deadlines because that is what works for us,” Palumbo told State Farm’s local attorneys. “I say that based on what State Farm has sent you in here with.”

Palumbo set a Dec. 7 trial date for the Hursh case and announced that a third deposition of Nicole Manduca, first deposed by Nick Marr, son of Jeff Marr, and subsequently deposed by Reggie Whitten, will be conducted in Palumbo’s own courtroom to ensure decorum and that discovery orders are followed.

On Thursday, Comanche County District Court Judge Grant Shepherd heard arguments in a case that, after the cases of retired U.S. Administrative Law Judge James R. Linehan and former Oklahoma Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph M. Watt, might provide the third instance of an Oklahoma judge battling State Farm over a bad faith claim.

On July 15, 2023, the Lawton home of Neil and Lacy West was pelted with two-inch hail, causing $50,000 in damage, court documents said. State Farm offered approximately $5,000 in compensation; the Wests lawyered up.

Neil West, a public defender and 30-year Lawton resident, is running to become a District Court Judge in Comanche County, where his bad faith case is being heard. On June 16, West received 40.2% of the primary vote in a four-candidate field, advancing to the August 25 runoff against Comanche County Special Judge Christine Galbraith, who received 27.7% of the primary vote.

On Thursday, strained by a year of repetitive legal actions across the state, the nerves of attorneys in the West case grew frayed as Judge Shepherd heard arguments on motions to de-designate 800,000-pages of State Farm documents and depose State Farm CEO Jon Farney.

In a July 7 motion, Hannah Whitten argued that State Farm, after being compelled to supply 800,000 pages of materials, had designated all of the documents confidential in violation of Oklahoma law.

“Such an abuse of the judicial system cannot stand,” Whitten wrote.

In a July 27 response, State Farm attorney Timila Rother offered spirited disagreement.

“Plaintiffs’ Motion unreasonably mischaracterizes and disregards Oklahoma law,” Rother wrote.

On Thursday, lawyers sparred over who should be tasked with determining which, if any, of the 800,000 documents should be made public.

State Farm attorney Paige Masters distinguished discovery orders from public documents.

“Discovery is not a court record,” Masters said.

Oklahoma City attorney Ryan Deligans, arguing alongside the Whitten Burrage attorneys, lost patience with State Farm’s repeated insistence that they were simply attempting to comply with court orders.

“Ultimately, you have a company here who likes to lie,” Deligans said. “They are the guiltiest-looking innocent company I’ve ever seen.”

Rother argued that CEO Farney was not sufficiently familiar with the wind and hail initiative to warrant a deposition.

“He probably did hear about the [initiative], but that’s not to say he had day-to-day knowledge of it,” Rother said.

Hannah Whitten pushed back by citing documents still under seal.

Judge Shepherd cleared the room of reporters, but Whitten’s voice was audible through the closed courtroom door: documents showed that Farney, as CFO, had attended weekly morning meetings of a Fixed Profit Task Force where tactics to reduce claim payouts were discussed alongside figures on the number of cases denied without payment, the same data points that appeared in reports on the 1997 test of Allstate’s claim processing redesign.

After two-and-a-half hours of argument, Judge Shepherd announced that he would issue written rulings. The order approving Farney’s deposition came within 24 hours; a decision on de-designating the 800,000 documents is expected this week.

Ed. Note: Many links in this story point to images showing portions of records obtained by Oklahoma Watch. The complete documents from which those images were taken are linked below.

Neil and Lacy West v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company and Nancy Holcomb Insurance Agency Inc.
PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION TO (1) STRIKE DEFENDANT STATE FARM’S BLANKET CONFIDENTIALITY ASSERTION, (2) DE-DESIGNATE DOCUMENTS PRODUCED, AND/OR (3) TO LIFT THE PROTECTIVE ORDER FOR GOOD CAUSE BASED ON STATE FARM’S FAILURE TO ENGAGE IN GOOD FAITH AS REQUIRED

Laurie Wedin and Thomas R. Utzig v. Allstate Vehicle & Property Insurance Company and Shoemake Agency, LLC
PLAINTIFFS’ REPLY IN SUPPORT OF THEIR SECOND MOTION TO COMPEL DEFENDANT ALLSTATE

TRANSCRIPT OF:
Senate Hearing on Insurance Claims Practices Following Recent Natural Disasters

J.C. Hallman covers a variety of topics for Oklahoma Watch. Contact him at jchallman@oklahomawatch.org.

The post The Secret Documents: Attorneys Unveil Insurance Scheme appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Oklahomans are reporting sticker shock at the mailbox when opening their electric bills this summer. While artificial intelligence and the data centers needed to support them have become major subjects of public discourse, state lawmakers and regulators say they are only one part of a much larger explanation.

Simply put, some customers are seeing rate hikes, while rising regional transmission costs, summer air-conditioning use and continued investment in an aging grid are contributing to higher bills for all. Data centers pose an emerging demand challenge, but they are not the sole explanation for what customers are paying today. 

Rep. Meloyde Blancett, D-Tulsa, hosted a town hall on the subject Thursday evening as a direct result of questions and concerns she has been fielding from constituents. She is running for reelection, but rather than canvass House District 78 on foot in the summer heat, she has called more than 500 constituents.

“I ask what’s on their mind,” said Blancett. “A good percentage of the people I have ended up having conversations with or who text or email me back, say, ‘What the hell is going on with electricity rates?’ That was the impetus for doing this. This is not a campaign event – this is about good governance.”

For Tulsa-area customers, the most immediate change is at Public Service Company of Oklahoma. An interim rate adjustment took effect July 1 while the Oklahoma Corporation Commission considers PSO’s broader case to hike rates permanently. 

“This is incredibly frustrating for retirees,” Tulsa resident Ellen Lannert told panelists during Thursday evening’s event. “We do the average, we do everything we can, we do the Power Hours, we keep the temperature at 79. We are beyond knowing what to do.”

The increase is subject to refund if the commission ultimately determines PSO was entitled to less, explained Fairo Mitchell, director of the OCC’s Public Utility Division, who fielded questions at Thursday evening’s town hall at a Tulsa library. 

To change their prices, regulated electric utilities like PSO and Oklahoma Gas and Electric file formal rate review cases with the state Corporation Commission. The commission reviews their total revenue needs, which cover operating expenses for labor and materials, capital investments and the profit they are seeking. 

A proposed settlement agreement to reduce the residential rate increase from roughly 15%, or about $25 extra per month on average, down to 1%, or about $2.45 extra per month, has been negotiated with PSO by the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office. 

It made headlines in late June, but not all interested parties are in agreement, according to 

AARP, which represents residential utility customers’ increases at the state Capitol. 

“From our perspective, the (average) base increase of $25 was absolutely unacceptable,” said Joy McGill, state director of advocacy for AARP, at the Thursday event.

Another significant factor in higher electric bills is the Southwest Power Pool, the regional electricity transmission organization that manages the grid and wholesale power market in nearly all of Oklahoma along with parts of 16 other states. Rising transmission costs and investments to address growing demand, new technology and weather get passed onto customers.

SPP’s latest, $8.6 billion transmission investment plan specifically identifies extreme-weather resilience as a reason for new investment. And power companies themselves are spending more money to install stronger power poles, upgrade transmission and distribution systems, install underground lines in some locations and manage vegetation to make Oklahoma’s grid more resilient to severe weather. 

The cost of steel, lumber, large electrical equipment, and other materials required for the work has risen, along with broader inflation, in recent years.

Then there is the Oklahoma summer itself. When temperatures soar, households can add hundreds of kilowatt-hours to their monthly consumption by running their air conditioners. Higher summer demand across the board requires additional generation, which can be more expensive, Mitchell said.

Rep. Blancett said she was learning the answers alongside her own constituents.

“I am not an expert; I am just a regular Joe like all of the people I represent,” she said. “My electricity bill went up substantially from what it was at this time last year. It just shows up and you’re like, well, crap!”

Large data centers can require enormous amounts of electricity and can trigger the need for new generation and transmission infrastructure, as well as substations. PSO and OG&E are developing special tariffs for exceptionally large electricity users, separate from traditional residential and industrial rate classes.

Widespread concerns over data centers’ power needs also prompted recent legislation by Rep. Brad Boles, R-Marlow, who made the 150-mile trip to Tulsa on Thursday at Blancett’s invitation.

House Bill 2992, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act of 2026, took effect July 1. It established protections for residential, small-business and traditional utility customers when new facilities such as data centers, cryptocurrency mines and AI facilities create massive new demand for power. 

The law requires companies that build these new facilities to cover infrastructure costs. In crafting the legislation, Boles worked directly with the utilities, industry associations, data center companies, the oil and gas industry, and AARP.

“This is one of the hottest topics in Oklahoma right now,” Boles told Oklahoma Watch. “The public sentiment is they do not want the utility costs to go up one dollar for these data centers. These data center companies also understand it’s important to be a good neighbor when you come into a state or a community. They did not fight the bill. Some said we planned to do this anyway. I said, ‘That’s great, we’re going to get it into law in case your plans change.’”

HB 2992 received unanimous support in the Legislature and Boles said that was no coincidence. While Oklahoma has the third-lowest residential utility rates in the country, unexpected cost increases are a critical issue for the vast majority of households.

“At the end of the day, I don’t compare my bill to other states around me. I only compare it to what mine was 3-4 years ago,” Boles said. “We have to have good energy policies in place. At the end of the day, this is a bipartisan issue. We can come together and solve these problems.”

Andrea Eger covers a variety of topics for Oklahoma Watch. Contact her at aeger@oklahomawatch.org.

The post Here’s Why Oklahoma Electric Bills Are Going Up and It’s Not Just Data Centers appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Multiple large-scale studies and major health organizations worldwide have repeatedly found no causal link between vaccines and autism.

The idea stems from a 1998 article published by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield that described, through retrospective accounts by parents and physicians, eight children manifesting autistic symptoms after receiving the MMR vaccine.

Though the paper was eventually retracted due to serious professional misconduct, financial conflicts of interest, and falsehood, and the author’s license was revoked, the idea had become a public concern because of the attention it gained from the media, politicians, and tort lawyers.

Many methodologically sound studies, which included more than 1.8 million children, have since explored associations between autism and MMR vaccines and have consistently found none.

Autism’s seemingly rapid rise can be explained by factors including broadening diagnostic criteria and increasing awareness and testing.

This Fact Brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Oklahoma Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

Sources

• National Library of Medicne Vaccines are not associated with autism: an evidence-based meta-analysis of case-control and cohort studies
• World Health Organization WHO expert group’s new analysis reaffirms there is no link between vaccines and autism
• Institute for Vaccine Safety Do Vaccines Cause Autism?
• National Library of Medicine Vaccination as a cause of autism—myths and controversies
• Yale Medicine Why More Adults Are Being Diagnosed with Autism

The post Are vaccines a partial cause of autism, as Secretary Markwayne Mullin suggested? appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.

Oklahoma City Public Schools welcomed students to its newest high school campus Tuesday, a $116 million, 292,000-square-foot school on the city’s south side. 

As students walked around the new Capitol Hill High School before the first day, finding their classrooms and learning the space, they were in disbelief, said Principal Shari Gateley. The students, she said, are saying, “I can’t believe this is ours.”

Funded by a nearly $1 billion school bond approved by voters in 2022, the new Capitol Hill High School was the priciest of the district’s bond projects, which include several other new schools and additions at existing sites. It’s an investment community advocates hope raises expectations for academic success. 

Facilities don’t automatically create a culture of academic success, but they can help attract and retain the people who do, said Gloria Torres, a community leader and former Oklahoma City Public School board member. While on the board, she advocated for the new Capitol Hill High School to help relieve overcrowding and attract new students and families to the predominantly Latino community. 

Last school year, Capitol Hill was the 28th largest high school in Oklahoma with 1,460 students. Its students scored below state averages on many measures of achievement and struggled with absenteeism. But there were bright spots, too, including a 7% improvement in average test scores in 2025 while statewide scores trended downward.

Built adjacent to the former Capitol Hill High School, a historic, 1920s Gothic-style building, the new school is strikingly modern with an angled roof, abundant glass windows and elevated bridge connecting the school to the new fieldhouse. 

“The old building didn’t have modern amenities,” Torres said. “Now, we have brand new. We have so much to be proud of. It translates to so many areas.” 

Fears that the district planned to demolish the historic school building, sparked by early renderings showing the campus cleared of the 1928 structure, drew backlash in 2022. For now, it remains standing as district leaders assess what to do with it.

However, the district razed the high school’s iconic, domed fieldhouse, which was plagued by structural issues and water leaks, and is in the process of tearing down the vocational education building at the site. 

The new, three-story school integrated learning spaces for career pathways, including construction trades, film production, culinary arts, cybersecurity, and horticulture. There’s a modern auditorium that seats more than 900 and a full, commercial kitchen. 

Brand new athletic facilities replaced the historic fieldhouse, though the scoreboard made the move. Instead of tight hallways lined with lockers, students now have wide, modern walkways with abundant clear glass windows.  

Cold air blasted visitors upon entering the school Monday, and two students said it was a noticeable change from the old building. 

“We have AC now,” said Capitol Hill student America Fuentes.

The district retrofitted the old Capitol Hill High School with air conditioning decades ago, but it wasn’t very efficient.

The idea to build new rather than remodel was not without controversy. But opponents were mostly concerned with saving the old building while acknowledging the need for a new one. 

Alumnus Ron Howell, class of 1960, petitioned the school board with thousands of collected signatures urging the preservation of the old Capitol Hill High School. He wanted to see the district gut, remodel and add onto the old building to give students an updated facility with a smaller price tag. 

“I’m not unhappy that the kids have a new building; I just think they could have spent the money differently,” Howell said.

If the goal was improving academic achievement, a new building wasn’t the answer, said Howell, a retired educator who now lives in Edmond. What Capitol Hill needed was updated facilities, higher teacher salaries, more support staff and more programs for struggling students.

He said that’s evident by a lack of significant improvement at three other district high schools — Douglass, U.S. Grant and John Marshall — since moving to new buildings about 20 years ago. 

Sean McDaniel, who was Oklahoma City Public Schools’ superintendent when the district proposed the 2022 bond, said he recognizes the nostalgia around the architecturally significant building, but it wasn’t an appropriate environment for student learning anymore.

Early on, Capitol Hill served a predominantly white, working-class neighborhood. An influx of Latino residents came in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, 99% of the school’s students were economically disadvantaged and half were English-language learners.  

The new Capitol Hill represents opportunity and renewed pride, he said. 

“I don’t know that I’m sappy enough to call it a new era, but it is a new time,” he said. “This is a different way to deliver education for today’s kids.”

Jennifer Palmer has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2016 and covers education. Contact her at (405) 761-0093 or jpalmer@oklahomawatch.org. Follow her on Twitter @jpalmerOKC.

The post “I Can’t Believe This is Ours.” OKCPS Opens New High School on City’s South Side. appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.