I call it the mandate committee.
It’s the House Education Committee, one of the most insufferable committees in the House of Representatives—almost as insufferable as the Judiciary Committee, which is dominated by lawyers who love to lawyer. (Politician meets lawyer: the most toxic of combinations.)
It’s a committee where almost everyone is a subject-matter expert, reminding one of the paradox of those who, in knowing everything, knew nothing.
Over the past decade, the education establishment, in an unholy alliance with dark-money special interests—the stronger of the two in this uncomfortable partnership—has come to dominate the people’s House.
Over the past decade, the education establishment, in an unholy alliance with dark-money special interests—the stronger of the two in this uncomfortable partnership—has come to dominate the people’s House.
Teachers, school board members, administrators, and their spouses or close relatives likely make up at least a fourth of House members. In one case, a House member’s resume boasts of having been a lobbyist for the Oklahoma Education Association. Put simply, in terms of education policy, the tail wags the dog.
But the unfortunate outcome? Too many cooks in the kitchen.
For a case in point, one need only review this year’s February 11 meeting of the House Education Committee.
There, the committee heard mandate after mandate affecting education and education-adjacent entities, topped off by a mandate from House Speaker Pro Tempore Anthony Moore, who disclosed that the person requesting it was his wife.
And this is the problem.
In some form or fashion, a host of public education insiders, and those adjacent to them, are all attempting to make their mark on the system that defines them—their identity, who they are. In doing so, they are creating a frightful cacophony of Frankenstein-like rules and regulations that administrators then have to figure out.
That’s not easy, because legislators are writing and rewriting the same sections of education law within the same year.
It makes for a fun game of exploring the state’s latest legal code and trying to figure out which law prevails. That game might be enjoyable for a legislation nerd, but it can’t be much fun for administrators. It may also help explain why so much public education money doesn’t go toward instruction, given the likely cost of the lawyers needed to figure it all out.
Nor can it be much fun for the Legislature’s attorneys, who must reconcile this puzzle each year through reconciliation legislation, trying to figure out which changes should prevail and what the legislative intent really was.
Perhaps the most high-profile of these recent mandates was the costly attempt to mandate recess time, a version of which was approved during that February 11 committee meeting.
The nonthinking legislator doesn’t understand the second-order effects of attempting to dictate the day-to-day activities of hundreds of school districts—the sheer number of which is a separate issue in itself.
But once districts confronted the reality of complying with yet another attack on educators’ ability to instruct, for example, to meet the recess mandate, the costly effects became apparent: school districts would have to extend the school year into early August. Ironically, Oklahoma temperatures at that time prevented students from playing outside in the first place.
The costly extension of the school year means students could be subjected to rides on unair-conditioned buses, only to arrive at schools whose ability to provide instruction had been hamstrung by law—all to satisfy the foolish presumptions of Oklahoma’s educator-legislators. It’s a case study in why government-led industries, whether in education or almost any other endeavor, don’t work well: yet another costly, self-defeating proposition from policymakers who, by taking away the latitude of local officials, had created a complete absurdity.
And then there’s the mandate suggested by Moore’s wife: the ongoing obsession with micromanaging students’ “screen time” from afar.
This one could be very costly.
In a world engaged in an arms race over the use of AI—and at a time when AI offers the methods and tools to provide a customized education in ways that were, until recently, unimaginable—Oklahoma’s Luddites are moving backward, potentially constraining educators’ ability to teach in the 21st century.
The promise of that technology must be balanced against the common-sense concern that constant exposure to electronic devices is reprogramming humanity. If legislators aren’t going to trust their teachers with being able to deal with this, via common sense, then there are much larger problems to deal with.
To see the opposite approach, one should follow the ongoing posts and emphasis of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, who regularly illustrates how future generations of that country’s students will become familiar with the technology.
If American students fail to understand AI, I would suggest that they may find themselves to be ruled by it—an invisible force they will struggle to manage or even understand.
Students must not only understand the technology itself; they must also understand how American liberty-driven jurisprudence must be preserved in the AI era. If they don’t, it’s increasingly likely that future generations will surrender those liberties to AI.
It’s a phenomenon that’s already happening, as evidenced by law enforcement’s rapid acceptance of the Flock surveillance system, which is almost certain to become AI-driven and whose tentacles have already been authorized on so many American streets.
When the Legislature mandates in this way, it stifles innovation, puts educators into a box where they have limited ability to instruct and innovate, and discourages them from even trying in the first place.
It may seem counterintuitive, but I would suggest that the election of so many single-issue education ideologues has created this legislative mandate factory—and that it has become a major barrier to improving the state’s education system.
Oklahoma’s education industry would do far better to simply elect policymakers on their merits—instead of those single-issue ideologues who are trying to earn the redemption of their religion: public education.
Oklahoma’s education industry would do far better to simply elect policymakers on their merits—instead of those single-issue ideologues who are trying to earn the redemption of their religion: public education.