(Editor’s note: This article is adapted from The Fall to 48th: Documenting Oklahoma’s Educational Decline, a recent publication of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy at the University of Oklahoma. Adam Tyner is OCEP’s executive director and the author of the report.)
Oklahomans didn’t need a financial website to tell us our schools are struggling.
When WalletHub ranked Oklahoma’s K-12 system 50th in the nation last year, it mostly put a number on a widespread sentiment among Oklahomans. A spring 2025 poll found that a majority of Oklahomans would give the state’s schools a “D” or an “F” grade, and hardly anyone — just 5 percent of respondents — would award our schools an “A.”
Yet a new research report from the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy at the University of Oklahoma, where I serve as executive director, shows these poor rankings are the result of a tragic reversal of fortunes for the Sooner State, which used to perform much better when compared with other states in the nation and in the region.
Using federal data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the report shows a sad reality, as some of Oklahoma’s student outcomes are the lowest on record. In 2024, Oklahoma ranked 48th nationally on a pooled measure of core NAEP performance — math and reading proficiency in 4th and 8th grades — ahead of only West Virginia, Alaska and New Mexico.
If that were the whole story, one might shrug and say Oklahoma is a rural, lower-GDP state doing the best it can. On the contrary, the state’s performance looks even worse when compared to its regional peers. Among the 12 states with universities participating in the Southeastern Conference, Oklahoma ranks last overall in combined math and reading achievement:
Oklahoma’s worst-in-the-region rank is not a result of unique demographics, either. Most of Oklahoma’s student groups also rank last among SEC states.
This includes Black students, Hispanic students, students of two or more races, white students and relatively affluent students:
Oklahoma’s position at the bottom of the heap is, however, a relatively recent phenomenon.
In fact, in every year of these data until 2013, Oklahoma’s education system ranked higher than those of Louisiana, Mississippi and even today’s regional leader, Tennessee. At the time, these states were often viewed as chronic underperformers, especially Mississippi, which ranked near the bottom nationally for nearly two decades.
In recent years, however, those states have reversed their fortunes, as a “Southern Surge” has lifted these states and several others in the region. Tennessee was the first of these states to pull ahead of Oklahoma, overtaking it in 2013. Mississippi followed in 2019, then Louisiana passed Oklahoma in 2022.
The contrast is especially stark in Mississippi’s case. After ranking 50th or near-50th in nearly every NAEP administration from the early 1990s through 2013, Mississippi rose sharply in the late 2010s and early 2020s, and the state’s 2024 results placed it 28th nationally:
Tennessee’s trajectory is similarly instructive, with a ranking that was slightly lower than Oklahoma’s from the 1990s until the 2010s.
After 2011, the state’s ranking began to improve steadily, and the Volunteer State now lands in the top third nationally and leads the region. Louisiana’s gains have been more gradual but nonetheless meaningful, particularly in recent years. In contrast, Oklahoma’s relative position deteriorated during the same period, leaving the state behind these regional peers that it once outperformed.
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More research is needed to isolate the causal mechanisms behind the Southern Surge, but these ranking improvements appear to reflect deliberate efforts to improve instruction and accountability within those states. Reforms included investments in teacher support and high-quality professional development, renewed emphasis on evidence-based reading instruction, stronger retention requirements for students needing remediation, and changes to curriculum and standards. Experts in those states often emphasize that their efforts were not one-time initiatives but part of multi-year strategies focused on systemic improvement.
Overall, suggestions that Oklahoma’s schools rank poorly are well supported by the nation’s most credible academic data. At the same time, history shows that Oklahoma once performed far better than it does today. There is nothing inherent in the state’s geography, economy or demographics that requires it to rank near the bottom. Other states with similar challenges have reversed course.
Oklahoma has mounted comebacks before. The data suggest there is no reason we cannot do so again.
