At a recent town hall meeting hosted by Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, an attendee suggested Oklahoma should have an eight-year funding plan for education comparable to its transportation funding plan.

If policymakers were to adopt an education funding plan based on the principles that guide the road plan – funding increases tied to measurable results with consequences for failure – I’d be all for it, and so would most voters. The challenge may be getting school administrators and teachers’ unions to jump on board.

The road plan works because funding is directly tied to results: More money means measurable improvement. In education, more funding should be tied to improved academic outcomes, instead of pretending more spending alone is an achievement even when outcomes remain the same – or decline.

In the past two years, lawmakers have increased K-12 funding by $638 million and increased teacher pay by a combined total average of $7,320 apiece. School appropriations have jumped 20% in two years. Yet, the number of emergency certified Oklahoma teachers still increased 54 percent in the 2018-2019 school year.

The head of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association told the Tulsa World the certification figures show Oklahoma continues to “have a teacher-shortage crisis,” but he also said, “I don’t think anyone thought it would be solved in one year or two years or even five years.”

You never heard such excuses from proponents of the road plan. No one suggested transportation progress would remain unrealized for years on end.

Also, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation relies on private contractors to carry out its road plan, and contractors who do a poor job are barred from receiving additional state work. Those concepts could work just as well in education. Why not let parents have a set amount of state funding and choose the school that best suits their children?

Finally, to have an eight-year plan would require school officials to admit there’s a level of per-pupil spending sufficient to provide a quality education. Instead, many school employees echo former Tahlequah Public Schools Superintendent Lisa Presley, who once declared, “There has never been enough revenue for public education, and there never will be.”

The eight-year road plan works because it includes accountability and free-market components along with funding increases. And it’s the latter components that are the key drivers of its success.

[Ed. Note: Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs ( www.ocpathink.org).]