Mazzei Minute 05/09/25

Congratulations to Patty Gasso and the Lady Sooners for winning the SEC Conference Softball season title in their very first year in the SEC! I’m a big Patty Gasso fan, not just for all the national championships, but for the culture of excellence, teamwork, and faith.

Coach Gasso proves that right here in Oklahoma, we can beat the best teams the country has to offer, including the University of Mississippi Rebels.  Why would I pick on Ole Miss?  Because they, and the leaders of Mississippi, have left we the Sooners in the dust when it comes to the more important program of teaching kids to read.

According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Mississippi ranked dead last in 2011 for educational outcomes. Today, according to the Urban Institute using NAEP data, Mississippi now ranks #1 in the nation. Oklahoma still ranks 49th, just like we did back in 2001. Governor Tate Reeves recently bragged about the latest ranking, “Mississippi isn’t making news – we’re making history.”

It’s high time Oklahoma starts to make history with bold transformational changes. In the last Mazzei Minute, we detailed six major strategies to reshape K-12 education in Oklahoma. This week, we want to emphasize the most important of those strategies – a major statewide emergency reading sufficiency program.

The state of Oklahoma needs to appoint a Statewide Literacy Director just like Mississippi has done, and led to what has been called the “Mississippi Miracle.” By hiring reading specialists, assessing students’ proficiency at the beginning of the school year, and replacing the failed liberal approach with the time-tested phonics approach to reading curriculum, we can turn around the job and life prospects for tens of thousands of students.