Oklahoma educators say they are on board with President Barack Obama’s proposed educational reforms that will take educational standards to a more centralized, national level.

“If our teachers and students are going to be compared to other states, we need to be judged on the same things, and that’s not happening right now in Oklahoma,” said Lela Odom, executive director of the Oklahoma Education Association.

A panel of Oklahoma educators considered Obama’s proposed education reforms in a panel discussion Saturday at the Oklahoma Educational Studies Association conference. Panelists included Odom; Carla Kimberling, Norman Public Schools assistant superintendent; Bill Frick, associate education professor at OU; and Nancy Mergler, senior vice president and provost at OU.

Panelists were asked to discuss the points of the reforms Obama presented in a speech he made to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce March 10. His five main points included raising the quality of early learning programs; encouraging better standards and assessments; recruiting, preparing and rewarding outstanding teachers; promoting innovation and excellence in America’s schools; and providing every American with higher education.

The financial crisis has heightened concerns of paying for higher education, and college graduates have had to go to other states to make the highest possible incomes to pay their school debts, Mergler said.

She said it would help those in higher education to keep an eye to the costs of education, but there needs to be a reassessment of the goals of higher education.

“What you’re after is the education, after all,” Mergler said. “Some of these extracurricular activities could be done more simply.”

She said the competition between universities for better dorms, parking lots, swimming pools and other amenities take the focus away from education.

The panel focused less on higher education, however, and more on kindergarten through high school education. Kimberling predicted national standards and better methods of assessment will be the hot topics of education in the near future.

She focused on some of Obama’s specific reforms, especially the expansion and improvement of pre-kindergarten and kindergarten programs.

“We need to make the school ready for the child, not the child ready for the school,” Kimberling said.

She gave the example that children coming from middle class backgrounds start school with five times the vocabulary of their classmates living at or below the poverty level.

Those at the panel also expressed support for Obama’s plans to encourage the recruitment and retaining of teachers through payment incentives.

“Incentive pay is the better way to go, because that [elementary] student doesn’t just have a classroom teacher,” Kimberling said. “It forces teachers to collaborate ... retaining good teachers is difficult, also.”

For the most part, panel members were open to at least modified versions of Obama’s proposed reforms. Frick, however, said many citizens who voted for Obama based on his education plans may find his proposals “disheartening.”

He said Obama’s rhetoric about higher standards and increased accountability echo the statements of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.