In partnership with NonDoc, The Frontier fact-checked some claims Democratic candidates for state superintendent Craig McVay and Jennettie Marshall made during a June 3 debate in Norman.
The Frontier used interviews, public records and news archives to verify information.
Claim: Oklahoma’s public school system lacks an adequate number of bus drivers, custodians and teachers.
Marshall said: “We don’t have enough bus drivers, we don’t have enough custodians, we don’t have enough teachers. But we’re continuously saying, ‘We need you to do more.’”
Fact check: Mostly true
The Oklahoma State Department of Education’s Office of School Personnel Records doesn’t collect data on open positions or staffing shortages, said Tara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Agency headcount reports indicate that districts around the state employed 3,592 bus drivers and 4,251 custodians during the 2025-26 fiscal year. Those numbers are down from a total of 3,708 bus drivers and 4,316 custodians employed during the 2024-25 fiscal year. A total of 3,675 bus drivers and 4,300 custodians worked at Oklahoma public schools during the 2023-24 fiscal year.
School districts across the state have resorted to reducing bus routes, canceling field trips and using administrators and teachers as drivers to deal with an ongoing shortage. A 2024 StateImpact Oklahoma survey of 80 superintendents found that about a quarter said they or another school administrator drove a bus. Local reporting on a school custodian shortage is more limited.
For years, school districts have faced a shrinking supply of traditionally certified teachers, pushing them to rely on alternatives like emergency certifications to fill open positions. The number of emergency teaching certifications issued by OSDE climbed from 32 for the 2011-2012 school year to 2,153 for the 2017-18 school year, according to a 2019 agency legislative brief. The state agency issued a record high of 4,676 emergency certifications between June and December 2024.
– Ari Fife
Claim: Following a deadly tornado, McVay urged the school board to put below-ground shelters in El Reno’s new schools, at a cost of $4 million, after the district had already built some above-ground shelters.
McVay said: “I had to go back to the school board and say, ‘Hey, it’s gonna cost $4 million, but we’re gonna put every kid underground.’”
Fact check: True
In May 2013, a tornado hit Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore, killing several students. El Reno had recently approved a bond to upgrade school facilities and install above-ground shelter facilities, but McVay and other school administrators decided to push for below-ground shelters, said current El Reno Superintendent Matt Goucher.
Updated construction plans for $3.8 million were approved at a 2014 El Reno School Board meeting, according to meeting minutes.
-Kayla Branch
Claim: Holding back third-graders who are unable to read on their grade level does not result in improved literacy because third grade is too late for significant long-term improvement.
McVay said: “Third grade retention -— if you ask any educator, they will tell you the same thing: All the research applies, even the research at the … federal penitentiary will back me up on this. Third grade is too late. If we’re going to hold kids back, it can’t be punitive. It has to be done in a way that will be helpful.”
Fact check: Mostly true
While research shows that students in grades four through 12 can make modest, positive gains in literacy and reading comprehension with intense reading instruction, remedial reading improvement measures had a much more significant positive impact on students before fourth grade. Further studies have shown that, though children in reading intervention programs between first and third grade saw more significant gains than those not in reading intervention programs, the effect and long-term gains from those programs was nearly twice as high for first and second graders compared to third graders and those who had intervention in the first grade were able to build on their reading improvements in subsequent years significantly faster than students who underwent reading intervention in the second grade.
-Clifton Adcock
Claim: Former Oklahoma House Speaker Jeff Hickman successfully passed legislation that allowed school districts to have their school years be 180 days or 1,080 hours after natural disasters caused severe damage to schools around the state.
McVay said: “Speaker Jeff Hickman ran this 1080-hour bill to give local control to those school districts who had to make emergency cancellations and make things happen. And so it’s not the same for Oklahoma City and Tulsa as it is for Guymon or Atoka.”
Fact check: True
Hickman sponsored House Bill 1864 when he served as a state lawmaker in 2009 to change the calculation of school years from days to hours, requiring schools be in session for at least 180 days or 1,080 hours.
The measure was signed into law in April of that year, a few months after an EF-4 tornado tore through Lone Grove and destroyed a small private school, several businesses and homes. Eight people died from tornado-related injuries, according to local reports. A few weeks before, a heavy snowstorm hit Buffalo, Okla., dropping two feet of snow and causing a roof at a nearby school to collapse, according to The National Weather Service and a news report of the incident.
Hickman told The Oklahoman at the time that the measure was intended to allow districts flexibility to extend school hours to make up days missed because of extreme weather, rather than tacking extra days on the school year. An hours-based approach would also save districts money, he said.
As of December, a total of 287 Oklahoma school districts have adopted the school-hours policy, according to the State Department of Education.
-Maddy Keyes
Claim: The “Mississippi Miracle” — the state’s rise from 49th to ninth in the nation in fourth-grade reading scores between 2013 and 2024 — was driven largely by a $15 million increase in state education funding.
Marshall said: “We keep talking about the ‘Mississippi Miracle.’ There is no ‘Mississippi Miracle.’ Mississippi said it’s an insult when we say that. They infused $15 million more into their education system to help turn education around and they were successful.”
Fact check: Mixed
Marshall is correct that Mississippi appropriated roughly $15 million annually through the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, enacted in 2013. However, the funding was not a general increase to the state’s K–12 budget. It was tied to specific reforms, including science-of-reading instruction, reading coaches, standardized tests, teacher training, and other state-mandated interventions designed to change how reading was taught in elementary schools. $15 million is less than half a percent of Mississippi’s annual education budget.
Some researchers have argued that Mississippi’s gains may partly reflect selection bias rather than genuine improvements in learning. Under the state’s reforms, third-grade students who failed to meet reading benchmarks were required to repeat third grade, meaning the lowest-performing readers were excluded from fourth-grade testing. Mississippi’s gains have also been much larger in fourth-grade reading than in eighth-grade reading, raising questions about how well the improvements persist over time. While the state ranked 50th nationally in eighth-grade reading in 2013, it still ranks only 41st today.
Mississippi’s reforms also built on earlier efforts by the Barksdale Reading Institute, established with a $100 million donation from technology executive Jim Barksdale in 2000. The organization spent more than a decade promoting phonics-based instruction and reforming teacher training programs before the Literacy-Based Promotion Act was passed.
Many states, including Oklahoma, adopted similar early-literacy policies at the same time or before Mississippi in the early 2010s that included reading interventions and third-grade retention for students who failed to meet reading score benchmarks. But lawmakers in Oklahoma and other states softened the retention system after backlash from parents over using a single test to hold students back. Oklahoma and other states have since moved back toward a Mississippi-style approach. A 2026 Oklahoma law restores third-grade retention — and institutes optional retention and additional intervention for first and second-grade students — beginning next year.
-Garrett Yalch
Rating system:
True: A claim that is backed up by factual evidence
Mostly true: A claim that is mostly true but also contains some inaccurate details
Mixed: A claim that contains a combination of accurate and inaccurate or unproven information
True but misleading: A claim that is factually true but omits critical details or context
Mostly false: A claim that is mostly false but also contains some accurate details
False: A claim that has no basis in fact
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