— State Rep. Jerry McPeak, D-Warner, unveiled his controversial proposed Freedom to Succeed Act to more than 200 supporters Thursday night in the Muskogee High School cafeteria.

He said, “Someone asked, ‘Is this a press conference or a rally?’

“It’s a press conference and has turned into what it is because you folks are interested,” McPeak said.

The audience included teachers, students, parents, school administrators and politicians, nearly all of whom supported McPeak’s proposal to repeal the law that requires high school seniors to pass four out of seven End of Instruction (EOI) tests in order to graduate.

Following the adoption of the national No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, the state Legislature passed the Achieving Classroom Excellence Act (ACE) in 2005 with the hope of raising expectations for public school students.

Mayor John Tyler Hammons said he supported McPeak’s bill.

“These tests affect historically disadvantaged people,” Hammons said. “Why would we want to deny students an opportunity to compete and succeed in life?”

“This bill needs to occur,” he continued. “If the student will pass the state-mandated curriculum, they deserve a high school diploma.”

Superintendent Jarod Mendenhall of Broken Arrow Public Schools said approximately 1,000 students from his district would graduate this spring, but 60 are in danger of not receiving a diploma because of the EOI exams.

“My feelings are that we’re moving to a common core (curriculum), and we’ve got a lot of things that are pending. They need to just pause (the four out of seven tests passed requirement) for a couple of years,” he said.

“This would be a lost generation, a group of students that if they don’t pass their End of Instruction exams, potentially aren’t going to get a high school diploma. We’re working to make sure those students pass those tests, but it’s the right thing to do to sunset the law for a while.”

Superintendent Clark Ogilvie of Owasso Public Schools said the ACE promised money to schools to remediate struggling students, but the actual payout from the state was not enough to cover the need.

“We’ve been expected to identify those kids we knew were going to struggle,” Ogilvie said. “We’ve been working with those kids since they were in the seventh grade on our dime because the amount of money from the state was so small, it wasn’t effectual. It wasn’t enough money to remediate them.”

Ogilvie said he also questioned the validity of EOI tests because they aren’t designed around the state’s new common core standards.

McPeak’ s proposed legislation crosses party lines. Rep. Fred Jordan, R-Jenks, weighed in with his support.

Jordan said one of the biggest challenges in the state Capitol has to do with “this notion that we need to compete,” which is what led to the creation of the ACE Act.

“They think public schools need to compete with private schools and charter schools,” Jordan said. “But it’s not a fair playing field.”

“We in the public schools have a mission: to educate every child that lives within our district,” he added. “It doesn’t matter if they’re  rich or poor, how smart they are or how smart they’re not. The other schools don’t have to do that.”

Trent Brown, a junior from Fort Gibson High School, said he believed the ACE Act “is wrong” and ultimately punishes students.

“If you go out in the world without a high school diploma, in this economy, you can’t do anything,” he said. “They’re going to work minimum-wage jobs their entire life and not have a good life. Some students just aren’t good at taking standardized tests, and colleges don’t accept the EOIs as valid tests, anyway.”

Supporters gathered from towns big and small, representing Haskell, Porum, Fort Gibson, Oktaha, Jenks, Union, Owasso, Broken Arrow, Hilldale, Oklahoma School for the Blind, Sand Springs, Okay, McCurtain, Webbers Falls, Wagoner, Warner, Sallisaw, Braggs, Sequoyah and Briggs.