Transcript Staff Writer

OKLAHOMA CITY --State leaders need a much better understanding the costs associated with meeting new education standards, the author of a controversial Oklahoma education study said this week.

John Augenblick, the president of Denver-based Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, defended his firm's 2005 study of the way Oklahoma's education system is funded, saying the questing of how much it cost a state to provide education services which meet governmental standards is "a pretty new question."

Augenblick's two-part study, "Calculating the Cost of an Adequate Education in Oklahoma," analyzed the "adequacy of revenues available to elementary and secondary school districts in Oklahoma" for the 2003-2004 fiscal year.

The second portion of the report -- finished in April of 2005 but never released by the House of Representatives -- said state per-student spending would have to be increased to almost $7,000 to "ensure school districts have a reasonable chance" to meet state and federal student performance expectations.

With more than 600,000 students enrolled in Oklahoma public schools, records show the state would need to spend an additional $844 million in new education funding to meet standards set by state lawmakers and the federal No Child Left Behind law.

"One question -- and it's a relatively new question that leaders are asking -- is 'what does it cost for school districts to reach (those) standards,'" Augenlick said. "No businessman would last 10 minutes if they didn't ask a similar question."

The answers, he said, are often controversial.

"I'm not going to tell you that this stuff isn't controversial," he said. "Sometimes it becomes dangerous for a state to sponsor this type of study; by sponsoring it, it becomes official and has more power."

And then, Augenblick said, the information becomes the legal basis for a lawsuit.

"Quite frankly, there are people who go around telling Republican leaders that 'you are silly to do this type of analysis,' that if the result is a number which you may not want to fund, because the study was sponsored by the state it could become the basis for a lawsuit."

While then-House Speaker Todd Hiett has not said why Augenblick's 2005 study wasn't released during his tenure as House leader, Damon Gardenhire, a spokesman for current House Speaker Lance Cargill, claimed the study was made available, but that its conclusions "were questionable at best, since the firm was clearly a tool of the NEA."

"Other studies reach different conclusions," Gardenhire said in an e-mail to The Transcript Sept. 10. "And other states are experiencing fiscal problems because of similarly flawed studies by Augenblick. Meanwhile Oklahoma continues to make record investments in public education."

This week, Augenblick refuted Gardenhire's claim.

"We have no relationship with the NEA," Augenblick said. "We don't have a contract with them. He (Gardenhire) would have to tell me what he means by that. We don't take orders from anybody. We do what we're asked in the best way that we can."