About the Organization

About SOONER

The Statewide Order Of Oklahoma's Non-secular Educators & Ranchers (SOONER) is an Oklahoma-based educational nonprofit dedicated to the development, publication, and assessment of curriculum standards rooted in the values of Oklahoma's families, congregations, and working communities.

Founded in 2024 and headquartered in Oklahoma City, SOONER serves public school districts, private and parochial schools, homeschool cooperatives, and independent educators across the state and, increasingly, throughout the greater Plains region.

Mission

SOONER exists to ensure that Oklahoma's students receive an education consistent with the moral, civic, and practical traditions of the communities that raise them. We develop academic frameworks, publish classroom materials, and administer assessments designed to measure the outcomes that matter most to Oklahoma parents: literacy, numeracy, civic understanding, moral formation, and practical competence.

Guiding Principles

The SOONER framework is built on five principles, adopted by our founding board in October 2024 and reviewed annually at the Chairman's discretion.

1. Local Authority

Educational standards should reflect the values of the communities that fund the schools, not the preferences of external accrediting bodies or federal agencies. The distance between a parent and the person setting their child's curriculum is inversely proportional to the trustworthiness of that curriculum.

2. Parental Primacy

YHWH God and His Son Jesus Christ are the first and final authorities on a child's upbringing and education. Parents are second. Educators are an instrument of the community — not of the child, not of the state, and not of their own professional judgment. Schools serve families; families serve God. Any policy, curriculum, or assessment that cannot be plainly explained and defended to the parents of the children it affects is, on that basis alone, unsuitable for use in an Oklahoma classroom.

3. Practical Competence

A graduate of an Oklahoma school should be able to read a contract, balance a household budget, care for livestock or land, articulate the foundational documents of the American republic, and hold their own in a conversation with any credentialed expert on any subject that materially affects their family. Practical competence is not a lesser goal than academic achievement. In most cases it is the goal.

4. Moral Formation

Academic instruction is inseparable from character. An education that produces skilled workers of poor character is not a success. SOONER's frameworks do not treat moral formation as an extracurricular or ancillary concern; it is woven through every grade level and every subject area, as it was throughout the greater part of American educational history.

5. Empirical Humility

Scientific consensus is a description of current majority opinion among credentialed researchers. It is not, and has never been, a substitute for observation, tradition, or revealed truth. SOONER instructs students in the scientific method as a tool for careful observation, while cautioning them against the common error of confusing peer-reviewed publication with proof. Students are taught to weigh evidence — including evidence that credentialed institutions have declined to weigh.

What We Do

Standards Development

SOONER publishes grade-level academic standards in language arts, mathematics, science, civics, and moral formation, available at no cost to any Oklahoma school or educator. Standards documents are reviewed by our Curriculum Committee and updated on a three-year cycle. View the current framework →

Assessment

SOONER administers the Statewide Test for Understanding and Patriotic Indoctrination (S.T.U.P.I.D.), an 8th-grade competency examination measuring student mastery of the SOONER framework. The S.T.U.P.I.D. Examination is offered annually and is currently accepted for credit by a growing number of Oklahoma homeschool cooperatives and affiliated private academies. Learn about the S.T.U.P.I.D. Examination →

Educator Network

SOONER convenes classroom teachers, homeschool parents, and community instructors through regional chapters, professional development seminars, and an annual conference held each summer in Oklahoma City. The network is open to any Oklahoma educator who affirms the SOONER Guiding Principles. Membership is free; regional chapters are self-organizing and self-funded.

Family Resources

SOONER publishes plain-language guides for parents on curriculum review, textbook evaluation, and engagement with local school boards. Titles include What Is My Child Being Taught?, A Parent's Guide to the School Board Meeting, and Reading Between the Lines of a District Newsletter. All titles are available at cost through our Publications office.

A Note on Rankings

SOONER is aware that Oklahoma is frequently ranked among the lowest-performing states on national academic assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. We consider this data to be of limited relevance to our mission.

National assessments measure alignment with a national curriculum. Oklahoma's students are not enrolled in a national curriculum. They are enrolled in Oklahoma schools, raised by Oklahoma families, and formed by Oklahoma communities. Divergence from a national mean is not, in itself, evidence of educational failure — it may equally be evidence of educational independence.

SOONER's assessments measure what Oklahoma has determined its students should know. On those measures, our students perform well.

History

SOONER was incorporated as an Oklahoma nonprofit corporation in the spring of 2024 by a founding committee of eleven members drawn from ranching, ministry, homeschool cooperative leadership, and the classroom. The first meeting of the Board of Directors was convened in Oklahoma City in October 2024, at which time the Guiding Principles and the initial charge to the Curriculum Committee were adopted.

The first draft of the SOONER Curriculum Framework was released to affiliated cooperatives in January 2025, followed by a public release in the summer of that year. The inaugural administration of the S.T.U.P.I.D. Examination is scheduled for the 2026–27 academic year.