Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s embattled state superintendent of public instruction, announced his resignation on Wednesday evening after a tenure defined by political theater, culture war mandates, and hostility toward marginalized students. His departure was made public not in Oklahoma City but on Fox News, where Walters declared he would become CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a conservative nonprofit dedicated to fighting teachers’ unions nationwide.
“We’re going to destroy the teachers’ unions,” Walters said on air. “We have seen the teachers’ unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools. We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers’ unions once and for all.”
For many in Oklahoma, the news marked both relief and exasperation. Walters leaves behind a state education system that slid further down national rankings, faced lawsuits over unconstitutional directives, and endured a steady stream of scandals. But he also carries his divisive agenda to a broader stage, raising alarms among advocates who warn his politics could further inflame national debates over public education.
Advocates: “A pivotal moment”
For many advocacy groups, Walters’ resignation was a watershed.
“Oklahomans for Equality recognizes the resignation of State Superintendent Ryan Walters as a pivotal moment for our state,” Hailey Briggs, the group’s executive director, told The Advocate. “Under his tenure, many of Oklahoma’s most marginalized students, including 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, and the educators who support them faced harmful rhetoric and policies that threatened safe and affirming learning environments.”
GLAAD was equally blunt. “Ryan Walters’s record shows profound failure for Oklahoma’s public school students, faculty, and families, including failing to keep students safe,” a spokesperson told The Advocate. “2SLGBTQIA+ students in Oklahoma deserve leaders who will recognize them and their basic needs to be themselves and be safe, which are essential to everyone’s ability to learn and thrive. The Walters era will be defined by his failures, a permanent record that will follow him wherever he goes.”
The Human Rights Campaign echoed the criticism and cheered the extreme politician’s exit. “I’m excited for Oklahoma’s parents, who no longer have to deal with Walters’s gross politicization of their children’s education,” HRC communications director Laurel Powell told The Advocate. “I sincerely hope their next superintendent is more focused on educational outcomes than culture wars.”
Teachers’ unions respond
Walters’ new role — leading a group aimed squarely at weakening teachers’ unions — drew fierce reaction from labor leaders.
“Today is a good day for Oklahoma’s kids,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The Advocate. “It’s no surprise that Mr. Walters, after failing on the job, is leaving the state. Any educator worth their salt understands it’s impossible to educate students if you don’t support teachers. Walters didn’t do that in Oklahoma and now, at a time we need to bring the country together, he’s trying to export his divisive rhetoric nationally.”
Weingarten, a frequent target of those on the right, including Walters, dismissed his new allies, including the Freedom Foundation, which she said has “nothing to do with either education or freedom.” “Teachers are more unionized than any other profession, and the Freedom Foundation’s post-Janus campaign to convince teachers to drop their union has been a dismal failure,” she said. “Schools are about helping kids develop the passion and purpose to pave pathways to a better life — and that means working together, not going to war, a lesson Walters appears not to have learned.”
A tenure of extremes
Elected in 2022 after serving as the appointed state education secretary, Walters quickly emerged as one of the country’s most polarizing figures. He aligned himself closely with Donald Trump, lauded Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and openly sought to use Oklahoma schools as a proving ground for his far-right vision.
Related: Education Secretary Linda McMahon snubs Oklahoma’s extremist superintendent of schools
In June 2024, Walters ordered that every Oklahoma public school teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments, a directive that critics said trampled constitutional limits on religion in public institutions. He later pushed social studies standards that echoed Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in the 2020 election, and this week, he announced that every Oklahoma high school would be required to host a Turning Point USA chapter, after Kirk’s assassination.
Walters sought to require out-of-state teachers from places like California and New York to pass ideological screening tests against “woke indoctrination.” He harassed educators who defended LGBTQ+ students, promoted book bans, and appeared with far-right anti-government extremist group Moms for Liberty at state expense.
Perhaps most controversially, Walters appointed Chaya Raichik, the Brooklyn-based creator of the Libs of TikTok social media account dedicated to harassing liberals and LGBTQ+ people, to Oklahoma’s Library Media Advisory Committee. Raichik had no educational background, no ties to Oklahoma, and no children in the state’s schools. Her online campaigns have been linked to threats against schools and libraries across the country, which experts describe as examples of stochastic terrorism. Critics said Walters had effectively invited a professional provocateur into the official policymaking process.
Walters was briefly floated as a potential second Trump term cabinet pick for secretary of education and considered running for governor, but his polarizing record earned him condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans.
Fallout from Nex Benedict’s death
Walters’ policies became especially explosive after the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict in February 2024. Benedict, a transgender and Two Spirit teenager of Choctaw heritage, was beaten in a high school bathroom and later died by suicide. The tragedy drew national attention, with advocates linking Benedict’s vulnerability to the hostile climate Walters fostered.
Related: After Nex Benedict’s death, Oklahoma’s Ryan Walters: Just two genders, as God intended
In the aftermath, Walters denied the existence and history of Two Spirit people, even though they are a well-documented part of Indigenous traditions in Oklahoma. Tribal leaders and LGBTQ+ advocates viewed his denial as erasure that compounded the harm facing Native youth.
GLAAD notes that 35 percent of transgender students nationwide report being assaulted in bathrooms that do not align with their gender identity — a statistic worsened, they argued, by Walters’ rhetoric portraying transgender youth as threats rather than children needing protection.
A record of scandal
Investigations and lawsuits plagued Walters’ office. He clashed with school boards over censorship and television broadcasts, was accused of mishandling pandemic relief funds, some of which were spent on appliances and video game consoles, and presided over plummeting reading proficiency scores.
Walters was unpopular within his own party. Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican now running for governor in 2026, said Walters’ tenure had been “an embarrassment to our state.” “Ever since Gov. Stitt appointed Ryan Walters to serve as Secretary of Education, we have witnessed a stream of never-ending scandal and political drama,” Drummond said in a statement. “Even worse, test scores and reading proficiency are at historic lows. It’s time for a State Superintendent of Public Instruction who will actually focus on quality instruction in our public schools.”
What comes next
Walters’ resignation spares him what was expected to be a bruising re-election campaign in 2026.
Related: Ryan Walters’s latest gambit fails as critics outnumber supporters at Oklahoma education meeting
For Oklahoma, though, the immediate question is who will replace him — and whether the state can begin to recover from the tumult. “This change in leadership is an opportunity to recommit to inclusion, respect, and quality education,” Briggs said. “We urge state leaders to listen to educators, families, and young people, and to build classrooms where every child feels safe and supported and where educators are trusted and equipped to do their work.”
This article originally appeared on Advocate: Oklahoma advocates & educators celebrate state superintendent Ryan Walters’s resignation as ‘pivotal moment’
