Just after taking office in 2023, Oklahoma education chief Ryan Walters removed portraits of respected educators from the walls of the state education department, calling the move a blow to “bureaucrats and unions.”
He began opening monthly board meetings with a Christian prayer, released a video about protecting children from transgender students, and fired employees at odds with his agenda. The next two and a half years were marked by a steady stream of edicts, incendiary statements and disruptions that included bomb threats, funding delays and conflicts with state officials.
“Every seven days you could expect something coming. It was almost like clockwork,” said Robert Franklin, a former associate superintendent of Tulsa Tech, a district that offers career and technical education programs.
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As Walters leaves his post as state superintendent to head the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a national anti-union organization, Oklahomans say his turbulent administration offered a preview of the Trump administration’s “move-fast-and-break-things” approach to overhauling education. Despite rhetoric about educators “closest to the child” knowing what’s best in the classroom, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, like Walters, has embraced an aggressive, top-down approach that frequently targets teachers for an assortment of perceived ills, from equity policies to protecting the rights of LGBTQ students.
In February, an Oklahoma City teacher called his state a “testing ground for Project 2025,” the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 920-page strategy document that federal agencies are closely following. In the same way Walters welcomed religious right personalities like David Barton and Dennis Prager to influence a rewrite of the state’s social studies standards, the Trump administration has assembled dozens of conservative leaders and organizations to shape a civics education agenda for the nation’s 250th birthday.
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In both cases, improving schools took a backseat to a singular — some might say, relentless — focus on the culture war. Walters’ grip on the state’s schools was “a microcosm of what we’re now facing at the federal level,” said the Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, an online community that seeks to counteract Christian nationalism.
In Oklahoma, where she led an interfaith network, educators grew fearful for their jobs as Walters teamed up with right-wing activist Chaya Raichik, who created LibsofTikTok , to monitor teachers’ social media. In Washington, McMahon laid off 1,300 staffers and officials told districts nationwide that they would lose federal funds if they didn’t eliminate programs aimed at closing racial achievement gaps.
To some right-leaning groups, Walters was a champion for parental rights whose “courage” deserves respect. “He showed that it’s possible to push back against the machine,” a supporter posted on Facebook.
Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, spoke on the steps of the Oklahoma state capitol earlier this year during an event supporting public schools. (Courtesy of Rev. Shannon Fleck)
In part due to his use of state funds to get himself on conservative media, Walters’ actions drew attention far outside his state. But the visibility also made him fodder for late night TV. Stephen Colbert called out the Oklahoma chief’s mandate that every classroom have a Bible and teachers incorporate scriptures into their lessons.
“Our kids have to understand the role the Bible played in influencing American history,” Walters said in a video from behind his desk last year after spending $25,000 in state funds on 500 Trump-endorsed Bibles for AP Government courses. “It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom. We will not stop until we’ve brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state.”
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For Oklahoma superintendents, the mandate was no joke.
“Most of my colleagues across the state are in the front row at their local church every Sunday, and here’s this guy forcing the Bible on them,” said Craig McVay, who retired in 2022 as superintendent of the El Reno district, outside Oklahoma City, and is now running for state superintendent.
Superintendents accused Walters of trying to illegally control local curriculum, noting that students were already allowed to bring their own Bibles to school. “Especially in the smaller communities of this state, it’s very difficult to stand up against Jesus, and that’s what he forced them to do.”
He largely failed.
Most districts have no plans to change current practices, while both the legislature and the state Supreme Court blocked Walters’ plan to purchase 55,000 Bibles.
Trump hasn’t conditioned federal funds on Bible reading in public schools, but the federal department is expected to issue new guidance on what he called “total protection” for school prayer. Some worry the administration will elevate Christianity over other religions in violation of the First Amendment.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon appeared with David Barton Sept. 24 at the Center for Christian Virtue in Columbus, Ohio. Barton founded WallBuilders, which argues the U.S. is meant to be a Christian nation. He’s also pushed model legislation mandating the 10 Commandments in public schools. (U.S. Department of Education)
‘Trumpier than Trump’
After Trump’s November victory, Walters created a special committee to help the state comply with the president’s education agenda. In a letter to parents, he called Trump “a fearless champion of efforts to eliminate the federal bureaucracy that has shut local communities and parents out of the decisions that impact their students’ educations.” Some speculated that Walters, who did not return calls or texts to comment for this article, was auditioning for a job in Trump’s cabinet, particularly the one the president ultimately gave to McMahon.
His frequent social media posts continue to voice unwavering support for Trump on issues such as AI in school, gender identity, and even “saving” Cracker Barrel.
Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said she wondered if Walters’ strategy toward achieving “political prominence” was to be “Trumpier than Trump.”
She pointed, for example, to Kari Lake, the former TV news anchor and Trump ally who refused to acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020. She sued, unsuccessfully, to overturn a gubernatorial election she lost to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022 and still denies she lost her Senate bid in 2024.
But while Trump chose Lake to lead, and dismantle, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, Walters never got the nod. To Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina, that’s surprising.
“His brazenness seems to be a character trait the administration values, which begs the question of why he stayed in Oklahoma,” Black said. It’s “somewhat likely,” he added, that Walters “lacked the insider network to get a position high enough to suit him.”
Once Trump was re-elected, Walters advanced policies that seemed to stay one step ahead of his hero. He pushed through new social studies standards that expect students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” even though multiple courts ruled there was no evidence that the Biden campaign “stole” the election. According to Walters, the standards present the “full and true context of our nation’s founding and of the principles that made and continue to make America great and exceptional.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court temporarily blocked the state from implementing them after parents, teachers and faith leaders sued, arguing the standards require teaching from the Bible.
Last year Oklahoma’s Ryan Walters told schools to show students a video of him praying for President Donald Trump. (Facebook)
Over 1,300 miles away, the Trump administration is undergoing a similar overhaul of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., to replace “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Exhibits, according to Trump, focus too much on “how bad slavery was” and offer “nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
In line with Trump’s immigration policy, Walters welcomed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to round up undocumented students at school and instructed districts to collect parents’ citizenship status when they enrolled their children. The state legislature opposed the plan.
The federal government has attempted to bar undocumented children from attending Head Start and issued a rule that prohibits students, including those in high school, from receiving tuition assistance for career and technical education.
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‘Christian patriot’
To Black, the law professor, Walters was “so far out of bounds” that he “cared even less about rules …than the current administration.”
He required teachers from New York and California, seeking to work in Oklahoma, to take a PragerU-developed test to screen out “woke” applicants — a move critics said would discourage efforts to recruit teachers. But as with Trump, his boundary pushing endeared him to Christian nationalists, who maintain a strong foothold in Oklahoma. One group, the Tulsa-based City Elders, considers Walters a “Christian patriot” who worked to advance their mission of “establishing the kingdom of God” on earth and infusing government with Christian principles.
“This is a war for the souls of our kids,” Walters told them in 2022. “The brilliance of our founders and the acknowledgement of almighty God — that’s where our blessings come from. That’s where our rights came from … and the left wants us to take that out of schools.”
Last August, when GOP lawmakers called for investigations into Walters’ management of state education funds, members of the group packed school board meetings and were the first to sign up to speak.
City Elders hosted him again at a gala in March, but protesters, organized by groups that oppose Christian nationalism, gathered outside the Tulsa-area conference center. Some waved signs that said “Impeach Walters,” calling him a “danger” to education.
A month later, he came face-to-face with critics during a “town hall” event organized by the Turning Point USA chapter at Oklahoma State University, considered one of the more conservative colleges in the country. Co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated Sept 10 in Utah, founded the organization to mobilize college students around conservative ideas and encourage open debate.
In April, Ryan Walters spoke at an Oklahoma State University Turning Point USA event, but left early when students jeered him. (Facebook)
But Walters couldn’t finish his sentences amid the angry chants about his low approval ratings and his comments following the death of a nonbinary student last year. He called Nex Benedict’s death, later determined to be a suicide, a tragedy. But he also used the moment to voice opposition to schools that allowed students to use facilities that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. His administration, he said, would not “lie to students” about being able to change their gender.
At the time, he was still a potential candidate for governor. In June, one pollster suggested that while Walters trailed frontrunner Attorney General Gentner Drummond by 27 percentage points, a path to the Republican nomination wasn’t impossible. Some question why a politician with Walters’ ambition would walk away for a new position with an uncertain future. He was also eligible to run again for state superintendent.
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“It’s pretty rare for someone to resign [during] their first term in a position when they’ve got another one available,” Andy Moore, a civics and voting rights advocate, said on a political talk show Thursday.
While Walters and Stitt were once close, observers say the superintendent had no chance of getting the governor’s endorsement. They had a series of falling outs on issues ranging from Walters’ attempt to take over the Tulsa schools to his support for immigration raids at school. Walters’ allegiance to Trump may have worked against him, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of education and political science at Teachers College, Columbia University.
“There’s an odd lack of symmetry in the politics around Trump,” he said. “Crossing him is close to political suicide for Republicans, but trying to read from his script does not confer equal and proportionate success.”
When McMahon visited the state in August, she coordinated a charter school tour with the governor’s office, not Walters — a move widely viewed as a political snub.
In a farewell letter to parents, he counted eliminating “woke indoctrination” and teacher recruitment efforts among his accomplishments. He recently announced that 151 special education teachers, including 34 from out of state, would receive signing bonuses of $20,000. It was Kirk’s death, he told a local reporter, that inspired him to take the job at the Teacher Freedom Alliance and that “national leaders” recruited him for the position.
“We have to have more people step up on the national stage to protect this country’s values,” he said. “We’ve got to get rid of the teachers unions.”
In typical outsized fashion, Walters didn’t just pay his respects to Kirk. He mandated that schools hold a moment of silence on Sept. 16 at noon — at a time when students would be eating lunch or enjoying recess.
He followed up with a declaration that all Oklahoma high schools would open a Turning Point USA club, even though state law leaves those decisions up to local school boards.
To Franklin, who took opposite sides with Walters on issues like Christian charter schools, the moment was telling. The former Tulsa Tech official said it underscored why Walters, despite the backing of right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty, might struggle outside of Oklahoma.
As Walters assumes a new national position, Franklin said that unlike Kirk, the former chief never sparked a “groundswell of ‘Oh my God, we need to listen to this guy,’ ” Kirk’s organization had over 900 college chapters prior to his death and has since received requests to establish thousands more. His campus appearances could draw thousands.
“The Charlie Kirk phenomenon only strikes every once in a while, and I don’t think Walters has that kind of following.”
