Oklahoma's top education official embraces culture wars [View all]

Source: Associated Press

Oklahoma’s top education official embraces culture wars

By SEAN MURPHY
April 29, 2023

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — When Oklahoma’s newly elected Republican head of public schools campaigned for the job last fall, he ran on a platform of fighting “woke ideology” in public schools, banning certain books from school libraries, empowering parents with school choice and getting rid of “radical leftists” he claims were indoctrinating children in classrooms across the state.

While the political strategy was successful and Ryan Walters won the race for superintendent of public instruction by nearly 15 percentage points, many expected him to pivot toward more substantive education policy: working with lawmakers to improve education outcomes and overseeing the state’s largest — and most-funded — agency.

Instead, Walters, a former public school teacher from McAlester, has doubled down on his political rhetoric, focusing his energy on culture-war issues like targeting transgender athletes in schools, banning books and fighting what he calls “Joe Biden’s radical agenda.”

In doing so, the 37-year-old political newcomer has frustrated even his fellow Republicans in the Legislature, who have publicly voiced concern about whether Walters can effectively improve public education in Oklahoma, which consistently scores below the national average on most standardized testing and where average scores have declined in recent years.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/oklahoma-education-teachers-superintendent-walters-c5c55e473eaeb0c94545c8ae5753149a