As Oklahoma’s schools flounder, state superintendent asks PragerU for teacher purity test
Far-right education official Ryan Walters asks religious propaganda group for help attacking ‘woke’ teachers
First published by Right Wing Watch.
Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters is enlisting PragerU propagandists to devise an “assessment” that Walters says would protect students from “woke” teachers moving into the state from places with more progressive education policies like California or New York. It’s the latest Fox News bait from Walters, a Christian nationalist zealot and ardent MAGA activist, who announced the policy with typical-for-him smears about teacher unions wanting to “destroy this country.”
Walters’ plan to screen teachers for “woke” attitudes comes as Oklahoma, which is ranked near the very bottom of states in educational achievement, is experiencing a serious teacher shortage. While Walters has portrayed the requirement as taking effect immediately, the details are still being worked out just weeks before the start of the new school year.
Walters said the Prager assessment would evaluate teachers on their understanding of the Constitution, American exceptionalism, and the “fundamental biological differences between boys and girls.” He said teachers who do not pass the test would not get a teaching certificate.
In announcing the plan, Walters declared, “We’re raising a generation of patriots, not activists, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep leftist propaganda out of our classrooms.”
Of course, he’s fighting tooth and nail to bring right-wing propaganda into the classrooms in the guise of “patriotic education.” Walters says he’s out to ensure that teachers coming into Oklahoma don’t “malign President Trump.” PragerU’s CEO Marissa Streit said the assessment will “ensure teachers champion America’s greatness.”
This isn’t Walters’ first partnership with Prager. Last year, he appointed Dennis Prager and other right-wing activists to an “executive review committee” to provide advice on overhauling the state’s social studies curriculum. Right Wing Watch noted at the time that “the educational materials produced by Prager's own organization are rife with disinformation and right-wing propaganda.”
Although Dennis Prager is Jewish, he is allied with Christian nationalists like Charlie Kirk and promotes their false claims about U.S. history. When Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress and chose a Quran for his ceremonial swearing in, Prager slammed him for not using a Bible, saying, “If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”
The new social studies standards developed by Walters and his right-wing advisers mandate that Bible studies and teaching about Jesus be incorporated into the curriculum.
And at the last minute, Walters snuck in a requirement that students be taught conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen from President Donald Trump. The legislature had a chance to reverse that decision but chose not to.
Last fall, Walters bought more than 500 expensive “Trump Bibles” for Advancement Placement government classrooms and announced the creation of an Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism. He ordered every school to show students a video of him praying for President Trump.
Walters also sought millions in tax dollars to buy 55,000 Bibles to be placed in every classroom; the official request for proposals from vendors was written in such a way that the only Bibles that would meet the requirement would be ones from which Trump and his family profit. It required the use of the King James translation “for historical accuracy.”
Walters’ policy pronouncements seem calculated to get him attention even when he lacks the actual legal authority to carry them out, leading state Rep. Forrest Bennett to describe Walters’ efforts as a “grift.”
Here’s how Right Wing Watch described Walters in a 2023 post about the Moms for Liberty summit at which Walters spoke:
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, is waging a scorched-earth campaign against teachers and teachers unions, which he called “terrorist organizations” at a budget hearing in May; he has been accused of lying to legislators at that hearing. At a state board of education meeting, Walters played a five-minute video savaging teachers unions, a video so hostile—it included insinuations that teachers supported pedophilia—that educators feared it would incite physical attacks on public schools. His agency banned sexually explicit materials from school libraries without defining the term. After Trump’s recent indictment, Walters put out a press release headlined, “Joe Biden Leading a Banana Republic Coup Against American Justice,” an indication of his focus on MAGA politics and promotion of Trumpish conspiracy theories.
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