Oklahoma Is Ground Zero in Trump’s “America First” Education Push — ProPublica

The future that the Trump administration envisions for public faculties is extra patriotic, extra Christian and fewer “woke.” Need to understand how that may play out? Look to Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has spent the previous few years reshaping public faculties to combine classes about Jesus and encourage satisfaction about America’s historical past, with political leaders and legislators working their method by means of the conservative agenda for overhauling education.

Lecturers, educators and critics alike consult with Oklahoma as floor zero for pushing training to the suitable. Or, as one instructor put it, “the canary on the prairie.”

By the point the second Trump administration started espousing its “America First” agenda, which incorporates the enlargement of personal faculty vouchers and prohibitions on classes about race and intercourse, Oklahoma had been there, executed that.

The Republican supermajority within the state Legislature — the place some members determine as Christian nationalists — handed sweeping restrictions on instructing about racism and gender in 2021, prompting districts to evaluate whether or not lecturers’ classes may make college students “really feel discomfort, guilt, anguish” or different psychological misery about their race. The next yr, it adopted one of many nation’s first anti-transgender faculty lavatory payments, requiring college students to make use of restrooms and locker rooms in line with the gender they have been assigned at start or face discipline.

Whereas he was state faculties superintendent, Ryan Walters demanded Bibles be positioned in each classroom, created a state Workplace of Non secular Liberty and Patriotism, and inspired faculties to make use of on-line “pro-America” content material from conservative media nonprofit PragerU. He known as lecturers unions “terrorist” organizations, railed towards “woke” school rooms, threatened to yank the accreditation of college districts that resisted his orders and commissioned a take a look at to measure whether or not instructor candidates from liberal states had “America First” data.

Most of the adjustments endorsed by the state’s leaders have parts of Christian nationalism, which holds that america was based as a Christian nation and sometimes downplays troubling episodes within the nation’s historical past to as a substitute emphasize patriotism and a God-given future.

Walters, who declined to remark for this story, resigned on the finish of September and have become CEO of the Instructor Freedom Alliance, an arm of the conservative assume tank Freedom Basis that goals to “battle the woke liberal union mob.” However a lot of the transformation in Oklahoma training coverage that he helped turbocharge is codified within the state’s guidelines and legal guidelines.

“We’re the testing floor. Each single state wants to concentrate,” warned Jena Nelson, a reasonable Democrat who misplaced the state superintendent’s race to Walters in 2022 and is now working for Congress.

ProPublica has reported that Training Secretary Linda McMahon has introduced in a group of strategists who’re working to radically shift how youngsters will study in America, whilst they perform the “ultimate mission” to close down the federal company. A few of these strategists have spoken of their want to dismantle public training. Others hope to push it in the identical course as Oklahoma.

Walters tapped the president of The Heritage Basis, a conservative assume tank that printed Venture 2025 and the blueprints that preceded it, to assist rewrite Oklahoma’s social research requirements. The Legislature didn’t reject the rewrite, so the requirements now embrace roughly 40 factors in regards to the Bible, Jesus and Christianity that college students ought to study in addition to skepticism in regards to the 2020 presidential election outcomes and the origins of COVID-19. If the brand new requirements survive a authorized problem, they might be in place till they’re up for evaluate once more in six years.

However whereas Oklahoma made these shifts, it has constantly ranked close to the underside on nationwide measures of scholar efficiency. Scores on eighth grade studying and math in nationwide evaluations are abysmal. Solely New Mexico’s proficiency charges rank decrease. The highschool dropout price is likely one of the highest within the nation, whereas spending on training is likely one of the lowest. Solely three different states — Utah, Idaho and Arizona — spend much less per pupil. And in the latest federal information about common instructor pay, Oklahoma tied with Mississippi for lifeless final. Many faculty superintendents and oldsters say state leaders have been fixated on the fallacious issues if the objective is to enhance faculties.

“The eye to the tradition battle factor signifies that there’s lots of distraction from the essential wants of youngsters being met,” mentioned Aysha Prather, a guardian who has carefully adopted adjustments in state training coverage. Her transgender son is a plaintiff in a 2022 lawsuit difficult the state’s lavatory ban. That case stays on enchantment.

“The college must be the nicest, happiest, greatest resourced place in a neighborhood,” she added. “That’s how we present that we worth youngsters. And that’s clearly not how most of our Legislature or state authorities feels about it.”

In a press release to ProPublica, the brand new state superintendent, Lindel Fields, mentioned that he’s sorting by means of earlier guidelines and edicts which have created “a lot confusion” for faculties, together with in regards to the requirements and the PragerU instructor certification checks. He mentioned the general public rightfully has questions on how the state Training Division adjustments after Walters’ tenure, however “given all these urgent duties, we merely don’t have time for trying backward. Whether or not we’re fiftieth or forty sixth or twenty fifth in training, now we have work to do to maneuver our state ahead,” Fields wrote. He mentioned his first duties are “resolving various excellent points which are hindering operations” together with making a finances for the company.

Public faculty superintendents don’t oppose all the mandates from the previous a number of years. When Walters directed faculties final yr to position Bibles in each classroom and educate from them, one district superintendent emailed to thank him for providing “cowl” to include Bible-focused classes, in line with information stories.

One other superintendent, Tommy Turner of Battiest Public Faculties, mentioned college students at his faculties have at all times had entry to the Bible. The district nonetheless places on a Christmas program and observes a second of silence to start out the day, and the college board prays earlier than conferences.

“Christ by no means left the college,” he mentioned in an interview in his workplace.

A lifelong Republican who works in a distant stretch of southeast Oklahoma, Turner mentioned he’s involved in regards to the state’s priorities and doesn’t see Bibles as essentially the most urgent points.

In his district, the cafeteria wants repairs even after the emergency substitute of a roof that had a gaping gap in it. A lot of his lecturers work second jobs on weekends as a result of the pay’s so low. Nail heads are poking by means of the health club’s skinny hardwood flooring. The district has misplaced 15% of its college students to a web based constitution faculty and homeschooling. Voters have rejected three bond points in a row for constructing repairs and renovations.

Turner mentioned he’d wish to retire, however he loves the scholars and needs to guard his little district. He placed on his cowboy hat, apologized for the pile of lifeless wasps on his workplace flooring — the infestations barely register anymore — and walked over to the highschool. He mentioned he hadn’t even learn the brand new social research requirements.

“I don’t have time to chase each rabbit,” he mentioned. “I’ve received a college to run.”

Patriotism and Jesus

The adjustments to Oklahoma’s curriculum guidelines don’t simply contact on nationwide points round race and gender. Right here, lecturers aren’t supposed to inform college students that the Tulsa Race Bloodbath of 1921 — a defining incident of racial violence in Oklahoma historical past — was perpetrated by racists.

State social research requirements for years have included dialogue of how white Tulsans murdered as many as 300 Black individuals. However as soon as the 2021 state legislation that restricted instructing about race and gender handed, some lecturers prevented the subject.

The legislation prohibits lecturers from singling out particular racial teams as answerable for previous racism. It specifies that people of a sure race shouldn’t be portrayed as inherently racist, “whether or not consciously or unconsciously.” Along with lecturers’ licensure being on the road, repeated failure to conform would enable the state to revoke district accreditation, which might lead to a state takeover.

When educators questioned educate a couple of race bloodbath with out working afoul of the legislation, state legislators and the Tulsa County chapter of the conservative guardian group Mothers for Liberty weighed in to say that white individuals at this time shouldn’t really feel disgrace and that the bloodbath’s perpetrators shouldn’t be forged as racists. A Mothers for Liberty chapter consultant didn’t reply to questions from ProPublica.

At a talking engagement on the Norman Public Library in 2023, Walters suggested teachers current the info in regards to the murders however mustn’t say “the pores and skin colour decided it.” Even two years after the legislation went into impact, information stories mentioned lecturers have been nonetheless treading lightly on the race bloodbath, cautious of the state suspending or revoking their licenses for exposing college students to prohibited ideas. These fears are usually not hypothetical; the state has revoked a minimum of one instructor’s license and suspended two others’.

Different historic episodes that reveal racism are also getting a brand new look in Oklahoma by means of the state’s partnership with PragerU Youngsters, which creates short-form movies to counter what its founder believes is left-wing ideology in faculties.

Lecturers within the state aren’t required to make use of the movies, however some like them and present them in school. The movies align with conservatives’ push to show a optimistic view of America’s previous and with the state’s guidelines on instructing about race and gender. As an example, PragerU Youngsters’ model of Booker T. Washington’s story is a cheery lesson in self-sufficiency and acceptance. As soon as free of slavery, Washington toiled in coal mines, labored as a janitor in trade for formal training and have become an incredible American orator and chief of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

The video doesn’t linger on his being born into “essentially the most depressing, desolate and discouraging environment” or, as he wrote in his autobiography, that slavery was “a sin that at a while we will need to pay for.”

“America was one of many first locations on Earth to outlaw slavery,” a cartoon model of Washington tells two time-traveling youngsters within the PragerU video, so “I’m proud and grateful.” (The U.S. did ban importing slaves in 1808, nevertheless it didn’t implement that legislation and didn’t outlaw proudly owning individuals altogether till 1865, after Britain, Denmark, France and Spain had executed so.)

The Washington character says within the video that he devoted his life to instructing individuals “the significance of independence and making themselves as worthwhile as attainable.” And when one baby says she’s sorry that he and different Black People confronted segregation and discrimination, Washington thanks her for her sympathy however assures the kid, who’s white, that she’s executed nothing fallacious.

Echoing a conservative speaking level, the cartoon Washington says, “Future generations are by no means answerable for the sins of the previous.”

Jermaine Thibodeaux, a historian on the College of Oklahoma, mentioned he’s aware of the PragerU movies and considers them an ideological device of a “reeducation mission nationwide” that may be deceptive.

“I don’t assume that’s one thing Washington essentially uttered,” he mentioned of the quote about future generations.

The worth Washington positioned on independence, Thibodeaux added, was “predicated on the notions of self-sufficiency post-slavery, when there was little assist coming from the federal government.”

A spokesperson for PragerU declined to remark for this story.

Strain to maintain squeezing social justice and LGBTQ+ points out of school rooms has been intensifying since 2021, when Republican state lawmakers started pushing “soiled e-book” laws that will censor faculty libraries. One invoice, which didn’t go, known as for firing faculty staff and fining offenders $10,000 every time they “promoted positions in opposition to carefully held non secular beliefs of the coed.” That was the backdrop when the state accused Summer time Boismier of “ethical turpitude” after which revoked her instructing license final yr.

The English division at Norman Excessive Faculty close to Oklahoma Metropolis instructed Boismier and her colleagues they wanted to drag titles that is perhaps thought of racially divisive or comprise themes about intercourse and gender. Or they might flip books round on the cabinets so college students couldn’t see the titles.

“I keep in mind simply sitting in my seat shaking. I had colleagues within the room who have been in tears,” Boismier mentioned. Given the selection to purge books or conceal their covers, Boismier did neither. She wrapped her classroom’s bookshelf in pink butcher paper and wrote “books the state doesn’t need you to learn” on it in black marker. She added a QR code linking to the Brooklyn Public Library, the place college students might get a library card and digital entry to books thought of inappropriate in Oklahoma, then posted a photograph of all of it on social media.

Boismier, who resigned in protest of the 2021 legislation, challenged the license revocation in court docket, and the case is ongoing. She mentioned she doesn’t remorse taking a stand towards a legislation she views as unjust. The state has argued the revocation is legitimate.

“I’m residing each instructor in Oklahoma’s worst nightmare proper now,” she mentioned. “I’m unemployable.”

Within the Battiest district, the place Turner is superintendent, an elementary studying instructor instructed ProPublica that simply to be secure, she eliminated books about variety and together with others who’re totally different. She mentioned that was uncomfortable; half of her college students are Native American, and so is she.

Adopted this yr, the state’s new social research requirements present much more specifics about what must be taught. They embrace the expectation that college students know “tales from Christianity that influenced the American Founders and tradition, together with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (e.g., the ‘Golden Rule,’ the Sermon on the Mount),” to second graders. A state court docket final month issued a brief keep on requiring faculties to comply with the requirements whereas a lawsuit towards them performs out.

As well as, the brand new requirements settle for Trump’s false claims in regards to the 2020 election. They dictate that ninth graders find out about “discrepancies” in election outcomes together with “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in choose cities in key battleground states, the safety dangers of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unexpected document variety of voters” and different unsupported conservative speaking factors. The Trump marketing campaign and supporters filed at least 60 lawsuits overlaying these factors; practically all have been dismissed as meritless or have been determined towards Trump. The election skepticism commonplace has left the superintendent of a roughly 2,000-student district north of Tulsa confused. He mentioned he and different superintendents are not sure how they might navigate these however are hopeful that “requirements rooted the truth is prevail.”

“There comes some extent the place curriculum can’t be opinion,” mentioned the superintendent, who didn’t need to be named as a result of he feared retaliation. “I’m not attempting to become involved in conspiracy theories.”

Worry and Resistance

The push by state leaders to embed extra Christian values in faculties isn’t what retains many superintendents within the rural elements of the state up at evening. They are saying the Bible has by no means left their school rooms.

“I’m smack-dab proper in the midst of the Bible Belt,” mentioned the chief of a tiny district on the western facet of the state. “We’re small, however now we have seven church buildings. You’re speaking ‘Footloose’ right here.”

Whereas she doesn’t disagree with every little thing the Legislature and Walters have executed, she mentioned she seems like a few of their actions undermine public faculties and will “shut down rural Oklahoma.”

She and different leaders of public faculty districts fear that the state’s expanded faculty alternative program, which permits households to get tax credit in the event that they attend non-public and non secular faculties, will draw away college students from their districts and, in the end, erode their funding. Congress handed the primary federal non-public faculty tax credit score in July.

It’s simply the second yr of the statewide tax credit score program accepted by the Legislature that permits college students to make use of public funds to attend non-public and non secular faculties. The credit price the state practically $250 million in tax income this faculty yr and subsidizes nearly 40,000 college students. That cash, superintendents say, is desperately wanted of their districts.

The state additionally has inspired the expansion of constitution faculties, that are publicly funded however privately run and topic to fewer laws. Final yr, the state’s third-largest district, behind the Oklahoma Metropolis and Tulsa districts, wasn’t a standard one. It was EPIC, a statewide on-line constitution faculty. Walters and Gov. Kevin Stitt supported St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Digital Faculty in its efforts to change into the nation’s first non secular constitution faculty. The Supreme Courtroom blocked it from opening.

Even communities with few non-public faculties really feel threatened by the state’s push towards privatization. At Nashoba Public Faculty, in a rural a part of southeast Oklahoma the place there’s little else however timber and twisting roads, the roughly 50 youngsters who make up the elementary and center grades are taught in split-grade school rooms. Like lots of of different Oklahoma districts, greater than three-quarters of that are rural, it’s not only a faculty, it’s the college; there aren’t any non-public faculties in Pushmataha County.

When college students enroll in constitution faculties, they typically take funding with them whereas districts have to take care of operations as earlier than.

“You starve your public faculties to feed your non-public faculties and constitution faculties,” mentioned Nashoba Superintendent Charles Caughern Jr. “Our basis was arrange for a free and acceptable training for all youngsters. All youngsters!”

Caughern fears college students with disabilities will endure as public faculties are weakened. Non-public faculties don’t need to admit college students with disabilities, and plenty of received’t, he mentioned.

Erika Wright, a guardian who leads the Oklahoma Rural Faculties Coalition, which advocates for public faculties, mentioned the state’s deep-red politics may lead outsiders to assume Oklahomans help state leaders pushing training far to the suitable. However that’s not the case, Wright mentioned.

“They don’t perceive what’s taking place,” Wright mentioned. “They only assume that public faculties are at all times going to be there as a result of they’ve at all times been there of their lifetime. I believe the common Oklahoman doesn’t perceive the gravity and complexity of what’s happening.”

That’s to not say there isn’t resistance. A gaggle of about 15 mother and father and public faculty advocates that Walters derided because the “woke peanut gallery” goes to State Board of Training conferences — a visible reminder that folks care about training coverage and public faculties. A suburban Oklahoma Metropolis district is devising plans to ship all the Bible classes contained within the new social research requirements on the identical day, giving mother and father a simple technique to have their youngsters choose out. Courtroom challenges to a few of the state’s right-wing insurance policies are pending.

Some are hopeful that Oklahoma will recalibrate the extra excessive insurance policies that marked Walters’ tenure. The State Board of Training final week determined to not revoke the licenses of two lecturers who Walters needed punished for his or her social media posts about Trump. The brand new superintendent mentioned he would drop Walters’ plan to distribute Bibles to each classroom.

However most of the vital adjustments in school rooms got here out of the Legislature, which has continued this yr to suggest payments to rid faculties of “inappropriate materials” and proclaim that, in Oklahoma, “Christ is King.” A whole lot of injury already has been executed to public faculties, mentioned Turner, the Battiest superintendent.

He was solely half-joking when he mentioned some mother and father have been “brainwashed” by right-wing TV information and Oklahoma leaders’ discuss of liberal indoctrination to assume the district is instructing youngsters to be homosexual or changing Christian youngsters into atheists.

A few years in the past, one mother stopped him within the parking zone in school to say she was withdrawing her baby from the district as a result of its instructing didn’t align along with her values. The superintendent was floored.

“That’s the ability of the rhetoric,” Turner mentioned.

He mentioned he used to take a seat a few pews behind that mother in church each Sunday.