Oklahoma Is Floor Zero in Trump’s “America First” Schooling 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 pleasure about America’s historical past, with political leaders and legislators working their method by means of the conservative agenda for overhauling schooling.

Teachers, educators and critics alike discuss with Oklahoma as floor zero for pushing schooling to the correct. 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 growth of personal faculty vouchers and prohibitions on classes about race and intercourse, Oklahoma had been there, achieved that.

The Republican supermajority within the state Legislature — the place some members establish as Christian nationalists — handed sweeping restrictions on educating about racism and gender in 2021, prompting districts to evaluation whether or not academics’ 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 per the gender they had been assigned at start or face self-discipline.

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

Lots of the adjustments endorsed by the state’s leaders have parts of Christian nationalism, which holds that the US 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 “struggle the woke liberal union mob.” However a lot of the transformation in Oklahoma schooling 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 average Democrat who misplaced the state superintendent’s race to Walters in 2022 and is now operating for Congress.

ProPublica has reported that Schooling Secretary Linda McMahon has introduced in a staff of strategists who’re working to radically shift how youngsters will be taught in America, at the same time as they perform the “last mission” to close down the federal company. A few of these strategists have spoken of their want to dismantle public schooling. Others hope to push it in the identical course as Oklahoma.

Walters tapped the president of The Heritage Basis, a conservative assume tank that revealed Mission 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 concerning the Bible, Jesus and Christianity that college students ought to be taught in addition to skepticism concerning the 2020 presidential election outcomes and the origins of COVID-19. If the brand new requirements survive a authorized problem, they may very well be in place till they’re up for evaluation once more in six years.

However whereas Oklahoma made these shifts, it has constantly ranked close to the underside on nationwide measures of pupil efficiency. Scores on eighth grade studying and math in nationwide evaluations are abysmal. Solely New Mexico’s proficiency charges rank decrease. The highschool dropout fee is without doubt one of the highest within the nation, whereas spending on schooling is without doubt 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 fogeys say state leaders have been fixated on the fallacious issues if the purpose is to enhance faculties.

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

“The varsity needs to be the nicest, happiest, greatest resourced place in a group,” 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, stated that he’s sorting by means of earlier guidelines and edicts which have created “a lot confusion” for faculties, together with concerning the requirements and the PragerU instructor certification assessments. He stated the general public rightfully has questions on how the state Schooling 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 schooling, we’ve got work to do to maneuver our state ahead,” Fields wrote. He stated his first duties are “resolving various excellent points which might be 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, based on information reviews.

One other superintendent, Tommy Turner of Battiest Public Faculties, stated college students at his faculties have all the time 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 stated in an interview in his workplace.

A lifelong Republican who works in a distant stretch of southeast Oklahoma, Turner stated he’s involved concerning the state’s priorities and doesn’t see Bibles as probably 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. Lots of his academics work second jobs on weekends as a result of the pay’s so low. Nail heads are poking by means of the fitness center’s skinny hardwood flooring. The district has misplaced 15% of its college students to an internet constitution faculty and homeschooling. Voters have rejected three bond points in a row for constructing repairs and renovations.

Turner stated 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 stated he hadn’t even learn the brand new social research requirements.

“I don’t have time to chase each rabbit,” he stated. “I’ve bought a faculty 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, academics 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 regulation that restricted educating about race and gender handed, some academics prevented the subject.

The regulation prohibits academics from singling out particular racial teams as liable 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 academics’ licensure being on the road, repeated failure to conform would permit the state to revoke district accreditation, which might lead to a state takeover.

When educators questioned easy methods to educate a couple of race bloodbath with out operating afoul of the regulation, state legislators and the Tulsa County chapter of the conservative guardian group Mothers for Liberty weighed in to say that white individuals as we speak shouldn’t really feel disgrace and that the bloodbath’s perpetrators shouldn’t be solid 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 steered academics current the details concerning the murders however mustn’t say “the pores and skin colour decided it.” Even two years after the regulation went into impact, information reviews stated academics had been nonetheless treading evenly on the race bloodbath, cautious of the state suspending or revoking their licenses for exposing college students to prohibited ideas. These fears will not be hypothetical; the state has revoked no less than 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 Children, 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 constructive view of America’s previous and with the state’s guidelines on educating about race and gender. As an illustration, PragerU Children’ 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 alternate for formal schooling and have become an ideal American orator and chief of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

The video doesn’t linger on his being born into “probably 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 must 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 regulation and didn’t outlaw proudly owning individuals altogether till 1865, after Britain, Denmark, France and Spain had achieved so.)

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

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

Jermaine Thibodeaux, a historian on the College of Oklahoma, stated he’s accustomed to the PragerU movies and considers them an ideological instrument of a “reeducation venture nationwide” that may be deceptive.

“I don’t assume that’s one thing Washington essentially uttered,” he stated 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 guide” laws that may censor faculty libraries. One invoice, which didn’t go, known as for firing faculty workers and fining offenders $10,000 every time they “promoted positions in opposition to carefully held spiritual beliefs of the scholar.” That was the backdrop when the state accused Summer season Boismier of “ethical turpitude” after which revoked her educating license final yr.

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

“I bear in mind simply sitting in my seat shaking. I had colleagues within the room who had been in tears,” Boismier stated. Given the selection to purge books or conceal their covers, Boismier did neither. She wrapped her classroom’s bookshelf in purple 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 regulation, challenged the license revocation in court docket, and the case is ongoing. She stated she doesn’t remorse taking a stand in opposition to a regulation she views as unjust. The state has argued the revocation is legitimate.

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

Within the Battiest district, the place Turner is superintendent, an elementary studying instructor informed ProPublica that simply to be protected, she eliminated books about variety and together with others who’re completely different. She stated 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 needs to 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 short lived keep on requiring faculties to comply with the requirements whereas a lawsuit in opposition to them performs out.

As well as, the brand new requirements settle for Trump’s false claims concerning 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 file variety of voters” and different unsupported conservative speaking factors. The Trump marketing campaign and supporters filed no less than 60 lawsuits overlaying these factors; practically all had been dismissed as meritless or had been determined in opposition to Trump. The election skepticism commonplace has left the superintendent of a roughly 2,000-student district north of Tulsa confused. He stated he and different superintendents are uncertain how they’d navigate these however are hopeful that “requirements rooted the truth is prevail.”

“There comes a degree the place curriculum can’t be opinion,” stated the superintendent, who didn’t need to be named as a result of he feared retaliation. “I’m not making an attempt to get entangled in conspiracy theories.”

Concern 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,” stated the chief of a tiny district on the western facet of the state. “We’re small, however we’ve got seven church buildings. You’re speaking ‘Footloose’ right here.”

Whereas she doesn’t disagree with all the things the Legislature and Walters have achieved, she stated 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 spiritual 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 permitted by the Legislature that enables college students to make use of public funds to attend non-public and spiritual faculties. The credit price the state practically $250 million in tax income this faculty yr and subsidizes virtually 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 rules. 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 College in its efforts to change into the nation’s first spiritual 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 College, 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 tons of of different Oklahoma districts, greater than three-quarters of that are rural, it’s not only a faculty, it’s the college; there are not any non-public faculties in Pushmataha County.

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

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

Caughern fears college students with disabilities will undergo as public faculties are weakened. Personal faculties don’t must admit college students with disabilities, and plenty of received’t, he stated.

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

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

That’s to not say there isn’t resistance. A bunch of about 15 dad and mom and public faculty advocates that Walters derided because the “woke peanut gallery” goes to State Board of Schooling conferences — a visible reminder that individuals care about schooling 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 dad and mom a simple technique to have their youngsters choose out. Courtroom challenges to among 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 Schooling final week determined to not revoke the licenses of two academics who Walters wished punished for his or her social media posts about Trump. The brand new superintendent stated he would drop Walters’ plan to distribute Bibles to each classroom.

However lots 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 supplies” and proclaim that, in Oklahoma, “Christ is King.” Numerous injury already has been achieved to public faculties, stated Turner, the Battiest superintendent.

He was solely half-joking when he stated some dad and mom have been “brainwashed” by right-wing TV information and Oklahoma leaders’ speak of liberal indoctrination to assume the district is educating 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 little one from the district as a result of its educating didn’t align together with her values. The superintendent was floored.

“That’s the facility of the rhetoric,” Turner stated.

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