\n<\/p>\n
Ryan Walters announced Wednesday night that he is resigning as Oklahoma\u2019s state superintendent after nearly three years of near-constant controversy.<\/p>\n
On a Fox News program around 10:45 p.m., Walters announced that he is becoming the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance.<\/p>\n
The Teacher Freedom Alliance\u2019s stated mission is to \u201cassist educators in their mission to develop free, moral and upright American citizens,\u201d and the nonprofit organization\u2019s website states that it currently has 2,617 teachers enrolled as members. <\/p>\n
He did not say whether he is still considering a gubernatorial run in 2026.<\/p>\n
Among the group\u2019s goals is to get teachers to drop membership in their local unions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to destroy the teachers unions,\u201d Walters said on the cable news program Wednesday evening. \u201cWe have seen the teachers\u2019 unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools. We are one of the biggest grassroots orgs in the country. We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers\u2019 unions once and for all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since his campaign for statewide office in 2022, Walters, a former high school teacher from McAlester, has railed against teachers\u2019 unions, even calling them \u201cterrorist organizations.\u201d Among other steps that have courted controversy, Walters has pushed for requiring teaching about the Bible; overseen a draft of new social studies standards that introduced misinformation about the 2020 elections; and said he\u2019d require educators from certain states to take a licensing test to prove they aren\u2019t \u201cwoke.\u201d <\/p>\n
In 2024, Walters\u2019 administration introduced like-minded political and advocacy groups and embedded representatives of those groups as instructors at the Oklahoma State Department of Education\u2019s annual summer professional development conference for teachers, including the anti-labor-union Freedom Foundation, which launched the Teacher Freedom Alliance. <\/p>\n
Walters has not yet specified his actual resignation date.<\/p>\n
Gov. Kevin Stitt, who campaigned extensively for his former secretary of education, Walters, is in line to appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of Walters\u2019 term. One of the most likely candidates Stitt could consider is his current secretary of education, Nellie Sanders.<\/p>\n
Stitt publicly split with Walters in the spring of this year by overhauling the membership of the Oklahoma State Board of Education with individuals who have repeatedly clashed with Walters. Earlier this month, Sanders helped Stitt\u2019s new appointees to the State Board of Education hold a special meeting without Walters\u2019 involvement.<\/p>\n
The board was without legal counsel or a board clerk, so a simple majority of the members held the extraordinary special meeting at the Oklahoma Capitol rather than the Oklahoma State Department of Education to tackle those issues after Walters cancelled the board\u2019s August meeting at the last minute.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who has been anticipating Walters to be one of his challengers in the next GOP primary for the state\u2019s next governor, immediately issued a press statement reacting to Walters\u2019 announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cEver since Gov. Stitt appointed Ryan Walters to serve as Secretary of Education, we have witnessed a stream of never-ending scandal and political drama. From the mishandling of pandemic relief funds that resulted in families buying Xboxes and refrigerators to the latest squabbling with board members over what was or wasn\u2019t showing on TV, the Stitt-Walters era has been an embarrassment to our state,\u201d Drummond\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven worse, test scores and reading proficiency are at historic lows. It\u2019s time for a State Superintendent of Public Instruction who will actually focus on quality instruction in our public schools. Gov. Stitt used to say he would make us Top Ten, but after seven years we are ranked 50th in education. Our families, our students and our teachers deserve so much more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ryan Walters announced Wednesday night that he is resigning as Oklahoma\u2019s state superintendent after nearly three years of near-constant controversy. On a Fox News program around 10:45 p.m., Walters announced that he is becoming the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance. The Teacher Freedom Alliance\u2019s stated mission is to \u201cassist educators in their mission to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[689,496,14392,14478,3225,1207,5997],"class_list":{"0":"post-23770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-chief","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-fiery","11":"tag-okla-s","12":"tag-ryan","13":"tag-step","14":"tag-walters"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}