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.
