“We can’t exit this decade with students, in particular low-income students, performing worse than they were performing when they entered the decade,” said Kevin Huffman, CEO of Accelerate, a nonprofit funding academic recovery efforts. “My biggest fear is just that people will use the Department of Education as a battering ram for other issues and not use it as a force to take on academic outcomes for kids.”

The Republican nominee, declaring this the “golden age of America,” in battleground states, like Georgia and Florida, than he did in 2020. As expected, Republicans flipped the Senate and will hold at least a 52-seat majority, with a few races left to call. Control of the House remains undecided. 

Observers expect Trump to immediately nullify the Biden administration’s Title IX rule that extends protections against discrimination to LGBTQ students. 

Those who campaigned for Trump, and agree with his promises to end in schools, celebrated his comeback.

“American parents voted for their children’s future,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the conservative Moms for Liberty advocacy group, . Her name is already among those being tossed around as a possible . She told �鶹��Ʒ that she “would be honored to serve the next president of the United States of America.”

Most clues about Trump’s early priorities come from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s , or Project 2025. In addition to eliminating Title I funding for low-income students and Head Start for preschoolers from poor families, the plan would remove references to LGBTQ people throughout federal policy.

But even if Washington ends up with a GOP trifecta and federal appointees handpicked by Heritage, the president-elect might not be able to deliver on some of his more bold promises to dismantle the education department and of illegal immigrants.

“Some of this rhetoric will be tempered with reality once the administration changes,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. “This is a president that we are very accustomed to. I understand people are nervous; they’re very concerned. But when it comes down to it, there’s also the reality of governing.”

Eliminating the education department, for example, would require 60 votes in the Senate and would likely be unpopular in the House as well, even if Republicans are still in control, said David Cleary, a former Republican Senate education staffer now working for a left-leaning lobbying firm.

“The votes wouldn’t materialize,” he said.

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, added that “draconian cuts” in spending would also be difficult to pass. That’s why Trump is expected to accomplish some of his conservative agenda through executive orders.

“Let’s assume that there is no grand reawakening to the problems that America faces and people stay in their partisan foxholes,” Cleary said. “Trump will have to take a page out of [President Joe Biden’s] playbook and do a lot by executive action and regulatory plans.”

That would include halting enforcement of Biden’s Title IX rule — which, because of litigation from Republican-led governors, currently applies to only 24 states. Officials would likely restart the process of restoring the 2020 regulation completed under former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, which narrowed the definition of sexual assault and expanded due process rights for the accused.

One LGBTQ advocacy organization called Trump’s victory “an immediate threat.”

“Today, many in our community feel a profound sense of loss and concern for the future,” Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, said in a statement, pointing to Heritage’s Project 2025 as the blueprint for how Trump would roll back policies that allow trans students to play on sports teams or use restrooms that match their gender identity. “With these changes, our young people could face increased discrimination, reduced access to safe spaces and diminished legal recognition.”

Trump, a and, at 78, the oldest candidate ever elected president, is also expected to push for private school choice, perhaps along the lines of the $5,000 that passed a House committee in September. But despite the GOP’s enthusiasm for vouchers and education savings accounts, which allow parents to use public funds for private school tuition and homeschooling expenses, some advocates would like to see greater support for the charter sector.

Petrilli, a self-described “never-Trumper,” said he’s worried about returning to “the political dynamics” of Trump’s first term, which didn’t benefit charter schools.

“Reform-oriented Democrats were sidelined or silenced,” he said. “Given that there are a lot of kids in blue states like California, New York, and Illinois who desperately need high-quality educational options, this would be a terrible development.”

But Rodrigues sees some bright spots in Republicans’ focus on parental rights and school choice. “Those things can be positive when not taken to the extreme,” she said.

She’s encouraged by the prospect of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana becoming chair of the Senate education committee, where he has already highlighted the importance of improving . 

While the National Parents Union has had close interaction with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and the White House, she said leaders have had ongoing “deep conversations” with those on both sides of the aisle.

“Progress will be made for children in any and all conditions, regardless of what happens in the House and the change up in the Senate,” she said. “I think the depth of our relationships are not confined to one particular party.”

He praised a new breed of “patriot pastors” who are mobilizing the faithful to engage in “biblical citizenship” by voting and getting involved on school boards. He’s among the far right religious who say former President Donald Trump is God’s choice for president and that Christians should not only participate in government and politics, but .

Republican leaders have spent a lot of energy this year putting those words into action. Much of the spotlight has been on Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters, who mandated that schools stock classrooms with Bibles. Louisiana passed a law requiring schools to post the 10 Commandments in classrooms, the subject of , while the Texas Education Agency has proposed a reading curriculum that includes stories from the Old and New testaments. 

But the question of whether those ideas will resonate with Christian voters on Nov. 5 is harder to answer.

One suggests they might not. On a long list of concerns influencing Christians this election, public schools ranked near the bottom, with less than 30% choosing it as a reason to vote for a presidential candidate. The economy and border security topped the list for at least 60% of voters. 

A lot of churchgoers are “still leery of bringing Christianity overtly into public institutions,” said George Barna, who runs the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, a small conservative college outside Phoenix. “They are more likely to desire the freedom to believe and practice their faith of choice, with their family, as they desire, without government intrusion.”

His recent poll suggests that many practicing Christians are so disillusioned by both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump that they may not even vote. Barna estimated that as many as 104 million “people of faith” — and of those, roughly 32 million regular churchgoers — won’t show up at the polls. 

Trump tried to shore up his support among the faithful this week during a with conservative pastors, suggesting a failed assassination attempt against him in July was a sign. “God saved me for a purpose,” he said. Conservative leaders are counting on Christians to support their preferred candidates — up and down the ballot. 

Walters co-authored an earlier this year with Steve Deace, a conservative talk show host, and David Barton, whose organization teaches history from a Christian perspective. In grave terms, they urged Christians to vote for Trump if they want schools to embrace their values.

“Churches and community groups must transform into centers of evangelical activism, educating and equipping members to take a stand in this cultural and spiritual battle,” they wrote. “The election ahead is more than a political contest; it is our opportunity to affirm our commitment to our nation’s Judeo-Christian values.”

But that message doesn’t always grab voters, said Kendal Sachierri, a conservative Republican running for state Senate in Oklahoma and a former Spanish teacher. A Second Amendment advocate, she defeated an incumbent who to increase penalties for having a gun on school property. 

When she was going door-to-door during the primary, Sachierri said she talked to voters who were unhappy with public schools.

“But no one was like, ‘We need Bibles in the classroom,’ ” she said. When she taught at Newcastle High School, south of Oklahoma City, she had both English and Spanish versions of the Bible available for students. “Did I ever make a kid use it? No.”

‘Biblical foundation’

In local races this year, there have been signs that the public’s support for candidates who align with fundamentalist Christian groups is waning. School board hopefuls backed by Moms for Liberty haven’t fared nearly as well in primary races as they did two years ago when they earned school board seats across the country. 

The organization primarily advocates against lessons on gender and sexuality, but their summit last year also featured Tim Barton, David Barton’s son and Wallbuilders president. He preached that depends on rebuilding its “biblical foundation.” 

Whether Christian voters have tired of such rhetoric enough to stay home on Election Day is hard to forecast, said Michael Emerson, a religion and public policy researcher at Rice University. 

“Attempting to estimate who will vote and who will not is unreliable,” he said. “As we have seen in the past, especially with Trump, people often say they are not voting, or not voting for him, to pollsters, but then go ahead and vote for him.”

Christians, in fact, have an on elections, he said. 

That’s especially true in Texas, where frequently mix. In conservative communities, it’s almost expected that a candidate’s platform will include references to Christianity, said Calvin Jillison, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. 

“If you’re in a red district, you better be able to speak about these issues in a way that you know voters will respond,” he said. 

The state’s official calls for schools to require instruction from the Bible, and wealthy conservative donors have thrown their support behind candidates who espouse a “” in public schools. 

They include state school board candidate Brandon Hall, a political newcomer who wants to emulate Walters’s effort in Oklahoma to purchase classroom Bibles.

“This is amazing. Let’s do it in Texas!” he wrote on .

For Hall, who identified himself as a pastor in campaign documents but also works for a , promising to promote in schools was a winning strategy. He sailed past a 22-year incumbent in the March primary with over 53% of the vote in a Fort Worth-area district.

Since then, he’s been busy promoting the Texas Education Agency’s new K-5 reading curriculum that features Bible stories and emphasizes the evangelism of the nation’s founding. As �鶹��Ʒ first reported in May, critics say it doesn’t reflect the religious diversity of Texas students and borders on proselytizing. (Wallnau has on X to ask state board members to vote for it next month.)

“Why do liberals hate the new curriculum so much? Second graders will learn courage through the story of Queen Esther,” Hall in September after speaking to a community group about the program.

Hall didn’t respond to voicemails or messages on Facebook — and hasn’t participated in candidate interviews with .

“Maybe he’s not concerned,” considering the makeup of the board has shifted more in recent years, said Rayna Glaser, his Democratic opponent. 

But as she attends campaign events and house gatherings to meet voters, she’s hoping that Christians will consider what could happen if the public school curriculum becomes subsumed by theology. 

“We’ve got the Quran. We’ve got the Book of Mormon. Do you want Satan in there? Because I know you don’t want Satanism being taught in school,” she said. “As a Christian woman who believes in God and believes the Bible, I feel like if you open [schools] to one, you really have to open them to others.”

She’s been homeschooling her children for over a decade, participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the , and has used choice words like “indoctrination centers” to describe public schools. And then there’s the 2020 tweet she said the media won’t let her forget — the one in which she called for a of former President Barack Obama. 

In an interview with �鶹��Ʒ, Morrow, who has about her past tweets, downplayed the comments. “Did I say things in jest? Absolutely,” she said. The former nurse unexpectedly ousted Republican incumbent Catherine Truitt in the primary and now faces Maurice “Mo” Green, a former district superintendent, in the general election. She brushes off her as just “a political thing.” 

“That’s between adults,” she said. “That’s not what I think should be happening in our classrooms.”

Morrow isn’t the only Jan. 6 participant vying for office this November. for a , and an of the rally is running for the Texas House. But if elected, Morrow would become the only protester responsible for more than 2,700 schools and a $13 billion education budget.

She counts her nine years teaching science and Spanish for a homeschool co-op as her primary qualification for the job and said that after six years talking to parents and educators, she has a “clear understanding” of what voters are looking for in a state schools chief, starting with a strong focus on academics and character development. Green, meanwhile, is trumpeting his experience leading an education agency and advocating for increased education funding at a time when Republican lawmakers are . 

In interviews, Morrow espouses policies — like a scientific approach to and in math — that could bridge the partisan divide in a state with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled House and Senate. But her past actions and occasionally extreme language are alienating would-be allies.

“I’m fearful of the rhetoric,” said Marcus Brandon, who leads CarolinaCAN, part of a network of policy and advocacy groups that support school choice. He pushed for expansion of the state’s voucher program, and said while Morrow is “good for my issue on paper,” he thinks Green is more qualified. A former lawyer, Green led the Guilford County Schools, which includes Greensboro, for seven years.

“We need a strong public school system,” Brandon said. “Seventy-five percent of our kids are going to go there.” 

Following her surprise victory in the March primary, Morrow’s campaign attracted a from North Carolina’s business community. But she lags behind Green in fundraising. At the Green had over $578,000 on hand to Morrow’s $50,600. 

Whoever wins faces a system with critical challenges, like record-setting and flat funding. According to the Education Law Center’s most recent , North Carolina ranks 48th in per-student funding, almost $5,000 below the national average of $16,131. Morrow argues there’s already plenty of money for education and districts just need to “triage.” 

“We need someone who can lead us in a way that prioritizes students,” said Lauren Fox, senior director of policy and research at the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a think tank that supports public schools. She hopes the next superintendent will continue Truitt’s practice of appointing a at a time when teachers currently feel “ and that their voices aren’t being heard.” 

Green agrees and often the public that Morrow, during some of her Facebook live posts early in the pandemic, used words like “cesspool of evil and lies” to describe public schools. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, has made similar disparaging remarks, calling teachers “wicked people” in last year. 

“Our educators are being disrespected,” Green told �鶹��Ʒ. The state ranks 42nd in starting teacher pay, according to the latest National Education Association . “It’s especially challenging to bring folks into this really important profession when you’re not paying them well enough.” 

During his tenure, from 2008 to 2015, Guilford saw graduation rates climb nearly 10 percentage points to over 89% and rising scores on college entrance exam. 

Recruited to run by outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Green said he’s better positioned to press for state spending increases while helping districts adjust to tighter budgets as federal relief funds dry up. He took over the Guilford district at the start of the Great Recession and said one of his first tasks was to return money to the state so officials could balance the budget.

After leaving Guilford, Green led the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropy that funds of education, social and environmental causes. In Guilford, he supported charter schools and encouraged choice within the district. But he said, “We can’t have great choices in our public schools when you don’t provide even close to adequate resources for them.”

His point in a state where a group of poor districts sued in 1994 to get enough funding to provide students with a basic education. The foundation he led funded efforts to determine how much the state should provide for programs like pre-K and teacher preparation. The conservative state Supreme Court, however, is now deciding whether to overturn a 2022 opinion directing North Carolina to spend $800 million to improve education in the poorest parts of the state.

Green called the foundation “an organization that certainly tries to lift up marginalized communities.” 

But Morrow has seized on Green’s ties to the association to label him and extremist. She points to the organization’s financing of who push for reducing the presence of school resource officers to curb the school-to-prison pipeline.

She said she’s watching out for teachers by making student discipline the centerpiece of her platform. She cited showing almost 1,500 assaults by students on public school employees during the 2022-23 school year and attended a recent in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to address school safety. 

Morrow thinks she’s been by educators in the public system and insists she only decided to homeschool when her oldest daughter, who had learning disabilities, wasn’t making progress. 

“She was having math tutoring every day, and she still wasn’t learning math facts,” she said. 

She eventually homeschooled her other four children, but stressed that she doesn’t think all public schools are bad. As an example, she pointed to her local Wake County district’s . 

“This whole idea that because your children are not in public school, that means you hate public school — nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

Morrow described any past online vitriol as “rhetorical hyperbole” that wasn’t “bothering anybody” until the media focused on it.

But at a June conservative gathering called America Day, south of Greensboro, some of had a familiar ring. 

“The greatest threat to the constitutional Republic that we call home is the indoctrination happening in our public school system today,” she said. In other interviews, she has voiced to discussions of race and gender in the classroom.

Morrow said she holds a monthly Zoom meeting with teachers, but has twice to share the stage with her Democratic opponent. 

“She is running for office by running against the current system,” said Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. If Green wants to draw the spotlight away from her, Cooper said he must “raise the salience” of the office.

“The superintendent of public instruction is not, in normal circumstances, an office that voters know a lot about,” he said. And most statewide races “do not draw attention outside of the borders of North Carolina,” making this chief’s race unique. 

But ultimately, the outcome in a purple state will likely rest not on either candidate’s platform, he said, but on whether Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor, and former President Donald Trump prevail on election night.

“If Morrow does win,” he said, “it will likely be on the backs of a larger number of Republican wins in North Carolina.”

A history teacher and 2016 finalist for Oklahoma teacher of the year, he encouraged vigorous debates on pivotal moments like Roe v. Wade and, closer to home, the forced relocation of Native Americans known as the “Trail of Tears.”

During homecoming week, students gently mocked him on “Dress Like Ryan Walters Days,” sporting his signature slim-fitting suits, skinny ties and color combinations that didn’t always blend well. 

Life-size cut-outs of Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan in his classroom spoke to his conservative values. But if he was a firebrand, none could tell. 

“He made us feel validated. He never told us that we were wrong,” said Starla Edge, who had Walters for homeroom, history club and classes each year she was in school. Having come out as queer in eighth grade, she served as president of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance junior year. But she never felt shunned by her favorite teacher. “I got excited when he went into politics, because I thought, ‘This is my voice.’ ” 

Now Edge barely recognizes the man who was elected Oklahoma’s state superintendent last November. In selfie videos from his car, Walters denounces “woke ideology” and frequently of pushing a radical agenda based on atheism, racial justice and gender identity. In a series of provocative statements, he’s called the state’s teachers union a and dismissed the separation of church and state as a  

The relentless focus helped push the small-town teacher who never ran a school or a district into the national spotlight. In July, he spoke along with other conservative luminaries at a summit in Philadelphia held by the right-wing parent group,  a platform for several GOP presidential hopefuls.

To Edge and many of Walters’s former students and colleagues, the transformation is dizzying. 

“This is not the man that I knew for a large chunk of my life,” she said. 

To supporters in blood-red Oklahoma, however, it’s not Walters who’s changed, but the education system that’s gone off the rails.

“We want our teachers to teach … reading, writing and arithmetic,” said Wade Burleson, a retired Baptist minister who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year and met Walters on the campaign trail. Burleson also wants school prayer and to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom — key tenets of a Walters formed in June. He called the state chief “one of those rare individuals who will do exactly what he said he was going to do.” 

Walters declined interview requests from �鶹��Ʒ. But as the 38-year old builds his national profile, he’s coming under increasing scrutiny at home. Following his recent threats to take over the and a social media post that sparked bomb threats in a neighboring district, Democrats stepped up calls for his They cite investigations into his handling of COVID relief funds and a “pattern of inflammatory language.”

Even some Republicans think his rhetoric has gone too far. 

“This guy cares more about getting on than he does about doing his job,” said Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, who leads a House education subcommittee. “Someone has whispered in his ear that he could be governor or … secretary of education.”

Religious upbringing

Walters may not have set out to become a culture warrior, but his values and politics, like those of many in McAlester, reflect a deep religious upbringing.

Nestled between an Army munitions plant and a state prison, the former coal mining center some 91 miles south of Tulsa is a town of and more than .

His father was a and his mother worked at . Both remain active in the , where he is a minister and she is elementary education director. Like them, Walters attended Harding University, a conservative Christian college in Searcy, Arkansas. His brother and sister also attended.

In honoring him as an “outstanding young alumnus,” Walters, who is married and has four children under age 10, said he chose the school for its “Christian mission.”

Harding students take mandatory Bible classes and attend chapel daily. Its explicitly forbids same-sex relationships and maintains that “gender identity is given by God and revealed in one’s birth sex.”

It’s an atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the McAlester Walters returned to in 2011.

His eight-year tenure at the high school coincided with greater visibility by the LGBTQ community. In 2015, students at the high school founded a Gay-Straight Alliance. Based on from the Obama administration, the district also set aside a “family” restroom for transgender students to use. 

Brenda Calahan, a retired art teacher who served as the GSA’s first adviser, said many in the community didn’t welcome the developments.

“It was rough for those kids,” she said. 

Members of the wrestling team one of the club’s founding members, setting up a point system for everything from slashing his tires to killing him, said Debra McDaniel, his mother. He left soccer practice one day to find screws stuck in the tires of his car.

The principal at the time told Calahan to remove students’ LGBTQ-themed artwork from a display case near the front of the school. Some students petitioned the school board to disband the club, which still operates today.

Edge remembers overhearing a “few grumpy teachers” complain about the gender-neutral bathroom. Not Walters. Other staff members, she added, made crude references to the GSA, mocking it as “gay shits allowed.” But Walters, she said, “would have shut that down.”

‘There was no black or white’

That view is widely held among former students at McAlester, where Walters taught three Advanced Placement courses — U.S. history, world history and government — and also coached boys basketball and girls tennis.

Former students interviewed by �鶹��Ʒ admired his approachability and sense of fun. When Edge struggled to grasp the finer points of Islam during his AP World History class, for example, he offered to lend her his own copy of the Quran. For another class, he took students to McAlester City Hall, where they took over for the day, playing the roles of mayor and department heads. In a mock council meeting, they voted in favor of allowing residents to own a potbelly pig as a pet.

“When we got done, I was pushing that we needed to do it again,” said Mayor John Browne, a Democrat who is now roundly critical of Walters. “When I found out that he was going to be running [for superintendent], I thought, ‘He’ll be good.’ ” 

During classroom debates — with desks pushed to either side of class — Walters critiqued each side’s argument and expected students to back up their claims with evidence.

Shane Hood, another former student, remembers a classroom discussion of the Indian Removal Act, which President Andrew Jackson signed in 1830. Students split over whether the law was racially motivated and unjust or actually benefited Native Amerians. While giving students their say, Hood said, Walters held firmly that white expansionism caused the suffering and death of tribes as they traveled 1,200 miles to what would later become Oklahoma.

“He was much more nuanced,” said Hood, who, like Edge, took all three of Walters’s AP courses. He now attends Oklahoma State University in Stillwater and credits Walters with inspiring him to study political science. “In his classroom, there was no black and white. It was all shades of gray. Now it’s, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’”

That reticence in the classroom stood out in a town where 74% of voters chose former President Donald Trump in 2016. Some teachers, Hood remembers, wore MAGA hats in the classroom and let student slurs like “libtard” go unchallenged. But not Walters. Some students even questioned if he was a “closeted Democrat,” Edge said.

Tennis and politics

If his students were ignorant of Walters’s private views, that was intentional, according to those who know him. “No one knew if he was a Democrat or a Republican, and that’s why they loved him so much,” said Chad Waller, a friend and former head coach of the girls tennis team.

After tournaments, Waller remembers the young educator grading papers past midnight. Walters, he said, gets a “bad rap.”

“The man eats, sleeps and breathes education,” he said.

But it was tennis that paved the way for his friend’s foray into politics.

In 2018, Kevin Stitt, a mortgage company owner, became the GOP nominee for governor. At a tennis tournament that year, Walters met Stitt, who was cheering on his .

“We kind of struck up a friendship,” in the Harding alumni video. After his victory, Stitt invited him to be part of an education working group that advised the incoming administration. 

That year, Walters got busy shoring up his conservative bona fides. With no visible prior record of writing for national publications, he gave full-throated voice to views he’d long kept out of the classroom. In for The Federalist, an influential conservative journal known for its vetting of federal judicial nominees, he warned of “runaway district courts” that would “undermine the will of the people.” Foreshadowing some of his future positions, he criticized the establishing a right to gay marriage, saying it demonstrates why justices shouldn’t have final say on constitutional matters.

A year later, he landed a job running Oklahoma Achieves, the education arm of the State Chamber, a commerce organization that, like Stitt, supports school choice. more than doubled his teacher’s salary. As superintendent, he makes over $124,000.

His rise did not go unnoticed. 

“This random, unknown, fresh-faced teacher from McAlester all of a sudden popped into the State Chamber spotlight,” said Erika Wright, founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, a nonprofit that opposes private school choice. “That is the moment where I first questioned ‘Who is this guy, and what’s the bigger plan?’ ”

‘Isn’t that a woke idea?’

At the time, those with more left-leaning views said they could still find common ground with Walters.

In 2019, Rep. Jacob Rosecrants of Norman, a Democrat and former Oklahoma City Schools teacher, began drafting to preserve a “play-based” teaching approach in early-childhood classrooms. He and Walters agreed on the value of recess and hands-on learning.

“He didn’t spout the far-right talking points he does now,” Rosecrants said. Progress on the bill stalled in 2020, and by the time they spoke of it again the following year, Stitt had appointed Walters as his education secretary. 

This time, Walters seemed skeptical. “I could hear his tone change, and he began to ask questions … like, ‘Isn’t that a woke idea?’ or ‘How is this not indoctrination?’ ” Rosecrants said. “Why? Because the words ‘social and emotional learning’ were in my bill.” 

What happened? The pandemic, for one. The long closures that followed lockdowns in March 2020 mobilized parents, particularly those on the right. School board meetings became battlegrounds over decisions to keep schools closed and kids tied to their laptops. The timing coincided with a right-wing backlash over many aspects of classroom life. Many parents began demanding restrictions on everything from library books on gender and sexual issues to the teaching of racial discrimination in U.S. history. 

Social-emotional learning — a decades-old practice associated with teaching kids resilience, empathy and self-control — got caught up in the fight. Some conservatives criticized its  and called it “l” and “too intrusive.”

Oklahoma was not immune. In 2021, it became one of the first states in the country to pass a law prohibiting teachers from offering lessons that suggest students should feel guilt or anguish because of their race. The following year, Stitt signed the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which forbids transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

With his young daughter Violet smiling and giving a thumbs up beside him, Walters made one of his earliest to celebrate the law’s passage. “We are not going to fall prey to the far left,” he said.

Making the culture war personal

His November election as state superintendent allowed him to step outside Stitt’s shadow. Many hoped taking control of the department of education would mark a turn to more substantive matters, particularly in a state that saw in student performance nationally following the pandemic.

But if anything, Walters doubled down on his rhetoric.

He a teacher’s license after she protested the state’s divisive concepts law by giving students a link to banned books from the Brooklyn Public Library. She later resigned and is for defamation. More recently, he pressured the Western Heights district to who performs as a drag queen on nights and weekends and launched an into its hiring practices. 

While other GOP education chiefs occasionally wade into the culture wars, Walters spends most of his time there. He’s established a “granular-level focus” on specific districts, and that makes his sharp rhetoric seem personal, said Deven Carlson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma.

In with conservative talk show host Steve Deace, Walters acknowledged taking the host’s advice to make his campaign “a referendum on groomers.” Typically used to describe sexual predators, the term is often employed by conservatives to describe anyone who supports LGBTQ inclusion — potentially minimizing real threats of child sexual abuse, experts say, while demonizing non-heterosexuals.

In May, he portraying teachers unions as a threat to children’s safety because of their liberal views on LGBTQ issues. 

For Walters, the fight is existential. “The forces that you all are fighting … want to destroy our society,” he said at the recent Moms for Liberty event in Philadelphia. “They want to destroy your family, and they want to destroy America as we know it.”

‘Let’s not tie it to skin color’

The rhetoric has many in McAlester wondering how well they actually knew the man who taught and coached their children for so many years.

Stacy Gorley Williams said her son, Vinny, who played small forward for McAlester High’s basketball team, thought Walters “walked on water.”

Walters’s wife Katie, a therapist, worked for Williams at a nonprofit providing mental health services, and the two often sat together during games. Williams, who chairs the county’s Democratic party and was a charter member of a local LGBTQ advocacy group, said if Walters had given her the impression that he was biased, she wouldn’t have let Vinny play for him.

“I have zero tolerance for people who don’t accept diversity,” she said. 

The questions only compound when it comes to Walters’s handling of his area of expertise: U.S. history.

In July, during a Republican meeting at a library in Norman, he appeared to suggest that one of the most shameful events in the state’s history, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, was not racially motivated. A white mob destroyed the thriving Black business district of Greenwood. The violence led to the deaths of an estimated 300 Black people, an episode that was suppressed in Oklahoma for decades. 

An audience member suggested the state’s divisive concepts law put teachers in a tough spot: How can they discuss the Tulsa massacre without running afoul of its tricky requirement to shield students from distress?

As a teacher, Walters served that in 2018 confirmed the episode’s place in state , calling it one of many examples of “rising racial tensions” in the 20th century. At the Norman meeting, he insisted the massacre should be taught, but through the lens of individual responsibility. 

“Let’s not tie it to skin color,” he said.

He later called the violence “racist” and “evil,” and said the media twisted his words.

Remembering how skillfully Walters handled the lesson on the Trail of Tears, not flinching from its racial dimensions, Hood, his former student, often wonders if Walters believes what he says.

“It’s too much of a transformation in my opinion to be natural,” he said.

Ryan Walters is not who you think he is.

Branding and performing

For his part, Walters rejects the notion that he’s changed. Responding to a debate question , he said, “The reality is my students didn’t know what my political background was.”

“I didn’t tell them what to think,” he said of his time in the classroom. “I challenged them to think.”

Regardless of his actual views, many of them — like his support for funding a religious charter school with public funds — go down well in a state where two-thirds of Republican voters favor candidates who talk about God and Christianity, according to a poll last fall. 

Some see his tactics, like the car videos and steady stream of audacious statements, as elements of brand building and securing a base — perhaps in anticipation of a  gubernatorial run when Stitt leaves office in 2026.

“He’s very ambitious, and I think that’s what took over,” said Rosecrants, the Democratic representative. “It leads me to believe that all of this is for a bigger purpose.”

Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, compared Walters to another high-profile state leader with national aspirations — Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Last year, Newsom paid for in seven red states promoting California as a sanctuary for those seeking an abortion.

“For an elected chief in blue and red states, unfortunately, the incentives are there to become a performer,” Hess said. “Walters is responding to the incentives, no matter how unhealthy they may be.”

But with his star on the rise, Walters faces at home. The state ethics commission fined him for failing to report campaign contributions, including one from the conservative 1776 Project PAC. And two audits criticized of a federally funded program to help poor families while he was secretary of education. Over $650,000 in federal relief funds went toward TVs, arcade games and furniture instead of curriculum and tutoring. The Republican state auditor’s office and the FBI are also .

In a podcast with 1776 Project PAC founder Ryan Girdusky,  the attacks against him “absurd.” Dan Isett, department spokesman, said the Democrats’ calls for an “represent a direct threat to our democracy.”

Supporters say outrage from the left proves he’s been effective. “This is a man of principle. Has he made mistakes? Possibly,” said Burleson, the retired minister. “But when you are attacked by people unjustly, there’s a tendency to come out strong.” 

Confrontation in Tulsa

This summer, he took his most aggressive stance yet against Oklahoma’s largest school system, the 33,000-student Tulsa district, and its former leader Deborah Gist.

He threatened a state takeover after Tulsa officials reprimanded a Moms for Liberty-backed board member who He later accused Gist of failure to disclose how much the district was spending on , which she’d described as a ”closely-held core value.”

To prevent the hostile action, she Aug. 22. The state board accredited the district, but “with deficiencies,” noting low academic performance and poor financial oversight. fell even more than . But students in the state’s second-largest district, Oklahoma City, lost just as much ground in math, and rank lower than Tulsa overall. 

The intensity of the fight worries observers in other districts, who see in Tulsa a harbinger of where the growing toxicity in education might lead nationally. “We’re now seeing partisan politics become retaliatory politics,” said Susan Enfield, superintendent of the Washoe County schools in Reno, Nevada. “This is ego-driven, reckless leadership.”

As the state board deliberated the Tulsa district’s future, events at the nearby Union Public Schools demonstrated how incendiary Oklahoma’s education politics had become. The district received bomb threats six days in a row after Walters from a far-right account featuring a local elementary school librarian. The threats continued well into September.

The librarian’s original TikTok video seemed to poke fun at Walters, saying her “radical liberal agenda is teaching kids to love books and be kind.” 

Walters, who once got a kick out of reading his about his tight pants and patchy beard, apparently didn’t see the humor.

“Woke ideology is real and I am here to stop it,” he wrote.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation has provided financial support to Every Kids Counts Oklahoma and its predecessor Oklahoma Achieves, and currently provides support to �鶹��Ʒ. Ryan Walters led both state advocacy groups.

New Kansas State Board of Education members say they will prioritize parental oversight in schools across Kansas.

Ahead of the election, the 10-seat board had six Republican and four Democratic members. With Republicans taking all five seats on the ballot in the November election, the BOE will shift further to the right. Republicans will have seven seats on the BOE with Democrats filling the other three seats.

Each member serves a four-year term. Even-numbered districts have elections during presidential election years, and odd-numbered districts are up for a vote during midterm election years. The board sets curriculum standards and graduation requirements for schools.

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The BOE has been the center of fierce debates over critical race theory, gender and sexuality curriculum, and other hot-button education topics around national trends of book bans and discussion of appropriate classroom material.

Three out of the five districts on the general election ballot elected Republicans who ran unopposed. District 1 and District 3 were the only competitive BOE races in 2022.

District 1 covers areas in Atchinson, Douglas, Leavenworth and Shawnee, among other school districts. In District 1, Republican Danny Zeck took 62% of the vote, beating Democrat Jeffrey Howards for the seat.

Zeck, like his fellow Republicans, platformed on parental authority, saying schools needed to be more transparent and that parents should be allowed to fully direct their children’s curricula.

“It is time to stop the Washington Liberal Standards from dictating values that do not fit Kansas Education. We must put Parents In Charge of their child’s Education,” Zeck’s campaign page read.

District 3 covers parts of Johnson County, including schools in Overland Park, Olathe and Gardner. In District 3, incumbent Republican Michelle Dombrosky faced Sheila Albers, a Democrat from Overland Park. Albers campaigned on addressing the teachers shortage and improving education, while Dombrosky focused on parental authority.

Dombrosky was returned to office in a tight race, getting 60,315 votes to Albers’ 54,247 votes. Dombrosky’s campaign page states her belief in parents’ “unalienable, uninfringeable authority to direct the education of their child.”

Out of the unopposed districts, Republican Cathy Hopkins took the District 5 seat. Hopkins has said before that she supports parental rights and wants to keep politics out of the classroom.

Republican Dennis Hershberger, elected to District 7 unopposed, also is a proponent of parental authority and campaigned with a “faith, family and freedom” slogan. Incumbent Republican Jim Porter was reelected in District 9.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on and .

All six of his endorsed candidates, who advanced from an August primary to runoffs in the general election, won their races, according to unofficial results. That means that of the 30 candidates the governor supported this year, 25 won.

Three of the candidates are incumbents who won re-election— Stephanie Busin in Hendry County, Jacqueline Rosario in Indian River County and Jamie Haynes in Volusia County. Three more captured open seats — Sam Fisher in Lee County, Cindy Spray in Manatee County and Al Hernandez in Pasco County.

Hernandez was from the ballot when a circuit court judge ruled that he didn’t live in the region he sought to represent when he qualified. But his appeal to a district court was successful, with a three-judge panel ruling that he had . 

DeSantis has held considerable sway over school board politics this year, not just endorsing candidates but also members. Those concerned about the direction conservative board members are taking schools oppose his involvement, while others who want greater say in their children’s education support the shift.

“That is our mission and the reason we endorse,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative advocacy group. Ballots, she said, should identify the party affiliation of board candidates. “It gives voters more information to work with. A more informed voter makes better decisions.”

But critics say the movement benefits parties more than students. 

“The only letters that a school board member should have after their name is EE — for education and equity,” said Joaquin Guerra, political director for the Campaign for Our Shared Future Action Fund, which organized to counteract efforts by groups such as Moms for Liberty. “We have enough politics in our lives.”

Alicia Farrant, who won election to the Orange County school board, was among the candidates Moms for Liberty endorsed. Her victory over Michael Daniels, a college administrator whose wife teaches in the Orange County schools, “means that we need to do a better job of engaging families in Florida and educating them about the importance of school board elections,” Guerra said.

Some experts say it’s a matter of time before the offices become officially partisan, not just in Florida, but other states as well. Moms for Liberty endorsed 270 candidates nationally, including 45 in California and 50 in South Carolina. Another group that works to elect conservative school board members, 1776 Project PAC, also endorsed candidates in multiple states. But ultimately, the results .

For years now, elections for judges, school board members and city council members have been nonpartisan “in name only,” said Susan MacManus, a politician science professor at the University of South Florida. “The partisan affiliation of the candidates has been laid bare for all to see.”