Auditions are over. The cast is being assembled. Will Ryan Walters get the call?
Over the last year, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction showed up for every casting call. Recited every line he dreamed would please the director.
Now he waits to see if he gets the part … as executioner of the U.S. Department of Education.
Only in a Donald Trump production would someone with Walters’ scant resume and sketchy managerial record be considered for an appointment as education secretary.
How Walters went from state teacher of the year finalist to state superintendent to candidate for presidential appointment to possibly presiding over the demolition of the federal education agency still baffles many who worked with him at McAlester High School.
Yet, it may be as simple as this: unbridled ambition.
Perhaps he was easily smitten when deep-pocketed anti-public ed forces saw qualities in him that could be useful to their ultimate goal of turning America’s public schools into for profit and/or religious endeavors. So, they bankrolled his rise to statewide office – giving him a platform from which to raise his profile nationally through uber-right media and events – and he poured himself into Trump’s bid to reclaim the White House.
Who knows if he’s done enough? Trump is nothing if not mercurial. Walters may have said all the right things yet lose out to a shiny new object the of the president-elect’s affection. Or perhaps Trump took offense at Walters’ decision to cancel the search for vendors who could supply 55,000 Trump Bibles for Oklahoma classrooms [though subsequently he apparently skirted state purchasing processes by ordering 500 for use in Advanced Placement classes at a cost to taxpayers of $25,000].
Still, if Walters doesn’t get the part, it won’t be for a lack of trying.
Two days after Trump’s victory, Walters sent a memo to parents and local school superintendents, declaring the State Department of Education would do everything in its power to fulfill Trump’s goal of dismantling the federal education agency.
“The federal government has hijacked our education system,” Walters wrote with typical bombast, “using taxpayer dollars to impose harmful policies and control what is taught in our schools.”
He cited “five major areas where eliminating the U.S. Department of Education [USDE] and moving to block grants would restore authority to states, allowing communities – not Washington bureaucrats – to decide what is best for their children.”
To support his claims, he recited his usual demagoguery about rampant wokeism and anti-American indoctrination in classrooms. Blah, blah, blah.
Then, last week, Walters unveiled plans for an Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism at the state ed department.
“For decades our nation’s public schools have tragically been ground zero for the erosion of religious liberty across our country,” Walters said. “The radical left never misses a chance to co- opt the teacher unions and their minions to indoctrinate our children against traditional values of faith and family, seeking to attack any display of faith or religion or patriotism.
“It is no coincidence that the dismantling of faith and family values in public schools directly correlates with declining academic outcomes in our public schools. In Oklahoma, we are reversing this negative trend and, working with the incoming Trump Administration, we are going to aggressively pursue education policies that will improve academic outcomes and give our children a better future.”
Walters’ sycophancy may yield a White House appointment – but at a terrible cost to Oklahoma school kids impacted by his mismanagement of the state education agency and his specious, but withering attacks on public schools.
