Oklahoma tries “normal” after Walters-era education turmoil

Oklahoma tries – Oklahoma’s new superintendent of public instruction, Lindel Fields, is trying to reset the tone of public education after Ryan Walters’ 33-month tenure triggered lawsuits, revocations, and fear across classrooms. With an election for superintendent looming on

OKLAHOMA CITY — Lindel Fields talks about public education the way some people talk about foundations: quietly, almost stubbornly, like the work won’t get applause.

In a state education office conference room where his office was under renovation. the superintendent of public instruction leaned into the idea that the most important work can look boring. He described his job as “building a foundation” for a strong public education system. adding. “And the foundation of a house isn’t sexy. right?”.

The hoped-for payoff is simple on paper: improved literacy scores. school districts that adequately support and retain teachers. and a public that “will forget who built the foundation.” For many educators in Oklahoma. the desire to forget is itself a measure of how disruptive the previous leadership became.

Fields took over after Ryan Walters stepped down as state superintendent last September after 33 months. Walters, who had a falling out with Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and riled state board of education members. left to lead the Teachers Freedom Alliance. formed by the conservative activist Freedom Foundation to challenge existing teachers’ unions. Stitt appointed Fields. The new superintendent is finishing Walters’ term and is not running for the position in November. an election considered key to Oklahoma’s educational future.

Under Walters, the fight over classrooms spilled far beyond policy memos. His MAGA-style edicts included calling for Bibles in classrooms. book bans. anti-diversity measures. and ideological tests for teachers coming from blue states. The changes drew national attention, spurred lawsuits and protests, and plunged Oklahoma public education into chaos. Through a spokesperson, Walters declined to be interviewed or respond to a list of detailed questions.

Educators say the damage wasn’t just legal—it lived in daily nerves. “People still experience some PTSD. ” said April Grace. a former school superintendent and member of the Choctaw Nation who in 2022 lost to Walters in the Republican primary for state superintendent. During Walters’ tenure, Grace said, “there was a lot of fear.” People were “concerned about being targeted.”.

The question now is whether Oklahoma can make public education “normal” again.

Across the country, schools have increasingly become ideological battlegrounds. Amid efforts to address foundering academic achievement. some say the flood of extremist laws. orders. and policies pulls attention away from the work of reading. math. and instruction. Grace put Oklahoma’s priorities in plain terms: “We needed to be about the business of literacy and math and career education.”.

Oklahoma, she said, ranks near bottom in national test scores for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math. “We just kind of wasted 2 1/2 years,” Grace added. “And we didn’t have 2 1/2 years to waste.”

That kind of time loss has a price that goes beyond test results. John Rogers. director of the Institute for Democracy. Education. and Access at the University of California. Los Angeles. and colleagues tallied direct expenses of responding to “culturally divisive conflict. ” including increased security. communications. and consultants. Their figures found the cost reached some $3.2 billion across the U.S. during the 2023-24 school year. They also reported “lots of time and energy being taken up. ” with superintendents saying it detracted from work on school improvement and educational advancement.

Oklahoma’s turmoil is not unique. State legislatures remain crowded with bills that shape what students learn. what teachers can say. and even how pronouns are used for students. Utah passed a law requiring Bible passages be taught in social studies starting in third grade. In Texas. the Board of Education moved to create a list of mandatory books all schools must teach beginning in 2030 that includes Bible materials. A U.S. appeals court recently ruled that Texas can require schools to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms. A similar law was upheld in Louisiana, but recently struck down in Arkansas.

California, among others, has also jumped into the conflict. The Supreme Court recently blocked California’s law banning automatic parental notification if a student changes pronouns or gender expression at school. At the federal level, Congress continues to debate “parental rights” bills around student gender expression, and the U.S. Department of Education recently affirmed the “right to pray” in public school.

In Oklahoma, Walters’ style of governance made ordinary school governance feel unpredictable. Kate C. White. whose firm provides counsel for the Oklahoma Education Association. the largest state teachers union. described the mood during Walters’ tenure: “It was chaos. ” she said. “Paranoia is the perfect way to say it.”.

Regan Killackey. an English teacher at Edmond Memorial High School in Edmond. remembered what happened after a law forbidding instruction around “divisive concepts” on race and gender. His district told teachers “to refrain from or try to avoid using terms of diversity and white privilege in class.” But Killackey’s course depends on it. “That’s, like, half my curriculum in Advanced Placement Language and Composition,” he said.

Under his teaching approach, students are asked to consider identity and bias directly: “your own identity, your own hidden biases” as they craft strong arguments.

White said the atmosphere shifted under Fields. “Now, there’s an open line of communication,” she said. “We can talk about the issues.” Whether that continues after the election remains uncertain.

Seven Republicans and two Democrats, representing a broad political spectrum, are running for the post, with primaries June 16. With Republicans dominating the state, the June election is likely to be decisive. Deven Carlson. a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma who studies education policy and politics. said the vote is consequential because it is about both academics and leadership style: are candidates “going to do anything about” Oklahoma’s poor academic performance. and “are we going to do anything about that?”.

Carson also framed it as tone. “Do we want a combative Ryan Walters-esque kind of state leadership around public education. ” he asked. “or do we want a more. you know. Lindel Fields. quieter. the kind of traditional state department of ed where if anyone knows the name of the state superintendent it’s surprising?”.

Fields is Republican and religious—he is Catholic—but he also describes how Walters’ approach collided with his own concerns. As a dad to a grade-schooler and a retired superintendent-turned-education consultant, Fields said he struggled with Walters’ dictums. “I’m like. gosh. this doesn’t feel right. ” he said. pointing to the state’s poor test scores and attacks on educators. particularly in Tulsa where he lives.

His first moves after being sworn in last Oct. 7 centered on undoing actions Walters had taken. Fields rescinded mandates for Bible instruction in schools and the requirement that there be a Bible in every classroom. The mandate originally favored two Bibles endorsed by Donald Trump and his family. Walters attempted to purchase 55,000 of them for the state until the criteria were changed. Walters had requested $3 million for Bible purchases, but Fields said the state spent $25,000. The Bibles now sit in a basement storage room.

Fields said he recognizes that “Oklahomans love their Bibles,” and argued that there are plenty of opportunities to access religious instruction outside of public schools.

He also halted Walters’ social studies curriculum. The state Supreme Court struck down the standards and called for new ones. While the social studies requirement was rejected, the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism—created by Walters to protect the right to pray in school—still exists.

For Fields, the clearest break from Walters may be about atmosphere. He said his goal was to “set a tone of decorum.” Whereas Walters reminded some critics of Voldemort—the dark wizard in “Harry Potter”—Fields described a different style. He said he tells staff. “If you wouldn’t say it to your neighbor’s sixth grader. don’t say it. right?” and shifted the Department of Education’s focus from compliance to. he said. declaring “that we are a customer service organization.”.

Educators describe the practical effect of that shift as relief from fear, animosity, and surveillance. During Walters, teachers whose licenses were targeted for revocation felt the brunt of a system that treated allegations like a constant threat.

One case that drew national attention involved Summer Boismier, a Norman high school English teacher. After she shared with her students a link to the Books Unbanned project at the Brooklyn Public Library. the state revoked her license. The state argued she violated H.B. 1775, the state law that restricts teaching about “divisive concepts” around race, gender, and history. Boismier has filed a federal lawsuit.

H.B. 1775 has faced legal challenges. Versions of the law have been adopted by more than a dozen states. A U.S. district court in 2024 blocked some aspects of it, citing vague language. The Oklahoma Supreme Court last year ruled it did not apply to higher education. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver heard arguments in March and is expected to rule soon.

Even before courts weighed in, Walters raised the stakes around compliance by encouraging anonymous write-ups of teachers through the “Awareity” reporting system. Awareity was created in 2022 to field concerns about school safety and bullying.

“Walters was a bully. He didn’t care about due process,” said Joe E. White Jr., a lawyer who also represents the teachers union. “He didn’t care about what a person went through to become a teacher.”

White said his office, which typically handles one teacher certification case a year, juggled 30 during Walters’ tenure. “It was all hands on deck,” he said. “We were moving trials down in district court to accommodate all these hearings we were having in the state Department of Education.”

Killackey’s case reflects what that pressure looked like up close. He learned just before the 2024-25 school year that the state was seeking to revoke his teaching license. He also became a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging H.B. 1775, which he believes made him a Walters target.

According to the Oklahoma State Board of Education administrative complaint. the department got a tip on July 17. 2024. about an Instagram post from 2019—nearly five years old—that “depicted Killackey and members of his family fictitiously stabbing fake presidential candidate Trump.” The photo. taken in a Halloween store. shows Killackey with a shocked expression as fake samurai swords surround a Trump mask.

Killackey’s daughter Scout, valedictorian of her high school class, said it was her idea to don the Trump mask “as a joke” to scare her Dad and brother during their annual goofball Halloween store outing.

The case was dropped in August 2025. just before the start of this school year. but Killackey feared his career was over. On April 27. he filed a federal lawsuit against the state. the Department of Education and the state board—as well as Walters himself—alleging defamation. abuse of process. and emotional distress.

Kate C. White, who represents Killackey, said threats to teachers’ livelihoods have been wrenching. She hopes whoever is elected can continue what Fields is doing. “Teachers want to go to school. They want to trust their administration, and administrators and the teachers want to trust the state Department of Education.”.

Trust is hard to come by, and not just in Oklahoma.

According to the 2026 iCivics Teacher Survey of 2,197 K-12 teachers, 52.7 percent said teaching civics concepts now feels difficult, and 58.7 percent fear backlash for teaching something the “wrong way.”

Oklahoma may be 72 percent white and predominantly evangelical Christian. but it has significant Native and Black populations whose history includes devastating attacks by white Americans. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed a thriving Black community known as “Black Wall Street” after state officials and law enforcement failed to intervene. Before statehood, Native people were driven from their lands. In the 1920s, whites killed Osage Nation members for their oil wealth.

In Millwood High School. located in the predominantly Black Millwood school district in Oklahoma City. English teacher Anthony Crawford said he feels compelled to choose literature that speaks to students. “We’re doing ‘Othello. ’ which is the only black character in Shakespeare. ” he said as students strode into his AP English classroom on a weekday this spring. “So, I chose this book for obvious reasons.”.

In class. along with one that followed in which students discussed George Orwell’s “1984”—a book frequently banned in schools—Crawford moved among desks in track pants and sneakers. with what students described as a provocative intensity. Students even spoke over one another in eagerness to contribute.

Crawford pressed them on jealousy and on the crude. racist language the character Iago and others use to refer to Othello. “Hey. do you all see the correlation between how they use propaganda to paint a certain image of Othello. ” he asked. “and how they paint certain images of Black men in today’s society?”.

Crawford, who is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging H.B. 1775, said he does not purposefully flout rules. As a father of two, he said, if asked to limit what he says, he will because he needs his job. But he also wants to raise issues that resonate with his students.

“Black and brown kids need to understand society and the things that are already working against them in society,” he said.

A dozen students who gathered for an after-class interview said Crawford’s class was one of the few that engaged them. David Salas. an 18-year-old senior. said Crawford “opens our minds to reality. and he doesn’t keep our eyes and ears closed.” Some teachers. Salas said. can seem too careful—“like they are scared to lose their job.”.

Educators around Oklahoma may be taking a breath, but few are fully relaxing. Fields is not a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction. With the next leadership uncertain, the fear is that the tone could shift again.

Polling underscores how close the race is. Sixty one percent of likely Republican voters were undecided as of May 14. and no candidate had a meaningful lead. according to polling by Pat McFerron. a Republican political consultant in Oklahoma. Among the candidates is state Rep. Toni Hasenbeck, a Republican who recently sponsored a bill mandating time in school for prayer and reading religious texts.

Hasenbeck has pushed hardball. She sought to disqualify another candidate, Republican Sen. Adam Pugh, contending that he was ineligible to run for technical reasons. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled in April that Pugh could stay on the ballot.

Pugh. a former Air Force officer and chair of the state Senate Education Committee. is pitching “practical. student-focused education reform” and “NO DRAMA. ONLY SOLUTIONS.” Carlson said Pugh is “more of a successor to Lindel Fields” while Hasenbeck is “probably more on the Ryan Walters side of things.”.

Another Republican candidate, John Cox, a rural superintendent, is vowing to “Make Education Great Again” in the state. Robert Franklin, also a Republican, is a veteran Tulsa educator whose tagline is “44 years in education. Not one day in politics.” The two Democrats running are Craig McVay. a former district superintendent who vows to “undo the disgraceful legacy of Ryan Walters. ” and Jennettie Marshall. a pastor and former member of the Tulsa Board of Education.

For people who fought Walters’ mandates, “normal” sounds both tempting and fragile. Erika Wright. director of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and community education organizer with Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. said some people think they can get back to normal because Walters is gone. But, she warned, “we are in a very precarious time.”.

Wright was speaking as she helped her teens, Charlie and Vivienne, pack lunches and get ready for school. The family lives in a stylish, airy home they built during Covid in rural Noble, where Wright grew up. Her children were plaintiffs in the lawsuit opposing Walters’ Bible mandates before Fields’ repeal made the case moot.

Wright said she is Republican and religious and that her community is, too. But she also said people thanked her for opposing the mandate. “It’s just not the government’s business to teach my kids religion. That’s a family’s job,” she said.

Now she is part of a “Better Outcomes for Oklahoma Kids” effort. focusing on issues like improving student performance. limiting class size. increasing teacher pay and support. getting more resources for mental health. and providing free meals for all students. She urged moderate Republicans to vote in the June primary and said independents “might want to rethink” being independent because they are ineligible to vote in the Republican primary. She added that low turnouts mean outcomes are decided by few votes.

The stakes go beyond the superintendent’s office because Walters’ supporters remain organized. Christian hard-right fundraisers who favor a Walters-style candidate remain involved. As Wright put it: “The people who got him elected are still here.”

Oklahoma education Lindel Fields Ryan Walters H.B. 1775 teachers unions Bible in classrooms book bans school politics teacher license revocation literacy scores Oklahoma superintendent election