We all know of and despise Ryan Walters, the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Oklahoma. He’s a Christo-Fascist of the worst kind who has been striving to destroy public education in his state.
He has tried to purchase Trump Bibles for public schools, eventually settling for sending a few hundred to AP Government teachers who don’t need them.
He rewrote the social studies standards to indoctrinate children with revisionist pro-Christian mythology, got the state’s Board of Education to approve those standards without telling them he made additional changes, got sued over it, and got blocked from implementing those standards by the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
He used public money to fund a religious charter school, a decision the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court later voted not to overturn that decision.
Despite a statewide teacher shortage, he said that teachers transferring from blue states like California had to take a special “America First” test to gauge their level of patriotism. The whole charade was just a publicity stunt for the right-wing group PragerU.
He sued an atheist group for warning public schools that they needed to follow the law and not allow staffers to push religion on kids. A judge dismissed that frivolous lawsuit with a blistering takedown of his pathetic arguments.
He also tried forcing teachers to make the Bible part of their curriculum, tried to put Christian chaplains in public schools, tried to mandate displays of the Ten Commandments in those schools, claimed the Tulsa Race Massacre had nothing to do with race, falsely insisted that President Joe Biden wanted “to destroy our Christian faith,” formed a faith committee to examine prayer in public schools, appointed the troll who runs Libs of TikTok to a statewide library advisory board, and sent out a “sample prayer” for teachers to use for the people of Israel (and definitely not the innocent people living in Gaza).
He pissed off Republicans in his own party, too. They said he was withholding $150 million for security enhancements that had already been allocated to public schools, hiding information about how he spent taxpayer dollars for his office’s travel budget, failing to fulfill open records requests in a timely manner, and refusing to spend money that he was legally obligated to spend on asthma inhalers for students. (Alas, there were not enough votes to impeach him.)
…
Just this week, he announced that every high school in the state would have a chapter of Turning Point USA in honor of Charlie Kirk, even though Walters has no actual ability to force schools to launch extracurricular groups and even though high school students already have the ability to start their own chapters if they want to.
But wait, I said this was good news. It is! Ryan Walters is resigning!
Walters, 40, said Wednesday night on Fox News that he is stepping down as state superintendent of public instruction to become the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit that says it assists educators “in their mission to develop free, moral, and upright American citizens.”
“We’re going to destroy the teachers unions,” Walters said on Fox. “We have seen the teachers unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools.”
It is fitting that he is stepping down to join a fanatical, conservative, anti-teacher organization. May he wither away in his new bubble of contempt and hatred for education — it’s where he belongs.
Now the big question: will he be replaced by someone sane? It’s Oklahoma, so probably not.
He’s probably just disappointed because he didn’t get raptured the other day.
I’d want to suggest that every state has somebody like this. They may not be famous enough to be noticed yet, and they may not have had the power (compliance) to implement the agenda items (particularly ‘blue’ states or counties), but they’re there in every state, all just like him in their goals and practices, their hypocrisy and their utter corruption, and all trying to find supporters in order to get the power to implement this agenda of destroying public education.
Uh the article about his resignation doesn’t say why (the REAL reason why, that is).
Seems he got caught in a meeting with porn images running on an office TV…
…and it wasn’t the first time.
Why do they even care?
Compared to everything else he has done or tried, that is a minor event.
I’m also sure that the other Oklahoma officials also have…porn running on their TVs, internet computers, and phones.
The 3 sacraments of fundie xianity are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
They are very good at all three of these.
Contrary to what j morales thinks, there is a superabundance of these xtian terrorists infecting our society. When caught in their bs they are shuffled around but, like cockroaches, they are never really gone. Prime example, catholic cult child molesting priests moved around and hidden but almost never punished.
Oklahoma rates 50th out of 51 states and territories in education.
You can easily tell that Ryan Waters could not care less and did nothing to improve that ranking.
I always wonder if the residents of Red states ever get tired of being poor, backwards, sick, and ignorant.
Red states have significantly lower life expectancies than Blue states. The difference can be as much as 6 years.
Maybe, who knows? I’ve never seen it. They voted in Trump after all and look how that is working out.
Hey, raven @6, i’m sure oklahoma is proud it is 50 out of 51; almost the top of the pile. What they will never admit is, it’s a Pile of xtian terror Crap.
@3
About that:
Oklahoma’s big “TV nudes” scandal was… a Jackie Chan movie on a Samsung streaming service
So basically, it was a nothing-burger.
@ Raven # 6
I linked to the same study in a previous thread when some nitwit in the OK state legislature floated a mandate of a Kirk Idol in every public institution of higher learning (presumably paid for with tax dollars) because nothing improves safety and educational outcomes like promoting bigotry and dogma
@6 raven, @7 shermanj
Of course, complicating your simplistic narrative is that the top of that pile is a blue state. Educational opportunities are almost entirely based on circumstances of your birth, and people in New Mexico didn’t win the jackpot either financially or demographically.
To provide greater perspective on this issue of ranking of states. As @6 raven pointed out there are many criteria to consider.
According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/blue-states New Mexico is only a very slightly blue state at on a range of 3 out of possible 20.
There are a lot of sites that rank education and there are MANY different criteria and data sources used. There is not one definitive list. There is no one state that is at the bottom of all of these, however there are some clear grouping trends.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/public-school-rankings-by-state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_educational_attainment
https://statwise.org/50-states-ranked-best-to-worst/
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/articles/how-states-compare
https://www.newsweek.com/most-least-educated-states-america-ranked-1583019
PZ, I didn’t mean to require your involvement in my comment. I presume it is because I listed so many URLs for source material. I am just trying to provide a broader perspective.
[meta + OT]
‘Contrary to what j morales thinks, there is a superabundance of these xtian terrorists infecting our society.’
This is because I (in another thread) noted that not all Christians are perforce terrorists, even in the USA, in response to your claim that it was redundant to append ‘terrorist’ when talking about a Christian. Tsk.
Be aware that I know that your is utter hyperbole.
(An abundance already, but no… the lily is gilded! :)
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Re: “PZ, I didn’t mean to require your involvement in my comment. I presume it is because I listed so many URLs for source material.”
Be aware this site restricts how many naked URLs are allowed per comment; there is no involvement by PZ other than his set-up back in 2011 or so. It’s caught in the spam queue automatically.
If you want to list more than a few, obfuscate them.
I read that Trump announced that the Superintendent of Public Education in Oklahoma is going to install a Turning Point chapter in every high school in the state. I read about it before I heard he was resigning.
@12. John Morales :
Or, dunno about the netiquette of this but perhaps make a second (or more) comment with those links spread out in multiple comments rather than just 1 maybe? I think the maximum is 3? 5? Say PS (if necess. PPS) or Part I , part II, part III etc.. That’s what I’ll tend to do.
Does this work & is this seen as ok for / by most folks here?
The limit is 7 links per comment.
It’s no trouble for me. I check the queue every day, and it’s usually only a few comments being held.
@8. Reginald Selkirk : “Oklahoma’s big “TV nudes” scandal was… a Jackie Chan movie on a Samsung streaming service..”
Huh. Seen a few Jackie Chan movies but can’t recall that one – don’t recall seeing much nudity or eroticism or any scenes that could really be called porn-ish in those martial arts movies albiet been a long time since I’ve watched any now & can’t recallif Isaw that particular one so I could be wrong.
Except as #3 acroyear noted :
So was that time(s) another co-incidental movie scene thing or worse – although really as long as its consensual who cares what porn folks watch in private. Oh yeah, the hypocritical
moral majorityRepugGuardians of moralsprudish enforcers of their own narrow repressed & warped sexual opinions.@10 the Trump enabling bad faith troll “beholder” :
Oh For Fucks Sake! You really have to stretch and go far outside the topic to get some way of bashing the only actual alternative to the Trump Fascists in even here and now hey?
Do you get paid per attack on the Democratic party by someone or are you contractually obliged to squeeze some anti-Democratic comment into every thread or something?
Rather New Mexico than Oaklahoma although of course individual ciurcumstacnes in individual states and for that matter state schools are obvs gunna vary. Of topic and trolling much huh?
Oh and do note the whole attacking state schools for not being willfully ignorant and pushing Trump’s warped version of religious is very much a Repug thing NOT a Democratic party thing so you, again, unintentionally, highlight how different the Non-Fascist party is from the Fascist one that you have aided and supported -and still do here. WTF is wrong with you troll?
[OT]
StevoR, re:
I took a brief look.
Seems to me that the claim is related to this recent article: https://journalrecord.com/2025/09/18/oklahoma-walters-explicit-images-movie-investigation/
(Fishing desperately, that is)
All this euphoria is well and good, but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
I just woke up from a badly-timed nap with the notion that Roddenberry based James Kirk on the British Empire.
Go Boldly … and f-bleep-uck everything with a … receptacle.
[chigau, white man’s burden. He probably did.]
@17 StevoR
I had nothing to say about it that hasn’t already been said by others here. Instead I was goaded into commenting by raven’s snobbery. Everything’s red or blue for them, it gets tiring to read for the thousandth time. Kind of like your comments in that respect, Stevo.
@20 chigau
Starfleet was the British Navy IN SPACE!, at least that’s how I understood it. Rather the other way around growing up watching Star Trek, I originally thought of navies as Starfleet in a bathtub.