Ryan Walters is resigning, ending his disastrous reign over Oklahoma's public schools

The far-right superintendent of public schools will soon lead a right-wing group that fights teachers' unions

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Oklahoma’s long educational nightmare is finally coming to an end. (Maybe.)

Ryan Walters, the Christian Nationalist Superintendent of Public Instruction who has used his position to push religious indoctrination in schools, will soon resign from his job to become CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a right-wing group that aims to destroy teachers’ unions. After rumors swirled about his possible departure yesterday afternoon, Walters confirmed it—where else?—during an appearance on Fox News.

Nothing reveals your love for public education like the statement, “We’re gonna destroy the teachers’ unions.” And you have to wonder how much money the group was willing to pay Walters to make him leave a position that so often made him the center of attention to the point that he was using his office as a TV studio.

Incidentally, Walters promoted the launch of TFA through his office earlier this year, when he touted it as a “necessary free market solution” to unions.

The Teacher Freedom Alliance announced the news on their website late last night (as they begged supporters for cash) and made a similar announcement on X/Twitter (as they begged supporters for cash):

Honestly, this is the best possible news for the state of Oklahoma.

Harming public schools is the job Walters always wanted to do, and everyone’s better off when he’s not doing it from the inside.

Before discussing his future, though, let me remind you of just how awful this guy has been as a public official.

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.)

It got to the point where even Trump Administration and Gov. Kevin Stitt (who’s been at odds with Walters for a while) wanted little to do with him:

Walters has been increasingly absent from Oklahoma’s education world. In August, Education Secretary Linda McMahon excluded Walters from a meeting when she visited Oklahoma. He also developed a pattern of skipping Oklahoma Board of Education meetings. In late July, school board members alleged they saw naked women on a television in Walters’ office during a meeting, which his office downplayed. In early September, Walters didn’t show up for the first state school board meeting since that incident was reported. The board carried out the meeting without 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.

In short, Ryan Walters did absolutely nothing to improve Oklahoma’s standing as one of the worst states in the country for education. (It’s currently #48, according to US News.) Everything he did was to score political points with Republicans and earn spots on FOX News.

And now he’ll finally ditch this job he clearly doesn’t care about in order to take one better suited to his hatred for the people who make public schools work.

Yesterday afternoon, multiple news outlets reported that Walters could be resigning as early as Friday in order to take up a job with a right-wing think tank:

That nonprofit is believed to be the Freedom Foundation, a far-right anti-labor union think tank. The group is connected to the Teacher Freedom Alliance, which Walters has plugged on social media and through news releases. Walters once compared teachers’ unions to terrorist organizations.

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Freedom Foundation officials have not responded to questions from The Oklahoman about whether the organization planned to hire Walters.

Since that article was published, of course, it was confirmed that Walters would run the TFA. The TFA is an offshoot of the Freedom Foundation, and the latter group posted this deeply weird video short last night featuring a man whose arms barely move and just awkwardly hang at his sides.

The bottom line is that a far-right politician will be working for a far-right group—it’s a match made in hell. As if to confirm the news before he went on Fox, the perpetually online Walters was weirdly silent most of yesterday and didn’t respond to reporters who asked him for comment. (One of his goons typically fires off a Trumpian insult whenever reporters ask him about the dumb shit he’s trying to pull.)

There was speculation that Walters might run for governor in 2026, but this news obviously points in a different direction. It also suggests he won’t be running for re-election, which he also could have done. Seems like all it took was a bag of cash to get Walters to leave politics entirely.

Now the question is who Gov. Stitt will choose to finish out the rest of Walters’ term. He hasn’t made that announcement yet, but hopefully, it’ll be someone who at least has respect for the people who educate children—something Walters never had despite being a former teacher himself.

When Walters resigns, it’ll mark not just the end of a disastrous tenure, but also a critical opportunity for Oklahoma to reclaim its public schools from the grip of ideological extremism. Walters’ time in office was never about serving students, strengthening classrooms, or supporting teachers. It was about self-promotion, political theater, and weaponizing education as a tool for his culture war.

By abandoning the role he was elected to fill, Walters is confirming what all of us already knew: Educating Oklahoma’s children was never his priority. His only loyalty was to the national right-wing propaganda machine that rewards demagogues who spread division and undermine public institutions while spreading misinformation and constantly pretending to be a victim.

If Oklahoma replaces him with someone responsible, maybe political leaders and local school districts can finally re-center the conversation on what truly matters: investing in teachers, creating safe and well-resourced schools, and giving students an honest, well-rounded education. Stripped of Walters’ circus of lawsuits, stunts, and authoritarian fantasies, the state can start repairing the damage he inflicted. His exit won’t erase the harm he caused, but it could clear the path for a future where education, rather than one man’s desperate ambition, comes first.

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