New standards for Oklahoma high school students promote misinformation about the 2020 election

Ryan Walters, Republican candidate for Oklahoma State Superintendent, speaks at a rally, Nov. 1, 2022, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma high school students studying U.S. history learn about the Industrial Revolution, women’s suffrage and America’s expanding role in international affairs.

Beginning next school year, they will add conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.

Oklahoma’s new social studies standards for K-12 public school students, already infused with references to the Bible and national pride, were revised at the direction of state School Superintendent Ryan Walters. The Republican official has spent much of his first term in office lauding U.S. President Donald Trump, feuding with teachers unions and local school superintendents, and trying to end what he describes as “wokeness” in public schools.

“The left has been pushing left-wing indoctrination in the classroom,” Walters said. “We’re moving it back to actually understanding history ... and I’m unapologetic about that.”

The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said, “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

The new standard raised red flags even among Walters’ fellow Republicans, including the governor and legislative leaders. They were concerned that several last-minute changes, including the language about the 2020 election and a provision stating the source of the COVID-19 virus was a Chinese lab, were added just hours before the state school board voted on them.

A group of parents and educators have filed a lawsuit asking a judge to reject the standards, arguing they were not reviewed properly and that they “represent a distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective.”

GOP lawmakers can’t muster enough support to reject the new standards

While many Oklahoma teachers have expressed outrage at the change in the standards, others say they leave plenty of room for an effective teacher to instruct students about the results of the 2020 election without misinforming them.

Aaron Baker, who has taught U.S. government in high schools in Oklahoma City for more than a decade, said he’s most concerned about teachers in rural, conservative parts of the state who might feel encouraged to impose their own beliefs on students.

“If someone is welcoming the influence of these far-right organizations in our standards and is interested in inserting more of Christianity into our practices as teachers, then they’ve become emboldened,” Baker said. “For me, that is the major concern.”

Leaders in the Republican-led Oklahoma Legislature introduced a resolution to reject the standards, but there wasn’t enough GOP support to pass it.

Part of that hesitation likely stemmed from a flurry of last-minute opposition organized by pro-Trump conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, which has a large presence in Oklahoma and threatened lawmakers who reject the standards with a primary opponent.

“In the last few election cycles, grassroots conservative organizations have flipped seats across Oklahoma by holding weak Republicans accountable,” the group wrote in a letter signed by several other conservative groups and GOP activists. “If you choose to side with the liberal media and make backroom deals with Democrats to block conservative reform, you will be next.”

Superintendent says his new standards ‘encourage critical thinking’

After a group of parents, educators and other Oklahoma school officials worked to develop the new social studies standards, Walters assembled an executive committee consisting mostly of out-of-state pundits from conservative think-tanks to revise them. He said he wanted to focus more on American exceptionalism and incorporate the Bible as an instructional resource.

Among those Walters appointed to the review committee are Kevin Roberts, the president of The Heritage Foundation and a key figure in its Project 2025 blueprint for a conservative administration, and Dennis Prager, a radio talk show host who founded Prager U, a conservative nonprofit that offers “pro-American” educational materials for children that some critics say are not accurate or objective.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Walters defended teaching students about “unprecedented and historically significant” elements of the 2020 presidential election.

“The standards do not instruct students on what to believe; rather, they encourage critical thinking by inviting students to examine real events, review publicly available information, and come to their own conclusions,” he said.

Recounts, reviews and audits in the battleground states were Trump contested his loss all confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, and Trump lost dozens of court cases challenging the results.

Critics say Walters’ new standard is filled with misleading phrasing that seeks to steer the discussion in particular direction.

Democrats characterized it as another political ploy by Walters, widely viewed as a potential candidate for governor in 2026, at the expense of school children.

“It’s harmful posturing and political theater that our kids do not need to be subjected to,” said Sen. Mark Mann, a Democrat from Oklahoma City who previously served on the school board for one of the state’s largest districts.

Concerns about politicizing school standards

National experts on education standards also expressed alarm, noting that Oklahoma has historically ranked highly among the states for its standards.

Brendan Gillis, the director of teaching and learning at the American Historical Association who oversaw a research project that analyzed standards in all 50 states, said Oklahoma’s social studies standards had been “quite good” until the latest version.

In addition to concerns about election misinformation, Gillis added: “There was also a lot of biblical content that was sort of shoehorned in throughout the existing standards.”

He said a lot of the references to Christianity and the Bible misinterpreted the history of the country’s founding and lacked historical nuance.

David Griffith, a research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education think-tank, said he was not aware of any other states that have tried to promote election misinformation in their curriculum standards.

He called the new standards an “unfortunate” departure from Oklahoma’s traditionally strong social studies standards.

“It is just inappropriate to promote conspiracy theories about the election in standards,” he said.

Associated Press writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Sean Murphy, The Associated Press