Ryan Walters Wants to Elect School Superintendents – the Latest in a Long Line of Distractions
What is the function of public education? Most of us went to public schools, and the reality is that most children attend public schools today. I never heard the words “woke,” “grooming,” “pornography” or “indoctrination” when I was in school or when my children were in school. Students could pray in school if they wanted. They could bring their chosen religious text. But there was no school-sponsored religion. All children were welcomed and accepted. Parents have always had a say in school. State Superintendent Ryan Walters seems to view students who don’t adhere to his personal beliefs and values as having no place in Oklahoma public schools.
I never understood why anyone would want to force their religion, values or beliefs on others. Implementing a state-sponsored religion is the quickest way to drive people away from religion. Most likely, parents prefer to teach their children about religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs, at home. I wouldn’t want a teacher or emergency-certified person to teach religion to my child.
The United States educates everyone, regardless of religion, race, class, etc. – to me, it’s one of our basic democratic values. Have we done a perfect job of that? No. School funding is uneven and unequal. We discriminate on the basis of race, learning differences, physical limitations and socio-economic level. Poverty is a major problem that has yet to be adequately addressed. But bibles and prejudice are not going to fix those problems.
A History of Undermining Teachers
Part of the strength of public schools is that they were the hub of a neighborhood, bringing communities together. Professional teachers trained at colleges of education had autonomy to write curriculum, to use lessons that engaged the children in their community. That is no longer the case. Oklahoma has almost 5,000 emergency-certified teachers. In Tulsa, you may have a person without a college degree teaching your child. That’s demoralizing to teachers and parents. Teachers are leaving the profession. Is it pay? Yes, but teacher pay has always been low. Another reason given to me by many teachers that I’ve talked to in TPS is lack of autonomy and lack of support in their classrooms. Lack of trust and respect for teachers are undermining the profession.
This didn’t happen yesterday. Over the past 20 years, since the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) with its drill and test focus on reading and math, the learning landscape has become more discouraging. Kids weren’t reading at grade level as promised. In fact, NCLB didn’t move the needle much at all. Kids at the top end weren’t getting what they needed, and those at the bottom were falling further behind. The architects of NCLB surely had good intentions (I think?), but it didn’t achieve what it set out to do.
So, what did we do in response? You would think policy makers, parents and those invested in education would take a good, hard look at what went wrong. Nope. Arnie Duncan gave us Race to the Top – another bad idea that pitted schools against one another in an unfair competition for federal dollars. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) replaced NCLB and is no better at improving outcomes. It’s more of the same, only the states have more flexibility. It could work with steady, true leadership and clear vision and maybe asking questions: What is success and how are we measuring it? What environment creates the best learning outcomes? What do children need to learn? What are some ways besides testing that we can hold schools accountable?
Many states and districts chose to test harder and drill more, even though 20 years of NCLB drill and test didn’t work. Like TPS, many districts chose to embrace Bill Gates MAP tests. (He’s rich; therefore, he must know who to run public education, right?) Is anyone asking if the MAP tests are a good measure of student achievement, knowledge or ability? “A study done by the U.S. Department of Education showed that integrated MAP testing into instruction did not lead to teachers individualizing instruction to any greater degree and did not lead to greater reading achievement among students. The study found no impacts of MAP on student reading achievement or teachers’ use of differentiated instructional practices.” (medium.com)
Rather than address these failures with courage and vision, the years of unsuccessful mandates undermined trust in public schools and created a fissure that could be further exploited by those who would like to destroy public education. Most of us are good people who see public education as a manifestation of the values of a pluralistic society where all of us, no matter what we believe or don’t believe, can come together in understanding and in community.
Ryan Walters’ Latest Distraction
State Superintendent Ryan Walters, on the other hand, is the manifestation of many years of culture wars, school privatization plots, untested tech ed curricula and discipline methods, and national charter chains that tear apart communities. He emerged from this swamp of divisiveness to sling mud at teachers, administrators and anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
Superintendent Walters ignores the real needs of public schools such as recruiting/retaining well-educated teachers, advocating for higher pay, implementing a K-12 technology strategy, working for smaller class sizes, providing wrap-around services, recruiting more special ed teachers, mental health counselors, and support personnel and ensuring safe buildings. He’s busy pointing to problems that don’t exist, and even worse, actively turning public school classrooms into religious institutions in his own image – an image of hate toward families who don’t believe the way he does, hate toward the LGBTQ+ community, hate thrown at teachers and administrators and even innocent books. Now he’s angling to introduce a bill to elect school district superintendents, grabbing the power to hire superintendents from locally elected school boards.
This is only the latest in a long, long, long list of distractions, most of which are listed here: Defense of Democracy
Why is Ryan Walters doing this? I have no idea. What I do know is that it’s so much easier to avoid the work you were hired to do and, instead, ride around vlogging in your car, using the following limited vocabulary: “the libs, woke, indoctrination, radical left and pornography.”
Oklahoma is ranked 49th in education. Mr. Walters is not doing the job he was hired to do, but I have no doubt he’ll come up with some other distraction, so he won’t have to focus on the children in Oklahoma who are getting a sub-standard education because of his lack of leadership.
