ProPublica's Jennifer Smith Richards on Oklahoma’s Push for More Patriotic, Christian Public Schools

Investigative reporter Jennifer Smith Richards of ProPublica joins Will and Josh to break down her major reporting on Oklahoma’s controversial education overhaul under Superintendent Ryan Walters. She explains how Christianity was woven into new academic standards, why educators across the political spectrum objected, and how figures like PragerU, David Barton, and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts influenced the proposed curriculum. Jennifer also walks through the dramatic rollback of civil-rights enforcement at the U.S. Department of Education and what the loss of federal oversight means for students with disabilities, racial discrimination claims, and families seeking accountability. This is a sobering, deeply important look at the future of public education, Christian nationalism in policy, and the stakes for parents and students nationwide.

Additional Resources

• This Is Ground Zero in the Conservative Quest for More Patriotic and Christian Public Schools: https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-education-department-oklahoma-public-schools
• PragerU Kids curriculum referenced by Oklahoma DOE: https://www.prageru.com/kids

Guest Bio
Jennifer Smith Richards is an investigative reporter at ProPublica, specializing in education, civil rights, and systemic failures affecting children and families. Her reporting has uncovered national patterns in school discipline, civil-rights enforcement, curriculum changes influenced by political movements, and the real-world impact of state-level education policy. Her work is widely recognized for its depth, clarity, and public impact.

Transcript

0:17

Hey, welcome back, Faithful Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, we're so glad to have you. I am Will Wright, your political host, and joined by my ever, I don't know, faithful, faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? And joining us today, we have Jennifer Smith Richards. She is an investigative reporter with ProPublica whose work exposes abuses by powerful government institutions. Her current reporting examines how the Trump administration is reshaping the federal government's role in education and what that means for students, civil rights, and schools. And today she is here to talk with us about all the things in Oklahoma. uh So welcome to the show, Jennifer. So glad to be here, thank you. Yeah, I just want to start off first by asking a little bit about your career. So uh looking it up, it like you've been in this education space for a very long time. whenever people have a specialty, whether that's, I don't know, education, religious nationalism, or whatever topic that they are studying, I'm always curious, like, what was it that got you interested to, you know, start looking at, like, how we teach people in this country? probably fell into schools reporting by accident, but once I was there, I think I realized just how truly universal and consequential, you know, particularly public schools are in this country. And I don't know, it's like there, it's such an interesting beat because you get a little bit of everything. You get government, you get politics, you get crime sometimes, you get business. Right. So you get to cover all of these different sort of topics that intersect and are so important to people's lives and their communities. it's just, I don't know, it's just a great beat to write about the world and write about, you know, the American experience. So. Yeah, that's really cool. mean, like when you think about it, education really is like the beginning part of just about every American's life where they start learning about. America and you know, depending if you've ever read like Jason Stanley's books on like education and fascism like he really goes into detail about why education is so important in America and why generally is like the first place that uh people with authoritarian tendencies tend to focus on. So I'm curious with that with that context in mind, I'm curious why uh why Oklahoma? is the sort of uh focus of your writing. I I don't know how many school districts there are or went out in the country, but it seems like the school districts within Oklahoma have had an especially hard time in the past several years. So give us kind of like the broad overview, like what's so special about Oklahoma and their education system? Great question. you know, Oklahoma is obviously a pretty conservative state. And yes, there are other conservative states in the country that have sort of tested out uh some ideas that are more conservative leaning in the education space. But Oklahoma was particularly primed because it had this political landscape that uh featured a supermajority, Republican supermajority in the state legislature. featured a conservative Republican governor, a conservative Republican attorney general, and then the introduction of Ryan Walters as superintendent who was elected, who was, uh by most definitions, uh very aligned with Christian nationalist ideals. So over a number of years, Oklahoma really was positioned politically to accept uh sort of this testing of more know, farther right education ideas. Yeah, that is so interesting to me, looking at this and seeing, like, basically, if we want to look, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic argument in your article is that if we want to see what an American first, like, patriotic, kind of Bible-forward, anti-woke agenda for school is, kind of almost like the poster child we should look at. uh Oklahoma for what's happening there how it's being pushed forward is that do I get that basically right? That's it. mean, people may be familiar with, for example, like Louisiana um enacting the 10 Commandments Bill. So you've seen bits and pieces of this elsewhere in the country. Right. But I was just going to say in Oklahoma, what you've seen is sort of all of the things. So it's the 10 Commandments and the Bibles and the social studies standards being uh rewritten in a pro-America sort of American exceptionalist uh idea. You've seen a little bit of everything, the anti-DEI bills, uh anti-trans bathroom bills in schools. So a little piece of things that we've seen, again, sprinkled throughout the country and other red states really were concentrated in a few years uh in Oklahoma. So it's like they were having, excuse my, kind of maybe, it's not a crude analogy, but I don't know if it's a good one. But so they're having like a side, like they're getting some a la carte things on the side, and Oklahoma's ordering the full menu, catering that kind of thing. Like they're all in on this whole thing. Is that a decent analogy for that, of what's happening? is, it is, and it's like, you know, a very long dinner, right? Like it's like over a period of, yeah, it's over a period of years. And it's with, you know, the governor and the legislature and the state superintendent and the attorney general on board. So you got power united. So what I'm trying to do is paint the picture for people so they understand what's really being said in this and why it might be an issue or not an issue to them. so this is my last, and I'll jump over to Will. So you talk about the new social studies standards. Outline that for us. What was it? What is it now? And why is it problematic? So the social studies standards before, and again, for listeners who may not know what standards are, standards are basically a state's map of what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. And in Oklahoma, the standards before were pretty standard. There was like one mention, yeah, there was like one mention of the Bible maybe, uh but that was it. They pretty much were aligned with uh the social studies standards for most. states. Ryan Walters entered the picture and decided to uh rewrite the standards in a way that really aligned with his beliefs. So Oklahoma has a review process like most states every few years, I think it's every six years. They look at the standards and say, do these still make sense? Are they representing everything we want kids to know about US history and about civics? Ryan Walters looked at these standards and said, no, what we need is more uh More information about the Bible and the Bible's role, he believes, in the founding of America. uh He and a group of other people came up with the idea, like, we really need to represent the disagreements about the validity of the 2020 presidential election. And we need to include some uh discussion about the origins of COVID-19. So by the time they were done, there were at least 40 references to Christianity, to Jesus, to the Bible uh that got specific enough that, you know, we're teaching particular parables and very, very specific biblical teachings that were included in uh statewide social studies standards, which just to be clear, it's really unusual. You know, mean, a red state like Oklahoma, mean, like you would think that that type of change would be widely accepted. I mean, I know it wasn't and it's not, but like, help me work through like why, you know, Ryan Walters coming in the door, making all these changes really seemed to kind of upset a lot of people. And is it... Is the change and the superintendent as well, because he's no longer there, was all of that just a product of the loudest voices? Or was there actually a groundswell of people that are like, I don't like what's happening ah in my state? I think it's fair to say that Ryan Welter was pretty widely disliked by educators, including conservative Christian educators who really objected um not to biblical teachings and not to Christianity, but objected to a public school being the vehicle for delivering biblical doctrine. You know, I think it struck so many people who had been educators for a long time as such a departure from the norm where there was a pretty defined separation between church and state teaching about the Bible was left to churches and to people's local, you know, choices of church. And it was not something that, for example, your, your U S history teacher was going to be delivering. And what I found in reporting and, you know, surprising or not. even in this very conservative state, conservative Christians were really uncomfortable with the idea of their child's teacher delivering their version of Christianity um or biblical teachings. You know, so your article says that, you know, this is ground zero, essentially, for the conservatives' quest for more patriotic and Christian public schools. Back in 2014, there was this project called Project Blitz, which was this project by a bunch of conservative right-wing folks that wanted to use states, essentially, as little testing laboratories. If you're familiar with Project Blitz, would Oklahoma fit nicely into that definition of it being a bit of a Petri dish? I suspect so. I if you look, if you've read Project 2025 and all of the kind of goals and the roadmap it sets out for education, there's pretty close alignment with what we're seeing in Oklahoma. So a lot of the things that are wishlist items in Project 2025 appeared in Oklahoma. And I want to say like particularly we're sort of turbocharged under Ryan Walters. who really was working, it seems, working his way down that list. So the answer is yes. Like, do we know the intent of the state's leaders that they intended to purposely make Oklahoma a lab or a Peter Dish? uh We don't know their intent, but we can see through the policy that they've worked down that they very much are checking off the big items of Project 2025. So it's kind of like something we all do. We make an inference based on looking at these several things that are happening, right? So maybe they're not going to say, hey, we're basing our education system off Project 2025. They're not going to make that statement. But you can look and you can compare, hey, like Project 2025 education priorities, Oklahoma American First education priorities, and they map on pretty. pretty consistently, is that what you're saying? And not just in that idea of like America first and, you know, American exceptionalism. I if you think back to um the St. Isidore case, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that would have been the first religious charter school in the country. Well, that was tested in Oklahoma, right? And that's something that that Oklahoma's leaders were very much, uh you know, in favor of and, seen that tested there. The other thing that we've seen out of Oklahoma that we've not seen elsewhere is Ryan Walter's coming out earlier, uh the school year and saying standardized testing, it's done. We're not doing standardized testing anymore. uh That is something that is a little bit of a, you know, that's a conservative ideal that you shouldn't have this sort of like government watch over, you know, this government accountability. uh So you've seen some of those things that map, that go beyond the kind patriotism and Christianity space into the more, you know, kind of like wonky, how do we run schools space that really, again, align with the ideals in Project 2025. Yeah, I totally, that makes sense. So is the idea, is the narrative and maybe, correct this wherever I'm getting it wrong, is the narrative or the story, is it like, hey, you got these bunch of guys that are colluding in conspiracy style, or is it more, this is a wave of ideology and thinking that's now taking place, like, I guess like... Would we have documentation if they're meeting together? I mean, I guess you can keep that stuff secret, but it doesn't seem like you can keep it secret for that long, right? I mean, that's whole thing about conspiracies, the cabal that's taking over the whole world and nobody, but there's no evidence. Well, of course there's no evidence. They wouldn't allow any evidence for it. So that kind of thinking, and I kind of want to avoid that thinking, but I do want to know, like, hear these connections and I just know there are people that I know that aren't going to have a problem. with Jesus being mentioned 40 times. They'll be like, hey, look, this is our history. This is part of the cultural uh soil that America was grown in. Why wouldn't we honor that history, whatever? And they would see, hey, this just seems like there's no conspiracy here. This is just good education. What's the kind of argument that you have on that one? I do want to press on that because I think that there are people that listen and of course we all have our own views. It's totally cool to have that and you've substantiated yours in this article and I appreciate that. And I just want people to hear your thinking and not just, you know, write you off because you're a liberal or you're a woke or you're whatever, right? I don't want people to do that. I don't want, you might not care, but I don't want people to do that when they listen. And so what would your kind of response to that again, this is history, culture, and is this like a, is this a conspiracy or is it more a movement, a wave? So let's talk about the arguments against this first, and then let's address conspiracy. So I think that uh what I heard from a lot of conservative Christians in Oklahoma about why they would have discomfort with teaching that Christ is king, for example, and that the country was founded on biblical principles is pretty simple. Is all Christianity the same? Is every denomination the same? Does everybody believe the exact same things and place the same importance on some principles versus others? And so they would raise the question, and speaking to them, well, whose version of Christianity will be taught? Will it be the one that my family aligns with? And will it be what my pastor, my local pastor teaches? uh And the answer is kind of nope. There's no guarantee that what is being taught from the Bible even is going to align with your understanding and your beliefs. So I think that was The single biggest thing that people told me was causing discomfort about the idea. It wasn't just the idea that the Bible is an important historical document and the Bible, you know, lays out important, you know, character foundations. Right. It was like, what Christianity are we teaching here? Like what version? As for the conspiracy, I'm not going to say the word conspiracy, but what we know, like what we know, what we know is about influence. And for some of these, uh you know, significant policy shifts, there have been the same people in the room. helping make decisions. And so let's talk about influence. So Ryan Walters in rewriting these standards brings together a group of people to act as advisors. And they're names that we know. They are Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU. They are David Barton, the founder of Well Builders. It is, you know, Dr. Kevin Roberts from the Heritage Foundation. So these are familiar names that then come together to help influence what Oklahoma's social studies standards are going to become. So those voices that we, again, that we know, that are familiar, that are driving education policy elsewhere are in the room here in Oklahoma. Yeah, David Barton is a name that comes up quite a bit in our conversations when we talk about Christian nationalism. um I've met are big fans of David Barton, unfortunately. And, know, on his website, he actually argues that uh the three branches of government are modeled after the Holy Trinity. yeah, so hearing his name kind of in the mix of curriculum building uh does make me a little bit nervous, even though I think he's now helping with Texas or something like that. But, uh you know, I am curious, like, so... You mentioned those names, they're all kind of in the room with Ryan Walters. um They've got, I'm assuming probably ready out the box curriculum. Talk to us a little bit about the curriculum, say for instance PragerU provides to Oklahoma, or did provide. Yeah. So, so the standards again, are a little bit divorced from the curriculum, right? You lay out what you want kids to know and be able to do. And then a state selects, you know, options typically in an Oklahoma, is true, true in Texas, options that school districts can choose that they say this is good curriculum to follow. Um, what Oklahoma did after these standards, you know, these standards were there was they pointed to PragerUKids and said, Hey, if you want really solid history and civics lessons. Here you go. This is ready to go. And they actually posted it just on their social studies website on the states, the Oklahoma State Department of Education's website. So you go there and it's like big Prager U kids presence. Um, and you know, Prager U kids, I'm sure your listeners know it's like, it's an off the shelf, like digestible short cartoon video style delivery. of a very particular version of American history. Yeah, what's funny, and I know Josh has a question. Like I have some of these things. I don't know why I have them so close to my desk. And for those that are listening, I'm showing them some learning history books that I bought. uh I know. So this one is about the kids guide to presidential elections. This one's kids guide to the free market, which my kids could. not care less about the free market. ah And then the kids guide to President Trump. Obviously, oh some of these aren't even open. So they may be collectors. when we're talking about the materials that PragerU is providing, do you get the sense that any of materials was specially curated just for the Oklahoma school district? given that they have an entire state now that they can market to. So what you'll see if you go through the catalog of PragerU, there's nothing that specifically says like we created this for Oklahoma. But what you'll see is that the states that they have presence in will have some state specific, some state level history information and some like get to know Oklahoma or get to know the history of Oklahoma. So you do see that kind of content um for Oklahoma and for Florida, which also makes use of PragerU or at least promotes it. um Yeah, I mean, you'll see like all the standard kind of important moments in American history told through um the lens of PragerU and then also state-specific content. That's interesting. I've been thinking as you're talking, sorry about that weird transition there. I was in the middle of a thought and then you stopped talking and then I was like, I'm live and I have to hit the unmute button. And my wife always goes, are you even listening? And I'm like, yes, I'm listening. I have ADHD, give me a break, dude. I'm trying to, anyway, so of course. Yeah, it kind of is. No, I am listening. And here's a thing that keeps coming up. So again, like, one thing that I do is that I try to represent who I was, number one. I have shifted in some of my views. much more pluralistic than I was, not theologically, but certainly civically than I was. And if that doesn't make sense, I'm happy to go into more of what that means. But... One thing though is like, it keeps coming back to me this issue that education right is so important. That's why everyone wants a piece of it. want it. They want to have their whatever it is. You can call it an agenda. You could call it their values. You could call it whatever it might be, right? We want our kids to be educated in a certain way. People want that. Parents want that. And then of course, the conglomeration and a state is very interested in how it's young children are taught, educated, and then brought out into the workforce and potentially military force, right? When you're thinking about it on a large scale. And I guess like a lot of people, I'm assuming some of my MAGA friends will hear this and they'll think, I mean, are you serious? The left has had his ideology in the school system for decades. This is just a correction. This is just a push back against the wave of Marxist ideology, the wave of communist ideology that's in the left ideology, leftist. And again, I'm taking on the MAGA hat right now. The leftist ideology that's basically infiltrated our school systems for years. Or even think about something like the progressive liberal maybe agenda on something like California school systems. the Illinois school systems, Massachusetts school systems, you know, and I'm sure that you can add more, right, to the conservative school systems, Texas, Louisiana, right? It goes back. So it's like, what is the core issue? And I think you're alluding to it in the sense that this choosing one particular thing, but don't we always come down to choose one particular way at the end? I mean, I guess I'm trying to get more clarity on thinking like I get so it's like when you tell me the whole thing, I'm like, I can see I'm uncomfortable. I'm like, I don't really want. Yeah. Like you said, I don't want people like some teacher. I don't know teaching my kids the Bible and then having to do that. And they might not even care about it. Like I would not be in support of that in Virginia school systems. And yet I also am there are things that I've seen over the last several years that I've definitely was not in support. of that were implementations within the school systems. um Things like uh critical race theory. And I've done a lot of thinking into that. And I'm not trying to caricature critical race theory as one thing. But I understand why people could be uncomfortable with aspects of it being in and taught if indeed they are. So I guess the question is, how do we respond to that? kind of pushback. Again, what I want to do is help people come to the place where, we're actually on the same page. We just are looking at it differently. But here's why our common shared good is that we don't want this kind of thing. Does that make sense? OK. I love to hear your response. it does make sense. And I think to your point, there would be discomfort. with the idea of indoctrination, right? On either side, when we're talking about, you know, political ideas or values. I think that there is, I say this, I think there's a disconnect between the rhetoric about what schools are, what they're teaching, what that woke liberal indoctrination really looks like that that conservatives are describing when they talk about public schools, the disconnect between the speech about it and then what is actually being taught. You mentioned critical race theory. So this is a really good thing to look at in Oklahoma. Back in, back in 2021, there was a bill passed by the legislature that was widely referred to as the anti-CRT bill. And the idea was people were, legislators were uncomfortable with schools teaching critical race theory. And so they talked a lot about CRT. The problem is the bill itself never mentions critical race theory. And the reason is that schools were not teaching critical race theory. by and large, not that it was never ever, there were no elements being taught in schools, but. There was just such a divide between the way that people were talking about what schools were delivering to students and what schools were actually delivering to students. So I think most of us would agree that we want a true and accurate version of history to be taught. I mean, right, right. So, you know. To your point, like nobody wants, I've never met a parent who says, really hope that my school is indoctrinating my child ah to believe one thing or another. And I've also never met a teacher who's like, hey, I'm out here indoctrinating children to believe one thing or another. I just think like there needs to be some more truthiness to like what we accept as schools are indoctrinating. I think people will need to be careful to kind of push beyond the rhetoric and say, what is, what does this lesson teach my kid or what are they being taught about the Tulsa race massacre or whatever that is? And not just take at face value this idea of woke liberal indoctrination because that's really powerful language that in particular, in Oklahoma um really has been effective in leading people to think that their public schools are delivering anti-God, anti-Christian values. You know, it sounds like the majority of the debate about the curriculum in Oklahoma with the sort of Christian nationalism overtones to it. The way I see it, seems like a lot of it is political in nature. ah I could be wrong, I'd love for you to kind of fill in the gaps. But is there any sort of um quantifiable, you know, ah like evidence that we could point to that shows that this Christian curriculum was actually benefiting, like helping kids, um you know, do better in school. Like how does Oklahoma rank, um you know, for public schools within the country? Like, is there any other sort of data that we can use to say, yeah, this actually was working. We just may not, you know, like the Christian part of it. I suspect that if there had been great success out of Oklahoma as the result of some of these policy changes, we would have all heard about it. The truth is that Oklahoma ranks very poorly ah when it comes to standardized testing. So when we look at tests that measure kids all across the country, Oklahoma ranks very near the bottom in reading and math. We know that um Oklahoma is spending less money per pupil than almost every other state. We really have the insight that we have into Oklahoma is that educationally students are really struggling. Got it. um the, um, you mentioned earlier, so Ryan Walters is no longer in his, in his job. what, what, do you know about, like, his departure and then what, what do know about his, his replacement? Everything about Brian Walter's super-inherency was so interesting and headline grabbing nationally. His departure was no less so. It was interesting and headline grabbing. ah There were rumblings uh that he was going to announce that he was leaving and people thought, gosh, he's going to go to Fox News and made all these sort of predictions. But ultimately he went on to Fox News and said, I'm, I'm resigning as the superintendent of Oklahoma. I am going to go to an organization called the teacher freedom Alliance that is specifically designed to be an alternative to teachers unions and to try to tear down, um, existing teachers unions, uh, in this country. So it was, it was sort of a spectacular exit. Um, he left amid a bit of a cloud of controversy. over a number of things in Oklahoma, both financial uh things and also policy decisions that he'd made. But yeah. wasn't there an image on his computer that had like an hour's worth in the news? It had a fair amount in the news, yeah. I was actually watching, okay, so what happened was, just for your listeners, uh this happened during a state board of education meeting uh executive session, so that board members and Ryan Walters are in uh Ryan Walters' office. And uh what board members later said is that an image of, included nudity, appeared on Ryan Walters' uh made everybody very uncomfortable. He ended up turning it off. And then eh there was this kerfuffle that followed that was like, you know, who's telling the truth and Ryan Walter is accusing them of lying. And it just really got uh very bizarre, frankly. It got very bizarre and like became this big, big news thing. ended up, I believe being like a Jackie Chan movie. Blaming on Jackie Chan. of, I, I could be, I could be wrong about the Jackie Chan part, but in any case, it was a movie that was playing in that moment that it featured unity. Um, but that, that became like something that the state was actively investigating and like Ryan Welter's was very much like in the crosshairs and it was, it was a big deal. So by the time he resigned, like that was just barely in the rear view mirror. And that was just the latest in a string of really peculiar. things that became news in Oklahoma and across the country. And his replacement, like what do you know about his replacement? His replacement is a man named Lindell Fields and he comes from a career in tech education background. He's not a politician. ah he, there's frankly not a ton known about him. He seems to be a pretty low key guy. Um, as soon as he came in, he sort of took this level approach and said, we're going to be looking at the things that Ryan Walters instituted. We're going to see if they make sense. You know, we're going to really sort of like. inspect everything. We're going to open up, you know, look under the hood and see what's been going on here at the Department of Education. ah And that's that's pretty much what he's done. He said, you know, give me give me 90 days. I'm going to get these things done. Give me another number of days. We're going to get these things done. And he's come in and actually already very quickly reversed some of the things that Ryan Walters uh had come out and said, like, for example, the the teaching The mandate that, that Ryan Walters issued that every classroom had to have a Bible and had to teach the Bible. Lindell Fields came in and said, no, that I do not support that. I'm going to revoke that. Um, Ryan Walters, I mentioned earlier was on, on this mission to end standardized testing, statewide standardized testing that would have required federal approval, um, to do something like that. And Lindell Fields came in and said, no. testing will happen, right? Testing will happen. And they're going to review the standards, which, you know, they are technically in place. They are, you know, officially the state's next standards. So we'll see what happens with that. I would love to focus in a little bit on, em it's just so interesting to me, the 2020 election uh prompts that they were giving in kind of this part of the curriculum that they were giving to students. I'd love you to go a little bit deeper into that because, and here's why for me, it's still something that's being talked about quite a bit. Trump still talks about it. even though I think on two occasions at least, right, he he admitted that he did lose in 2020, but, you know, two out of how many other claims that he made that he won. So I don't know what percentage that is. em And I guess what I. What was the justification for this claim? Because, again, I know people that say, well, yeah, we should at least look at this. Why not look at the sides? Why not? Why not see what's going on here? And I'm aware. that there's now the scant evidence, at least in terms of court documents and stuff like that, that I've seen that, you know, I do not think it was stolen in any way, personally. em But there's a lot of people that do and still do. And they might be like, hey, this is a claim that's worth investigating, even if, and I guess to steel man that, to make it its best possible argument, hey, this is a real thing that happened in people's minds. So there's a... giant perception in the American public. So at least we would look at the reasons for that perception. Is that what they're doing or is it like what is, what was this 2020, how was this part of the curriculum and how were they asking like teachers to operationalize this and actually bring it into the classrooms? Like what would that even look like? Did they do that? Do we have any examples? We don't know if they actually did that. And again, these are new standards that would have, if they had not been paused by a court temporarily, would have been in place for this school year. They are currently, not yet, but we don't know what will happen with them, right? They are kind of withstanding a court challenge. still in that. They're still in the standards that. They are still, so right now Oklahoma schools are using the last standards that were adopted, which was in 2019. And that's per a very recent court order that kind of halts the implementation of these standards. These new standards that, as I mentioned, the group of Kevin Roberts and Dennis Prager and helped Ryan Welter's come up with. But when it comes to the 2020 election, it's in a standard, that's meant for ninth graders. So what a high school freshman oh should understand. And it advances the idea that we should accept the false claims about the 2020 election. And specifically that the ninth graders should learn about, this is the actual quote from the standards, 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. Those are all very specific claims that in the standards are accepted as fact. Even though, as you pointed out, there have been at least 60 lawsuits related to the validity of election results in 2020. nearly all have been dismissed as meritless or were decided against the president. um So that skepticism, it's not just introduced in the standards as something that students should be aware of, that there are skeptics of the 2020 election. It advances this idea as an accepted one, that the 2020 election did have discrepancies and that their uh were sudden batch dumps that were problematic. So I think that's the distinction. It's not teaching about history. Some people disputed the election. There was an event on January 6. It's the idea that the standards accept as truth those conservative talking points about the election. about January 6th? I mean, I obviously know that's connected. Do you know? Oh, gotcha. No, I'd be super interested. Was it a peaceful protest that they were calling? I don't recall that the standards specifically mentioned January 6th, but I'm saying that I think that most history teachers would probably agree that is an event that happened that one could teach about in a historical context. I think we should cheat about January 6th all of that. And yet what you're saying is that they're actually presenting this as factual. That these things happened, these dumps or these discrepancies. And so these are factual. it's almost like, yeah, that's, can under, and though that's patently false is what you're saying. Like they're actually teaching unfactual things. about it or is it the interpretation that they're bringing of it? Does that make sense? And maybe you don't know the answer to question, it's fine. just kind of like having, you know, these questions are coming to my mind as we're... Yeah, and perhaps there's, I'm not sure that there's really a distinction if you're presenting these discrepancies to students, to ninth graders, to teenagers, um as accepted when we know through the legal process that these things did not happen. Hmm, yes. They were not, they were not real. That's problematic. Right. It becomes a factual issue. And so when I talked to superintendents about the standards, they really, in addition to the Christianity, the infusion of Christianity throughout the standards, they found discomfort in this too. And one superintendent told me, we are looking for standards that are rooted in fact. That's what we want to prevail. And the standards of what we need to teach in Oklahoma cannot be based on opinion. It cannot, it can't be opinion. That's not what social studies is about. Yeah, I'm curious about school vouchers and like school choice that those two concepts are big um with Republicans. It's really big for groups like Moms for Liberty um and others. And I'm curious on like how successful was uh Oklahoma in increasing those, you know. those elements like for the school district or did they never get far enough to really kind of really be pushing the vouchers? They did. Oklahoma did expand. A lot of states have some version of a voucher program that may apply just to particular groups of students, like students with disabilities who may be trying to access very specific services. Oklahoma was in a similar position where it had kind of a small version of a voucher program, and the state expanded it and it became available to students all over the state. So a universal voucher program, that was a big expansion. So there are, I think about 37,000 students in Oklahoma using a tax funded, you know, voucher. It's really a scholarship, a tax credit, sorry, a tax credit uh to attend a private or religious school in the state right now. And did any of those vouchers impact folks who are living in the rural districts, low-income students or people with disabilities? So we've learned a couple of things just through our reporting on this. One is that. Vouchers are mostly used by people in cities. That's true in Oklahoma, because that's where the private schools are. There are lots of places in Oklahoma that are extremely rural, even very remote, where the only school available in the community is the public school district. I stopped at one that served 50 kids. There are no charter schools. There are no private schools with which to use a voucher physically located in these areas. So there are lots of places where that is true. So the voucher use that we've seen in Oklahoma has been concentrated in cities and it's also been concentrated among people who were already attending a private school. which is kind of interesting, right? So it's people who already were choosing to go to a private, exactly, a private or religious school, who then can use tax funds to offset the cost of tuition. So we've seen those couple of things in Oklahoma, but the rural nature of the state is really, really important to understand. sort of like who has access, if you wanted to use a voucher, who has access and who can actually make use of that tax money. It's so weird when he talked about the private school stuff. We had one of your colleagues on talk about um school choice vouchers up in Ohio. uh His story talked about people are using this money to do horse. trainings or something like that, you know, and just using it for very elaborate purchases that you'd have to draw a pretty squiggly line to see how it's connected to education. So that's really interesting. It's almost like the states that have implemented these types of programs. uh I don't know if there's like an educational department, IG or something like that, but it seems like they really, really need to be looked at. uh pretty severely because the money is not going where it's supposed to. Hey Will, Gabby needs her horse lessons, okay? Stop trying to take that away from Gabby. Who am I to take that away from Gabby? One interesting thing to understand is that part of the uh sort of more conservative vision for what schools should look like, school just generally in America, actually supports the idea that you should be able to purchase things like course back writing lessons, piano lessons. So the author of the education section of Project 2025 is Lindsay Burke. She now holds a position, a top level position at the U S department of education. She has very explicitly. Advocated for, um, a universal voucher system that really would, would function like, every, every family gets a debit card. Right. Or like an Amazon gift card where they could purchase, they could build their own, what they want for their children, their own educational system. So that could include tutoring that could include private school. that could include micro schools or a homeschooling curriculum, it could include piano lessons. So that literally is, that's not uh a bug of the voucher system. Like that's a feature to uh many of the people who are imagining uh what real parental control of students learning should look like. So when I hear that, that sounds like to me personally, like, dude, that'd be awesome to be able to have money that I didn't earn that was given to me to pay for my child's education. mean, again, I'm getting taxed for it. I get that. um But that sounds awesome. And yet, there seems like there's a hidden part of this. that I think we've alluded to in terms of the budgetary restrictions, the kind of pressure that it puts on a budget and the in people and out people, because I also think, well, who could actually um afford to even not just to pay for those things, but to be able to have the time and everything to do that. seems like it favors people that already have money. em But I don't know if that's true or not. I could see how people would think that. Is that what's happening? Like, I would love for you to go into more detail on how this is affecting people. like how these vouchers and this money is actually this ripple effect to other people that are getting. um It's basically a continuance of Will's question, but asking even in more depth, are people getting left out because Gabby's getting piano lessons or whatever, and the government's paying for it. Or I guess that's not happened yet, or has it? This is an area where I don't have a lot of understanding. Yeah, I think that, you you've highlighted like a piece of what that might look like from Ohio. I think you're talking about Alec McGillis's reporting. uh So we've seen bits and pieces of this play out in other states that have had voucher systems for a much longer time. Ohio is one of those states. I was actually a beat reporter in Ohio when the EdChoice system came to be. uh So we've seen pieces of this play out. The vision that Lindsay Burke has espoused. Have we seen that realized anywhere? Not yet. Not yet fully. So we haven't seen that play out. But the question about who is left behind and who is left out of systems like this is a really good one. People who study private school vouchers and scholarship and tax credits and the whole world of school choice will tell you that uh Um, there really aren't ways to spend money to fully fund traditional public school districts and keep those robust and healthy and fund all of the horseback riding lessons and piano lessons that, that you envision and private school tuition, right? There's a finite amount of money and that money shifts. between those systems. So when you're thinking about... kind of who is left behind. It's often in high use private school voucher and charter school areas. It's often the public school district. They end up um having to operate, run the same operation, right? Just because you lose a couple students, that doesn't mean you can lay off a teacher. So they still have to operate their buildings and buy books and pay for teachers, but often with less money. Because as the students leave and choose other options, the per pupil funding that's coming from the state and local governments follows the students. That's true in most states. It's not always true, but. So who's left out are people who are either choosing their local public school district that is then less resourced or can't access for whatever reason a private school voucher. So kids in the most rural parts of the state that really don't have all those options, they need their local public schools. You know, this is my last question and uh it's kind of related to Oklahoma, but thinking about education as a whole, you so as a person that's really been studying this space for a long time, there's a lot of talk up in Washington right now about abolishing the Department of Education, ah you know, regardless of the mechanics and, you know, process that that will entail. But can you help us better understand, If the education department no longer existed next week, whenever that day comes, know, like what effect would that really have? Because I think I'm included in this. Like, I don't think a lot of people really understand, like, why that's such a big deal, ah because we just don't really understand maybe how the money flows or, you know, how curriculum gets developed and all that other kind of stuff. So, like, can you help us just better understand, like, what would happen if we didn't have an education department ah next week? Right. So what we're hearing from the education department is a lot of discussion about returning things to the states. It's important to understand that the education department, one thing it doesn't do is establish curriculum. Doesn't do that. That is a state and local decision. What the department does do is act as a conduit for getting federal money for schools to states and school districts. So that's one huge function. federal money for students who come from low-income families, federal money for students with disabilities. That flows from the federal government to states to school districts. That's one big function. The second big function is to act as an investigator and enforcer of civil rights in schools. The U.S. Department of Education has operated one of the country's largest enforcers of civil rights. Huge team of lawyers in 12 offices across the country whose sole purpose was to make sure that students were not experiencing discrimination in their schools. That division has been effectively wiped out. So when it comes to like what our school is going to feel. There's already a lot of evidence that schools are going to feel financial strain. The Trump administration has scaled back a number of funding streams and it has signaled through budget requests for the next fiscal year that they intend to spend less money on schools. So that's one thing that's gonna be super consequential. Two is more of a uh question, it's more of an impact on parents and students. You are going to be in a situation for the first time in decades where there is going to be no public free way to try to hold your school district accountable for discrimination, whether that's racial discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual harassment. Whether there are students who are unable, have disabilities, who are unable to access the education that they need or services they need. There's no federal free recourse for that now. And that is going to be really consequential to parents and students who are experiencing something in their school districts because there are fewer places to turn to if you can't afford a private attorney. Wow, well, on that happy note, um Thank you so much for stopping by. This was a very sobering conversation. I don't know if I should say I'm happy that Oklahoma got a new superintendent. I know a lot of people that are happy, but it's very unfortunate that we're kind of in this point where an entire country actually knows the name of the superintendent from one state. That just seems weird, right? It seems weird because it is weird. It is really unusual. And yeah, this is an issue that's really worth paying attention to. Yeah, agree. um Jennifer, um where are your travels and your work taking you to next? What's the next story you're focusing on? There's probably more to be written in Oklahoma. It's such an interesting state. uh ProPublica is all over the country. So we're reporting all over the country. I think that the next uh stories and the thread that I've been following all year uh has been related to civil rights enforcement. It feels uh super consequential to students' experience at schools. So probably civil rights stories that are... about students' experience at school. That's awesome. everybody, this is Jennifer Smith-Richard. She's a reporter for ProPublica, and we will make sure that we put links to her story in the show notes. Make sure you check that out, and make sure you like and subscribe, do all that stuff that helps us out. And yeah, thanks for stopping by, and as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, folks.