Beth Wallis: Linda, thanks for joining me.
Linda Jacobson: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Wallis: So your story, it's a deep dive into two spaces that Walters fills: that of a conservative firebrand, as well as the chief bureaucrat of an incredibly busy and influential state agency. As a reporter at a national news outlet, what drove you to tell this story about Oklahoma?
Jacobson: Well, we did a story last year looking at Walters’ background as a teacher and some of his former students talking about how he was not the same person that they knew in the classroom. And there was a lot of wondering about, just, people who were influencing him and the influence that he was having well outside of Oklahoma.
And, I think it's clear that he wants to be seen on a national stage — almost every other week he's on Fox News or some other conservative radio talk show. He definitely wants to have a profile that is larger than Oklahoma. I think that certainly gave us a reason to update the interest in his approach to leadership. And, just some of the backlash that we've seen both in his state and out of his state.
Wallis: One of the top- line themes in the story is the position that some Oklahoma Republican politicians are finding themselves in, especially as we move closer toward Election Day. Oklahomans have heard a lot from Moore Representative Mark McBride, who hasn't been shy about publicly criticizing Walter's rhetoric and potential agency mismanagement. But who else did you talk to and what did you find out from them?
Jacobson: I talked to Representative Tammy West (R-Oklahoma City), I also talked to Kendal Sacchieri — both who are running for office. And, they’re starting to get questions from constituents or potential voters about, ‘Where do you stand on Ryan Walters? What's going on with Walters?’ I think that that caught our attention, that he had clearly become an issue in this campaign for people in his own party.
Wallis: Lawmakers and courts have been zeroing in on how the State Department of Education is managing itself, especially regarding state and federal dollars. We've seen legislative efforts to put guardrails on agency spending, investigations into federal grant management and an executive order from the governor to rein in publicity contracts. You spoke with a couple of former department employees who had some insight into what they see as structural failures that are kind of gumming up the gears of administration. What did you learn from them?
Jacobson: I learned that it wasn't so much that there weren't people to keep doing the work within the department. There obviously has been a lot of attention to departures of top officials in the department. But, some of the people who filled those roles were so new and didn't have the institutional knowledge to keep the wheel spinning, I guess. It showed in the most recent federal audit looking at federal spending.
I spoke with somebody who used to work in the department, Matt Colwell, who felt like he had pretty good insight — it wasn't that the department wasn't doing some of these things, [but] just [the] evidence was not readily available to show the federal government that these activities were being taken care of. And, he attributed that to a lot of the shuffling around and people just not knowing how to answer some of these questions from the auditors.
Wallis: I want to turn to Tulsa. It's the largest traditional school district in the state. Tulsa Public Schools has been under Walter's magnifying glass for more than a year. The former superintendent stepped down amid the threat of the district potentially losing its accreditation. And up until the last meeting, administrators had been required to give monthly in-person updates to the State Board of Education.
It seems like things have somewhat calmed down a little bit since last year in Tulsa, for now. But, you had some conversations with the board president, Stacey Woolley. What do you think are the lasting marks of Walters’ interventions in Tulsa?
Jacobson: Well, I think he wants, certainly, to give the impression that his involvement, his intervention in the district has really made a marked difference. And I think that is still unclear. There [have] been sort of mixed results with their test scores, mostly focusing on MAP test scores, which is an assessment that districts will give during the year just to kind of see how things are progressing. It's not a state test. The state test, we really can't tell how much of an impact because there was a change in the standards, and you really can't compare this year to last year's.
But, I think that there is certainly some uneasiness with that relationship with the state superintendent. They have been re-accredited. There are still some deficiencies, not nearly as many as there were before. So I think that's a relief for Board President Woolley and other people in the district. I think the district will continue to kind of be on edge for a while, as long as he's in office.
Wallis: As an outlet that covers education nationally, is this something that you're seeing from any other state education officials – this kind of very hands-on intervention into school districts that also gets national media attention?
Jacobson: I think the only thing that we could compare it to at this point is, maybe Houston. But you haven't seen nearly the culture war dynamic there that you've seen in Oklahoma, with Tulsa. And it's not just Tulsa. His target has been multiple districts that he thinks have policies or there's been behavior that goes against the way he thinks the district should behave or employ people.
Wallis: Well, not to say that education has been free of politicking, but do you feel like this is a different level of politics being inserted into K-12 education, what's happening in Oklahoma?
Jacobson: I think it's definitely a different level. A lot of people point to Oklahoma as sort of this test case, or this proving ground for a real swing to the right in education policy, whether it's the Bible in schools or whether it's really promoting school choice and options outside of the traditional public system.
Wallis: Linda Jacobsen is a senior reporter at the nonprofit education news outlet, The 74. Linda, thanks for talking with me.
Jacobson: Thank you.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
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