The Oklahoma State Department of Education likely would contradict state law if it implements an ideological test for teachers coming from certain states, said the leader of another state agency that oversees teacher assessments.
Requiring an “America First” assessment for teachers moving from progressive states like California and New York, as state Superintendent Ryan Walters pledged to do, would step outside the authority Oklahoma law grants to the state Department of Education, wrote Megan Oftedal, executive director of the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, in an email to her agency’s governing board on Monday.
“This is not the first instance in which (the state Department of Education) has acted in ways that appear to exceed its legal authority, and the pattern raises ongoing concerns about governance and the proper exercise of statutory responsibility,” Oftedal wrote in the email, which Oklahoma Voice obtained through a records request.
A spokesperson for Walters’ administration, Quinton Hitchcock, said Tuesday that neither the state Legislature nor the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability, which governs Oftedal’s agency, “has any control over teacher certifications.”
State law and the Education Department’s own website would disagree. Both acknowledge the Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability is responsible for adopting competency tests that teachers must pass to become certified in Oklahoma.
Gov. Kevin Stitt’s education secretary, Nellie Tayloe Sanders, leads the commission. The Governor’s Office did not return a request for comment from Sanders about Walters’ teacher assessment.
The state Legislature also has an integral role in teacher certification. Legislators write the laws that determine the certification process and can add new testing requirements.
The state recently added a new Foundations of Reading assessment to earn a certification in early childhood, elementary or special education after the Legislature required that teacher candidates demonstrate knowledge of the core elements of reading instruction.
The Legislature also approved a proposal from Walters this year to have newly certified teachers take a written version of the U.S. Naturalization Test. Legislators declined to apply the requirement to veteran teachers renewing their certification.
Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, said Oklahoma schools already face an educator workforce shortage and shoulder too many burdensome requirements without adding in Walters’ test targeting blue states.
“It’s silly to impose any requirements on out-of-state teachers in the middle of a massive teacher shortage,” said Waldron, the chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party and a former teacher. “Secondly, it’s silly to presume that teachers are scrambling to get here from California and New York to promote woke ideologies in Oklahoma. Thirdly, it’s simply not legal.”
Walters has yet to publicly show the full “America First” test, despite announcing it more than a month ago and touting it in several local and national media appearances.
His spokesperson, Hitchcock, declined to provide a copy of it to Oklahoma Voice, saying the assessment “is not available to be shared yet.” Hitchcock also declined to disclose the number of California and New York teachers who have become certified in Oklahoma over the past five years.
Walters has said the new test would keep “woke agendas” and “leftist propaganda” out of Oklahoma schools by asking questions about “fundamental biological differences between boys and girls,” American exceptionalism and the U.S. Constitution. He said he is developing the test with the media entity PragerU, whose conservative content he’s promoted.
The state superintendent has faced questions multiple times in recent months about whether he overstepped his authority while announcing major changes to state policy.
Last month, he ordered all public schools to provide cafeteria meals at no cost to students, despite no state law enabling such a mandate, and he announced a wholesale change to Oklahoma’s student testing system before getting permission from the U.S. Department of Education.
After consulting her agency’s legal counsel, Oftedal raised similar doubts about the legal basis for Walters’ teacher assessment.
State law on the matter is straightforward. The Oklahoma State Board of Education “shall issue a certificate to teach to a person who holds a valid out-of-state certificate,” according to statute. A certified teacher coming from out of state also must pass a background check.
Aspiring educators coming from out of state who aren’t yet certified can earn an Oklahoma teaching license by passing “a competency exam used in a majority of the other states” and clearing a background check, according to state law.
Competency exams review a teaching candidate’s grasp of the subject area they want to teach and their professional knowledge of working in education.
A teacher shouldn’t be kept out of the classroom because of their personal political views, Waldron said.
Waldron, who formerly taught high school history, said students should learn different viewpoints, even their teacher’s, while being allowed to develop their own opinions.
“You shouldn’t sanitize the classroom,” Waldron said. “You should let students know that there are different points of view, and you should teach them (methods of) argument. It’s a natural inclination of teenagers, anyway, and then they use their reasoning skills to form their own opinions. That’s democracy. What this state superintendent is practicing is not democracy.”
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence.
