The Daily Signal - Oklahoma Has Best School Choice in America, Superintendent Says

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Every state should adopt Oklahoma's school choice model, the state's Superintendent of Education Ryan Walters said. "We have the best school choice in the country, and it's a national model that every state should follow," Walters told The Daily Signal at Erick Erickson’s The Gathering conference in Atlanta over the weekend. "But frankly, I think that I've asked for federal legislation along this way as well." Walters said improving education affects the whole state, and passing federal school choice legislation would improve the whole country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Nothing else is Rees. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, August 15th. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell, and I sat down with state superintendent of education Ryan Walters at the gathering conference in Atlanta to discuss the state of education in Oklahoma and throughout the United States. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. Looking for a podcast that cuts through the noise and delivers honest, truthful, and conservative perspectives, check out the Daily Signal podcast. Each weekday, we bring you interviews with policymakers on the issues that matter most. From breaking down complex legislation to exposing media bias, we're committed to giving you the facts that you won't hear from the establishment media.

Subscribe now to the Daily Signal podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell, and I'm here with Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of education in Oklahoma. This election cycle, the border crisis is a top issue for a lot of Americans. How is illegal immigration affecting Oklahoma schools? School districts are going to actually account for how many illegal immigrants are in their schools, turn those over to us at the State Department. So we can see how big the problem is because we've got to understand the numbers. We've got to understand the fiscal impact so we can understand how to deal with it.

So we're the first state in the country to say schools, you're going to tell us, you're going to keep account of it, and we're going to know how many illegal immigrants are attending our schools. You've also seen a radical left teachers union who have pushed indoctrination in a way that like we've never seen before. Pushing transgender ideology, pushing pornography like genderqueer and flamer into our schools under the guise of inclusivity, fighting accountability.

Remember, these are the same groups that closed our schools down during COVID. So what you've seen is this radical agenda, Marxist agenda from the left-wing teachers union, but you've also seen them capture so many of our schools and institutions that our test scores are terrible. indoctrination has been taking place all over the country. And so that's why we've had a very aggressive agenda to fight back on it. We've seen a lot of success and other states should be

following what we're doing. You have to play offense to get the education system back on track. That means taking the unions out of control and putting parents in control. It means using the free market to drive performance through things like performance pay like we have in Oklahoma, not socialist schemes like the teacher's union pushes. And lastly, you've got to focus on academics, not indoctrination. We should be teaching kids how to think, not what to think. You start doing that and you develop a love for country by making sure that our kids understand American history. They truly read the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and they understand them. And if you get to that point, you're now going to start creating a population that love

this country that are patriotic, that understand what made America great, and that way we can make it great again. Awesome. And how does it affect these public schools when they have a legal immigrant students, and why is it important to be aware of the number that are there? Great question. So a few things here. Number one. Schools look at their population and they make a lot of decisions based on enrollment, right? How many teachers are we going to hire? How many support staff do we hire? How big are our building sizes? What happens with these illegal immigrant caravans is all of a sudden you have 300 new students? And by the way, not over the summer in the middle of the school year. Well, what happens? Okay. Well, the teachers that were normally teaching taxpayers' kids, well, now you've got a

each dramatically more kids right in the middle of the year. Does the school staff up? Do they hire new teachers, new counselors? Well, you don't have a new tax base coming in that's paying into the state the way that the citizens are. So this creates this burden, this fiscal burden on a school district, and then just you have to decide what you do with the finite amount of resources you have, right? Number two, what you've seen is the drug problem this is created through a fentanyl crisis has required schools to use a lot more resources towards ensuring that. that they are keeping this drug out of their school. And I do, and when you talk about fentanyl, something important to remember is it's very different than a lot of the other drugs that we deal with.

Fettonol, you see routinely people on the first time they try it die. I mean, we have seen kids drop dead the first time they use fentanyl. And so it's incredibly dangerous. We've got to get it out of our schools. But again, you see a fiscal impact, right? The school's trying to cover this. You also see the deaths of young people and families and the disruption there. And then you also see how you're dealing with finite resources when you have a massive illegal immigrant population that's coming in throughout the year. And should taxpayer dollars be going towards education of non-American citizens? So look, that's what we've got to take a look at here.

And this is where we can't even get to the bottom of how many illegal immigrants are in our schools. You know, right now, we have to get the information available so that we can go back to the public and come to a conclusion of how do you deal with this problem? Look, we're going to send the feds a bill. Biden and Harris decided to leave the border open intentionally because they wanted future Democrat voters. So what did they do? They wanted an open border. They wanted this future Democrat voters. Well, now they've overrun our cities, our schools, our states, our country. And so, okay, well, who's going to pay for it now? They just look at taxpayers. So we're going to send the feds a bill and go, hey, you're going to help us out with this. And we're going to have a national discussion on

what are we going to do to get to the federal? under control and to make sure that taxpayers' funds are being used appropriately and that our schools are put on a path to being successful. But again, Kamala Harris, and I'm going to tell you, her vice president is one of the most extreme leftists, just in general, but on education policy, you couldn't have found someone who is a further left ideologue than him. Waltz has sat here. He closed down schools, cheerleading closing down schools, said, I won't have an impact on kids. Defended it even after the fact. When we've seen, seen the dramatic impact it had on kids. This is the guy who has pushed these left-wing ideology

requiring tampons in the boys' bathrooms. I mean, just absurdities, but he is the poster child of what the Marxist Teachers Union has tried to push on our schools. If you allow Harris and Waltz into the White House, if this country allows it to happen, by not getting out the vote, by not making sure that President Trump is not re-elected, what you're going to see is the most dramatic Marxist agenda, our schools have ever seen. And remember, that's, in the way. the context of what you're seeing right now. This gender ideology, this overrunning of our schools of illegal immigrants, it's going to be accelerated dramatically by allowing those two in the White House. Interesting. And speaking of teachers' unions and walls, he has accepted more than 135,000

from teachers' unions during his various campaigns, both from 2005-2018 in his congressional races and then also in his gubernatorial elections. Do you think that this is reflected in his education policies? Absolutely. He's a puppet for the teachers union. I mean, Randy Weingarten put out her statement the other day. They control him. That is what the teachers union does, is they come in and they control politicians. He is lockstep with their radical Marxist agenda. So look at it. The teachers unions are pushing gender ideology. They want genderqueer and flamer in the hands of kindergartners. That's what Waltz is going to do. They want schools shut down to hold. off for ransom payments from the federal government. That's what Waltz wants to do. They want to

push parents out of power by fighting school choice, by fighting transparency in schools so they can funnel the money however they want to their friends, their buddies. That's what he's for. So look at all these radical positions of the teachers union. Look how they've put a target on every parents back in the country. Look how they've fought parents' ability to decide the school of their choice for their kids. This is what Waltz has championed. And he's pretty open about it. I mean, I will say, say this, you can go read what he said. He is a complete, completely lockstep with the National Teachers Union, which is one of the most radical Marxist organizations in the country. Absolutely. And speaking of school choice, you started an office of school choice in Oklahoma.

How have you seen school choice initiatives affect students, especially low-income students at failing schools? Oh, we're so proud of it. We're so excited in Oklahoma. We have our school choice, a universal school choice program where parents can send their kids to a private school, they can send them to a charter school, they can send them to home schooling. And so we start an office of school choice to help parents navigate that. And it has been tremendous. Our parents are so excited at these options. We're seeing record enrollment in these new schools. We're seeing new schools being created. So we wanted to help make sure that could happen. And we want to make sure parents could navigate this landscape. So, you know, we're one of the

first states in the country to have an office of school choice. Then I'm going to tell you, the other thing that we've been working on is we're the first state in the country. to approve a religious charter school. We are very, very proud of that. Now, there is an ongoing legal battle. I'm being attacked by the National Teachers Union on that, too, and the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. They're all suing us over that

and trying to stop kids from being able to choose. But we believe this is the next front of school choice. We want to have more charter schools. We want to have more options for kids. And again, we know parents know best for kids, and it scares the teachers' union to death to see a state like Oklahoma say, we want more high-quality options for kids.

We want parents more involved in their kids' education. And again, Oklahoma, there's no state that has more school choice in Oklahoma. Wow, that's great. And what grounds are the teachers' unions, the SPLC, and the ACLU using to tell Oklahoma that it can't have a religious charter school? Yeah, well, they use the lie of separation of church and state, which is not found in the Constitution, not found on the Declaration of Independence. You're not going to find a separation of church and state.

So what they've done is they've used that phrase and weaponize. it. They are telling a school that meets every criteria that Oklahoma has, you can't be a school because you are a religious individual or a religious institution. Well, they meet all the criteria. So you are actually not allowing them to practice their religious liberty. Well, here's the reality. In Oklahoma, we will protect religious liberty. We want to make sure that our kids have the opportunity to attend a high-quality Christian school. That's what they choose. So we're going to continue to fight for that and we're going to continue to fight to be the most pro-school choice state in the country. And so we're not going to back down from that fight. We just

voted to send the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. And that's where we'll be going next. And again, we want our parents to have every option available. The parents deserve it, their kids deserve it, or state deserves it. Yesterday, Governor Stitt said that Oklahoma has the best school choice in the country. What makes it that way? Yeah. So we do. We have the best school choice in the country. and it's a national model that every state should follow, but frankly, I think that I've asked for federal legislation along this way as well. It is a tax credit, so it is a refundable tax credit, which means you can get it immediately. So if you send your kids to a private school, that's paid for it now, for the next year. And what this allows you to do is to have maximum mobility with what you're doing.

So whether it functions like an ESA, but it's through a tax credit form, which again is so important that it will work for both homeschooling, private schools alike. It works in both manners. But nationally, we've seen other school choice options fail nationally. I think this is the path. I think we need, with President Trump's election this November, we need to immediately move to have a universal school choice bill passed for the entire country through a refundable tax credit. They need to use exactly our model in Oklahoma. And then every kid in the country, it doesn't matter if you're in the bluest of blue state. Doesn't matter if you're in the blue state. It doesn't matter if you're in, you know, Waltz's Minnesota, you know, these far left-wing states, it won't matter.

Every family could use that tax credit to send their kids where they want to go to school. I think that is a game changer for the country. You look at economically, Oklahoma, we are seeing this dramatic economic boom. Why? Well, when you start improving education, it really touches everything. So it creates more jobs. You're getting the most out of every kid, so you're creating more jobs. Businesses more want to move to your state.

why? Well, they want their kids in high quality schools. They want their parents to be able to choose options because all of their employees are also parents. And so it really touches all of the different subjects. It really touches all of the different areas here. And so the more that we can unlock the potential of every child, the better off the entire country will be, quality of life, of families, everything. So that needs to be done. And with President Trump's election, I think it will absolutely happen. Awesome. Yeah, it's really interesting to hear how education can come into every different area of the country's life. What would you say to Democrats who say that school choice is bad for public schools?

I would tell them to quit just being puppets of the teachers' union and repeating their lies. That is factually incorrect. Look at Arizona. Arizona of the birthplace of school choice, you know, going back over 30, you know, nearly 30 years ago, and what have you seen? We know what happens. The free market principles work, okay? Democrats and the left love to argue that somehow free,

market principles don't work in education? Well, that's baloney. Okay, free market, the free market principles work because they're based in history, right? Because they're based in universal truths that we know. And so what you see is in a school system, when you have school choice, when you have that free market approach, what's going to happen is, yes, some parents will go to private schools, they will go home school, they will use those options. And the public schools will be forced to improve. They will fill the pressure from the free market. They will improve. We saw it in Arizona. We saw it in Oklahoma. Our first year, within, universal school choice. Guess what happens? We've never had more than 40 schools come off the F-list

in Oklahoma. The first year with the universal school choice, we have over a hundred schools come off the F-list. Why? Because of that pressure. They didn't feel the pressure in the past. Now they've got the pressure of, well, if we don't improve, the kids will go to another school. And we're very open with parents from the State Department, our office of school choice. Hey, we tell parents, hey, if you're kids on an F-list, let's help you get in another school. That type of pressure applied to schools, they are improving. They are feeling that pressure, and it means better schools for all kids. So the private schools, the charter schools, the homeschool options are great. That's fantastic. But it also improves your traditional public schools as well. We've gotten the numbers on that.

The data supports it and history supports it. And that's all for today's interview edition of the Daily Signal podcast, where I sat down with state superintendent of education from Oklahoma, Ryan Walters. Have a wonderful day and be sure to tune in to the Daily Signal's top news edition later today at 5 o'clock, where we lay out the headlines of the day. Please make sure to subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you listen to podcasts and help us reach more listeners by leaving us a five-star rating in review. We read all of your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful day, and we're back with you at 5 p.m.

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