The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked controversial new social studies standards from going into effect, ruling that the guidelines—which reference discredited claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and include dozens of references to Christianity and the Bible—were approved without the legally required public notice.
The standards, written and adopted under former State Superintendent Ryan Walters, a Republican, are one example of how Oklahoma moved to include explicit references to Christianity and endorsement of conservative politics in classrooms during his tenure.
Under Walters, Oklahoma also ordered schools to keep a copy of the Bible in every classroom, and instituted an ideological screening test for teachers looking to transfer from “woke” states.
But after Walters’ departure in September, the state has rolled back some of these measures. New State Superintendent Lindel Fields, a Republican, announced the end of the Bible mandate this fall, and said the screening test is not a certification requirement in Oklahoma. (The state supreme court dismissed a separate lawsuit last month challenging the Bible requirement after Fields said he wouldn’t enforce the mandate for classrooms to retain copies.)
Now with this week’s decision from the state Supreme Court, Oklahoma must go back to the drawing board on the social studies standards, too. Teachers will continue to use the 2019 social studies standards, pending a new revision process.
Even before the court’s decision, Fields had announced tentative plans to make rewrites to the 2025 standards, citing a need to evaluate whether additions were “germane to what kids need to learn,” the Oklahoma Voice reported in October.
“This is a victory for transparency, fairness, and the constitutional rights of all Oklahomans,” said Brent Rowland, the legal director of the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, one of the organizations representing the group of parents, students, teachers, and faith leaders who made up the plaintiffs who sued to declare the standards unenforceable.
“The authority to govern comes with accountability for making decisions in the full view of the people the government serves,” he said, in a statement. “Public school classrooms may not be used to endorse religious doctrine—no matter what the religion is or how many people follow it.”
In an emailed statement, Oklahoma Department of Education spokeswoman Joleen Chaney said that the 2019 standards will remain in effect, in accordance with the court’s decision.
“We are committed to transparency and adherence to the Open Meeting Act as we begin the work of developing new standards,” she said. “Oklahoma families, teachers, and students deserve confidence in both the processes and the products from the State Department of Education.”
Last-minute changes to draft standards violated state law, court ruled
The court’s ruling hinges on a central—and contentious—piece of the standards revision process from this past year.
In a February state board of education meeting this year, Walters presented a revised draft of the social studies standards for a vote. However, that draft included changes from the version that had been last posted publicly. These included language requiring that students learn about “discrepancies” in the 2020 presidential election results, and be able to “identify the source of the COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab.”
Several members of the board said they weren’t aware of these changes before they voted to approve the standards. The state department of education also didn’t notify the public of the updates to the language.
The court decided that these actions resulted in a violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act, which requires state bodies to provide public notice of meetings at least 24 hours advance, specifying the agenda. The court ruled that because updates to the standards weren’t made public ahead of the meeting, the board of education violated this act.
Earlier this year, experts from national social studies and history education organizations spoke out against the proposed standards, arguing that they could give credence to factually inaccurate claims. Independent fact-checking organizations have found no evidence for widespread, coordinated election interference in 2020.
But language about the election in the standards—including requirements to teach about “the security risks of mail-in balloting” and “sudden batch dumps,” for example, could suggest an open debate where there is none, experts told Education Week in March.
