Oklahoma officials make education look like the ‘Twilight Zone,’ and no one wants to see the twist

(Photo by Brent Fuchs/For Oklahoma Voice)

Every time it seems like our public school policies can’t get any more bizarre, our education officials manage to up the ante.

In the past month alone, they’ve announced that:

• Bibles must be used in public school classrooms. Not as a dust collector or doorstop but as a historical text.
• Rather than relying on traditional social studies experts to draft our new academic standards, we’re tapping political pundits and right-wing advocates , including one who creates offensive videos that tend to oversimplify history.
• They’re moving to strip a former Norman educator of her teaching license, despite a recommendation from a neutral judge that they shouldn’t. The teacher is not accused of committing a crime. She merely shared a QR code to a Brooklyn library card with students.
• And, we have a senior education official who apparently thinks it’s appropriate to leave glass bottles with small ghosts on chairs reserved for journalists at a public meeting. The juvenile display was accompanied by a handwritten message warning journalists to “Stop chasing ghosts.”

Time to cue the music from the “Twilight Zone.”

It’s beginning to feel like we’re part of the fictional show that started airing in the 1950s and forces its characters to face bizarre or unsettling events. The show’s stories often don’t end well and its characters face a horrendous final twist.

Our problem is that this isn’t fiction.

It’s real. And, the twists and turns keep coming at breakneck speed that’s enough to give any sane person whiplash.

Our academic outcomes definitely leave a lot to be desired, but it’s difficult to see how incorporating the Bible, tapping an unusual cast of characters to help draft “a complete overhaul to Oklahoma’s social studies standards,” and waging war on a teacher who has committed no crimes is the solution.

What are our leaders thinking?

Let’s be clear. State Superintendent Ryan Walters didn’t dig our educational system into a hole.

But he’s certainly not helping to pull us out as he trots out harebrained ideas.

And our state Board of Education, whose members are handpicked by Gov. Kevin Stitt, take those ideas and run with them.

These five board members are knowingly allowing chaos to happen.

These are people that are supposed to represent all of us — not just far right-wing Republicans.

We’re relying on them to reduce increasing chronic absenteeism rates, boost our statewide reading and math proficiency scores and better prepare our students for college, university or technical school .

Yes, those are really complicated problems to solve, but we’re trusting them to do it. If they can’t, maybe this isn’t the board for them.

Our board should also serve as a counterbalance to ideas proposed by Walters, not as a rubber stamp.

Our state Senate for whatever reason gave each of these people’s nomination the greenlight, which sends a signal that our upper chamber is also fine with the current state of affairs.

If this political theater were actually generating better outcomes for the over 700,000 youth that rely on public schools, perhaps we might all be more open to these unusual capers and techniques.

But it’s not.

We still rank at the bottom in any subject area that matters most to the future health of our state.

And rather than arguing about concrete improvement strategies that would unify Oklahoma and benefit all schools, we find ourselves fighting each other over social issues.

It’s a strategy both far sides of the political spectrum are increasingly relying on to distract us from their lack of real solutions.

But it begs the question, how much latitude should we give this board?

The last thing our state needs is a whitewashing and oversimplification of history that focuses on how exceptional we are and have been. Oklahoma’s past includes massacring Black people and the abhorrent treatment of Native Americans. History isn’t meant to be rosy – it’s supposed to tell the truth.

We all deserve better.

And hopefully, our state Board of Education members will choose to focus on a concrete path forward for our schools rather than vote-peddling controversy.

Because the path they’ve chosen for us for these past few weeks is riddled with potholes and likely litigation.

It’s already an absurd tale. No one wants to see an even more dystopian plot twist.

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