Poli Alert Politics & Civics
Related Articles
A controversial new set of academic standards in Oklahoma requires high school students to study alleged “discrepancies” in the 2020 presidential election, a move that education experts and voting rights advocates say reinforces debunked claims and undermines trust in U.S. democracy.
Quietly pushed through in February and officially enacted last month, the standards were championed by Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Republican state superintendent of public instruction and a prominent conservative activist. Despite bipartisan concerns over how the standards were approved, little resistance emerged regarding the actual content, which draws directly from false narratives first promoted by Donald Trump and his allies.
Under the new U.S. History standards, students must identify supposed irregularities in the 2020 election. These include widely disproven claims such as sudden ballot “dumps,” halts in counting, security concerns over mail-in voting, and the idea that the results contradicted traditional “bellwether counties” — counties historically seen as predictive of national outcomes.
“These new standards will ensure that kids have an accurate and comprehensive view of historical events,” Walters said during a February Board of Education meeting.
“While also reinforcing the values that make our country great.”
But education experts disagree, warning that the standards conflate conspiratorial rhetoric with legitimate historical inquiry.
“That’s not teaching critical thought,” said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer for the nonpartisan Election Center.
“It’s presenting conspiracy as fact and calling it education.”
Anton Schulzki, interim executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, added that the language of the standard directs students toward a pre-determined conclusion, rather than encouraging true inquiry.
“It assumes the discrepancies exist and asks students to justify them,” Schulzki said. “That’s not inquiry-based learning. That’s ideological.”
How the standards passed — and who wrote them
The new standards bypassed normal approval processes. Walters introduced them just hours before a key February board meeting, misleading members into believing they had to vote immediately to meet a deadline.
New board members later appealed to the Legislature, saying they hadn’t had time to review them. Even Governor Kevin Stitt and Senate Republicans urged lawmakers to send the standards back for more review. But in April, after a closed-door meeting with Walters, the Republican-led Legislature allowed the standards to take effect.
Critics like Aaron Baker, a government teacher in Oklahoma City, say the entire process overrode the input of local educators, replacing their work with that of national conservative figures. Walters appointed Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation and Dennis Prager of PragerU to the standards’ Executive Review Committee — both known for promoting right-wing ideological content.
“They threw out the work of Oklahoma teachers and brought in national political operatives to dictate what Oklahoma students should learn,” Baker said.
While Baker won’t be required to teach the new history standards, he said he would present a fact-based counterpoint if he had to.
“I’ve been telling my students for four years: There was no widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election,” he said.
“That’s what the courts found, again and again.”
Legal challenge looms
A lawsuit filed by a former Republican Oklahoma attorney general could delay implementation of the standards, which are set to take effect in the 2025–26 school year. But the lawsuit focuses on procedural flaws, not the merit of the content itself.
As misinformation continues to shape public perception of the 2020 election, experts warn that Oklahoma’s move could set a dangerous precedent for injecting political narratives into classrooms.
“When schools treat these debunked theories as if they are legitimate historical facts,” Patrick said,
“they erode public trust in democracy and in the educational system itself.”
