Oklahoma has approved new education standards that will require public school students to teach Donald Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election as if they were legitimate concerns.
Starting next school year, Oklahoma high school students will be asked to identify so-called “discrepancies” in the 2020 election — a shift that turns the state’s classrooms into battlegrounds for Trump’s debunked conspiracy theories.
The new curriculum, pushed by Republican state Superintendent Ryan Walters, instructs students to look at “graphs and other information” to analyze claims that have been widely disproven. Among the topics students are now expected to study: “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities,” “security risks of mail-in balloting,” “sudden batch dumps,” “an unforeseen record number of voters,” and the idea that 2020 results broke from past trends in so-called “bellwether counties.”
This language reflects Trump’s long-standing — and baseless — assertions that the 2020 election was stolen. Every major audit, recount, and court ruling in the battleground states Trump contested has confirmed Joe Biden’s victory. Trump’s legal team lost more than 60 court cases challenging the results.
Despite this, Oklahoma’s new standards frame these falsehoods as subjects for “critical thinking.”
“The standards do not instruct students on what to believe; rather, they encourage critical thinking by inviting students to examine real events, review publicly available information, and come to their own conclusions,” Walters said in a statement to the Associated Press.
But critics say there’s nothing neutral about it.
Mike Hunter, Oklahoma’s former attorney general, is now representing parents in a lawsuit against the state school board. He said officials “broke [their] own rules and ignored due process.”
The previous curriculum asked students to “examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The revised version injects Trump’s conspiracy theories directly into classroom materials — theories that Walters has openly supported.
In October, Walters praised Trump, saying “Trump’s won the argument on education.” Walters has also attacked teachers’ unions, tried to cut lessons on George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, and backed plans to insert Bibles into classrooms.
He’s also promoted a public religious charter school, a move that may reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Opposition to the new standards has come from across the political spectrum, including Republican lawmakers and the governor’s office. They were especially alarmed that some of the most controversial changes — like claims about the 2020 election and a statement that COVID-19 came from a Chinese lab — were added just hours before the vote.
Still, the effort was backed by pro-Trump groups like Moms for Liberty, who warned GOP legislators not to oppose the changes.
“If you choose to side with the liberal media and make backroom deals with Democrats to block conservative reform, you will be next,” the group warned in a letter.
Inside Oklahoma classrooms, some teachers are worried the standards will pressure educators to push political agendas.
Aaron Baker, a high school government teacher in Oklahoma City, said rural teachers may feel “emboldened” to promote personal beliefs. “If someone is welcoming the influence of these far-right organizations in our standards and is interested in inserting more of Christianity into our practices as teachers, then they’ve become emboldened,” he said. “For me, that is the major concern.”
The new standards are expected to cost Oklahoma taxpayers $33 million for updated textbooks and teaching materials.
Behind the scenes, Walters assembled a committee of conservative media figures and think tank leaders — including Dennis Prager, founder of Prager U, and Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation — to rewrite the standards. Walters said he wanted to highlight “American exceptionalism” and make the Bible an “instructional resource.”
The backlash has been swift. Parents, educators, and legal experts say the standards represent a political rewrite of history — one that trades facts for falsehoods.
“These standards represent a distorted view of social studies that intentionally favors an outdated and blatantly biased perspective,” reads the lawsuit filed by concerned parents and educators.
For now, unless the courts intervene, Oklahoma classrooms will begin teaching Trump’s discredited election theories as if they’re historical debate points — a move critics call nothing short of state-sanctioned misinformation.
