The very real damage Ryan Walters has caused can't afford to be forgotten (and must be remedied)
Ryan Walters is difficult the way Donald Trump is difficult, the way Baghdad Bob was difficult, the way the vast majority of right-wing radio hosts are difficult, the way Joseph McCarthy was difficult.
Because he never stops, because he has an answer for everything even though it’s always wrong, because he has no shame, because he sees himself as the only non-expendable quantity.
It’s quite the combination because it makes him so hard to contain.
He may lose every battle, but the drumbeat of the aggregate, a firehose of disingenuousness, make those losses nearly unnoticeable, a new outrage landing before the last one settles, making numbness the constant, leading to conversations like this:
“Did you see what Ryan Walters did the other day?”
“Yeah, what an idiot, he never stops.”
“I know.”
“You ready to order?”
So it goes.
I try to not let people forget.
I use the truth to pillory him for his ineptitude, shamelessness, bullying and the smallness of his narcissism.
Here, he’s held accountable for whatever that’s still worth.
Here, he’s treated with the same contempt he treats others and, bonus, it’s entirely fact based, more than anybody can say about him.
Still, it’s hard to keep track.
The Oklahoman does a terrific job, specifically behind the reporting of Murray Evans and M. Scott Carter.
The Frontier does a great job, as does Oklahoma Voice.
Yet, because it’s such a torrent, because Walters makes perpetual headlines, perspective remains difficult.
That’s why everybody needs to read this piece from The74, a non-profit newsroom not centered in Oklahoma, but covering education nationwide.
First appearing Tuesday, The74’s Linda Jacobsen penned an article that’s done all of us a favor, summarizing the last two years of Walters state superintendency.
When you read it, though please stay for the highlights I’m about to offer, perhaps you’ll be struck as I’ve been struck.
Mainly, Walters’ saga is not a game.
It’s not about one side trying to own the other, but about the real harm brought to real people via his never-ending negligence.
Indeed, despite the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency (LOFT) finding no malfeasance warranting “referral to law enforcement agencies for criminal investigation” from Walters and his state department of education in its 56-page investigative report issued Tuesday, very real damage has still been done by the man and his department since he took office.
Quoting Jacobsen’s piece, let us count the ways.
• Services for many students with disabilities were disrupted for about a month when teachers and therapists couldn’t access a database with special education plans. The state also delayed $250,000 for emergency inhalers to combat asthma, a condition suffered by about 10% of Oklahoma students.
So, the students in need of the most specialized of education plans, in many cases, could not benefit from them because Walters and his department were asleep at the wheel. Though some districts may have fantastic special education programs and need no assistance at all, you know those plans are a lifeline for districts not awash in such resources. It’s a dereliction of duty creating real victims. It’s exactly the kind of thing the education department exists to deliver. It’s basic, but Walters and his department cannot fulfill basic.
The failure to deliver on inhalers?
Hopefully nobody died while Walters and the department sat on a quarter million dollars earmarked for one thing and one thing only: inhalers.
• When confronted, Walters frequently gets personal. That’s what happened in a spat over Title I funding … a particular concern in Oklahoma, where 1 in 5 children live below the poverty line and districts rely on $225 million in federal funds for tutoring and afterschool programs. Districts typically get estimates in the spring, allowing them time to recruit and hire staff for the fall.
When late July came without a word, Rob Miller, superintendent of the Bixby, Oklahoma, schools, couldn’t suppress his frustration any longer. Venting on X, he attributed the delay to Walters falling down on the job amid a “talent drain” under his leadership …
At a press conference four days later, Walters called Miller “a clown and a liar” and pointed — without evidence — to “all kinds of financial problems” in his district.
Miller, impressively unafraid of Walters, is right now suing him for defamation of character and won’t it be great should Walters receive some long overdue comeuppance hitting him in his very own wallet. Yet, the bigger point is the avoidable issue that created the spat: school districts literally did not know what to expect in the form of Title I funds for months and months, forcing them to stand still as preparers and hirers when they were supposed to be readying for the fall semester, and because incompetence trickles down far faster than tax cuts given millionaires and billionaires, real damage was done to the those districts and those districts’ students that were left in the dark.
Too easily, the episode becomes a he-said-he-said between Miller and Walters and sides are taken. Meanwhile, injury is occurring to the very people the department of education exists to benefit: students.
• In an August interview with Blaze News Tonight, a conservative talk show, Walters made no apologies for promoting his priorities over maintaining a bureaucracy he says has turned schools into “state-sponsored atheist centers.” He said state employees who were fired or quit were part of a “left-wing apparatus” that has tried to undermine his agenda. He even plans to use savings from their departure to help defray the multimillion-dollar costs of his Bible initiative.
I could spin my wheels writing 5,000 words about Walters’ naked disingenuousness when it comes to quotes like those and I might feel better afterward, yet the bigger point is not those words, designed to inflame culture wars, perpetuate his own power and shine his star brighter on the Christian Nationalist stage. No. The bigger point is why do you think Walters and his department have been derelict in so many of their basic duties? It’s because he didn’t get himself elected to fulfill them in the first place. He got himself elected to fight the culture wars, not to educate Oklahoma students. Period.
Where’s Oklahoma rank in education again?
• One member of the education department exodus under Walters was Matt Colwell … To Colwell, episodes like the Title I blowup fit a familiar pattern. “His strength is threatening; his weakness is administration,” he said of Walters. “There were tons of comments like, ‘I’ve directed my staff to do A,B,C and D on curriculum.’ And then I’d talk to the curriculum people, and they’re like, ‘We haven’t heard a thing.’ ”
There we have it. Proof from the inside.
Walters, strategist Matt Langston and spokesman Dan Isett — the entire state department functionally — just make it up as they go along, a state of affairs that, by design, leaves no room for putting students first.
Oh, yeah, Oklahoma ranks 49th in education.
If D.C. and Puerto Rico were to receive statehood, we’d probably rank 51st.
• Until recently, most district leaders were cautious about publicly criticizing Walters, and in Facebook groups, teachers warn each other to keep their social media accounts private.
With his Bible mandate, Walters went too far and the districts quit being quiet. Miller, coming after Walters from his superintendent’s position, has also changed the state of play. Still, coming after Walters from within the educational infrastructure is hardly universal and a still recent development. For most of the last two years, while Walters went after teachers, went after entire districts (like Tulsa, for instance) and mined culture wars to keep his name in lights and headlines, those he slandered spent a great deal of their time too scared to cross him rather than empowered to do what they feel called to do: educate students, the only, only, only thing Walters’ position and the department of education exist to facilitate.
Sure, he’s thrown millions away.
He’s thumbed his nose at the legislature.
He’s picked fights with the attorney general and anybody else who might lift a finger in an effort to get him to lift his own fingers in the name of doing his damn job.
It might be good theater.
It’s horrendous for education.
At everything he’s supposed to be doing, Walters is a failure.
Every Oklahoman is his victim.
Another excellent column, Clay. Walters (who reminds me of another politician) is a menace to everyone in the state, but especially our students and teachers. His focus and purpose are to promote himself, pure and simple, although there's nothing "pure" about the creep. I, too, thought the article in the 74 was well researched and well written. If you keep Walters' shortcomings (LOL) in front of the public, perhaps action will be taken to remove him.