No state education chief has done more to show just how in line he is with Donald Trump than Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s elected superintendent of public instruction.
In fact, Walters has pursued an agenda—both in policy and rhetoric—molded so closely in the MAGA image that many suspect he’s auditioning for a role in a potential second Trump administration, and that he could be a real contender for secretary of education.
“I’m happy to help President Trump in any way that I can,” Walters said in an interview with Education Week about whether he was interested in the job, his federal policies priorities, and his record in Oklahoma. “My focus is to help him get elected. His Cabinet selections, that’s up to him.”
Still, it’s hard to imagine Walters could have answered questions about the gig and his views on federal policy in a way that Trump—who famously prizes loyalty in his appointees—would find more appealing.
Walters can’t name a K-12 issue on which he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Trump—including a proposal to make school principals an elected position, which other supporters of the former president have said would be hard to implement. He also thinks Trump could be the president who finally abolishes the U.S. Department of Education, a Republican holy grail since the department was founded back in 1980.
Walters, who was elected in 2022, endorsed the former president and pledged to campaign for him in November of last year, when Trump still faced credible rivals for the GOP nomination.
And like the former president, Walters isn’t afraid to be combative. He’s gone after teachers and even superintendents who he sees as promoting a liberal agenda.
He’s also required school districts to report on any spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. And he’s supported a bid in his state to create the first religious charter school and sought to put Trump-approved Bibles in public school classrooms.
His tenure as state chief has been dominated by investigations—including from Oklahoma’s own Republican state auditors’ office— into his management of federal pandemic relief funds. And a group of Republicans in the state legislature over the summer pushed for Walters’ impeachment over his management of the state education department, spending priorities, and transparency.
Walters spoke with Education Week on Oct. 15. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Your name often comes up when I talk to Republicans in Washington about who might be Donald Trump’s education secretary. Is that a job that you would be interested in?
I’m happy to help President Trump in any way that I can. I mean, the president has laid forth the best education agenda the country has ever seen. We have been working in Oklahoma to get indoctrination out of our schools, fighting the teachers’ unions, getting the Bible back in schools, getting the pornography out of school.
I love that President Trump’s led to getting us back to understanding American exceptionalism. So, you know, I’m happy to help the president in any way I can. I would want to be able to help him in any way moving forward.
So, to be clear, does helping him include serving in his administration, potentially as education secretary?
My focus is to help him get elected. You know, his Cabinet selections, that’s up to him. That’s his decision.
So, if it’s not you, is there anybody whose name you want to suggest?
President Trump could have a lot of good names to choose from. I trust him. I think that he does a great job of finding talented folks to surround himself with. I trust the process. I think that he’s going to have an incredibly talented team around him.
I think it’s going to be somebody that can step in there day one and completely dismantle [the U.S. Department of Education].
Speaking of that, as a former teacher and state chief, you know how much schools depend on grants like Title I and state grants for special education. What happens to them if the department goes away?
Here’s what we don’t need: We don’t need an agency that is putting forth all these regulations and strings on all the money going to the states. If we want to keep some of those programs, we can block-grant them in the states. I believe we should have a national school choice tax credit that should mirror what we have here in Oklahoma, that doesn’t require this gigantic government agency overseeing it.
If you take that kind of model, you don’t need the apparatus of a huge, monstrous Department of Education that continues to cause more problems than to be of any assistance to states.
It’s clear you’re a huge Trump fan. What do you wish he had gotten accomplished in his first term? You just talked about a tax credit. That was a proposal that never really got off the ground. Why do you think he wasn’t able to accomplish everything he wanted to?
Congress has to act, you know? In the first term, I saw President Trump lay out an incredible vision and I saw Congress not move the way that they should have on his initiatives.
What I see now is that the president is more popular than ever. He’s stronger than ever.
It’s amazing to me how little we’ve heard about education from so many in the national media because President Trump’s won the argument on education. His vision has won the day with voters across the country. And so look, I think he’s going to come into office full steam ahead.
In the second term, I truly believe that President Trump will be the president to truly do away with the Department of Education.
I think you have the tax credit, the consideration of, how do we get back to understanding American exceptionalism in our schools? We want to have patriotic students. I think President Trump has a clear vision of how to do that. And I think you, in the second term, you see all these things accomplished.
You’re a former teacher. What do you think a former teacher, or a former educator, can bring to the secretary role that somebody who hadn’t been in the classroom could not?
I loved teaching. Loved working directly with kids, you know.
I truly believe that our best teachers should make more [money], but we should do it based on their performance. President Trump has laid these plans out as well. It’s essential to talk about using free market solutions for education. We’ve got some great teachers in the country. They should be making more money. We should get out of the socialist system where all teachers make the same.
Do you think the best teachers don’t make enough? Or that all teachers don’t make enough?
In education, we’ve just continued to throw money at the problem. And look, money is not the problem. The problem is, is where the money is going. We have too many administrators. There’s too much administrative bloat. There’s too much bureaucracy in education. The dollars that are currently being spent in education should be invested into the classroom. The best teachers should make more money. We’ve seen tremendous success with it here in Oklahoma.
(Note: Oklahoma’s Teacher Empowerment Program provides funds for districts to use to boost the salaries of teachers they designate as advanced, lead, or master teachers. Another programs to draw teachers to fill hard-to-staff positions through large signing bonuses. Some teachers who were initially approved for and received the extra pay were later told they didn’t meet the program’s requirements and would need to return the money.)
When your name comes up as an education secretary, folks do mention some of the controversies surrounding you, such as, you helped a tech company secure a no-bid contract to quickly distribute funding for school supplies to families during the pandemic, and they ended up buying grills and Christmas trees with the money. There’s a grand jury investigation.
(Note: After this interview, news broke that the grand jury found Gov. Kevin Stitt and Walters responsible for mishandling the relief funds, but stopped short of issuing indictments.The panel’s report did not mention Stitt or Walters by name but concluded they had been “grossly negligent” in allowing pandemic relief funds intended to help children learn at home during the pandemic to instead be directed to parents’ personal use. )
When you take on the teachers’ union, which have been a force of detriment to every student in the country, and you take them on aggressively and directly, they come after you. I’ve faced all these lies, all these attacks. I will continue to fight for kids. I will continue to fight back against all the attacks that come my way.
[American Federation of Teachers president] Randi Weingarten put my picture on the big screen at her big conference this summer, pointed to me and said that they’re coming after me this fall. I’m one of their top targets in the country.
(Weingarten did have Walters’ picture, along with those of other conservative proponents of private school choice, on a screen behind her at the AFT’s summer convention in Houston. She didn’t talk about going after him this fall but accused the group of “defunding and destabilizing public schools.”)
You mentioned those issues. We had a vendor that was a major problem, and we held them accountable legally for allowing those things to happen. (Note: Stitt sued the vendor in question, but that lawsuit was dismissed.)
Is there anything on which you disagree with President Trump? For instance, he’s proposed electing school principals, which to many seems unworkable.
No, I’ve loved everything he’s put out on education. We’ve got states all over the country that elect their superintendents. I think what President Trump’s focused on, and I love it, is how do we empower families?
We have education bureaucrats that are left-wing, elitist, that think they know best for families, and they have become so radicalized that our families are going, “what is going on here? We want our kids to get a good education. We want our kids to grow up, have good families, and be able to go get good jobs, and it’s not happening, and we don’t understand.” President Trump has thrown out so many great ideas to say, “we’ve got to be aggressive in shifting the pendulum back and empowering families.”
