OKLAHOMA CITY — State Superintendent Ryan Walters will resign from office with more than a year left in his term for a new position leading a conservative teacher organization, he announced Wednesday night while speaking live on FOX News.
Walters said he will become the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a newly formed group that markets itself as an alternative to teacher unions. He expects to resign in early October, his campaign manager and senior adviser Matt Langston told Oklahoma Voice.
His resignation means Gov. Kevin Stitt will have to appoint a candidate to lead the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the state Board of Education through the rest of Walters’ term, which ends in January 2027. Stitt has not yet said who he will choose.
In a brief appearance on FOX late Wednesday night, Walters said he is “excited” to step down and accept his new position. He said his goal is to “destroy the teachers unions.”
“We have seen the teachers unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools,” he said. “We are one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the country. We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers unions once and for all. So, this fight’s going national, and we will get our schools back on track.”
The Teacher Freedom Alliance has 2,617 enrolled members, according to its website.
Langston said he plans to leave the Education Department on Sept. 30. The Texas-based political strategist has been a top leader at the agency since Walters took office in January 2023 while at the same time working on various political campaigns.
Walters, a former teacher turned far-right-wing firebrand, was elected to a four-year term as Oklahoma’s top education official in 2022. He could have been eligible for a second term had he run for reelection.
For much of his two years and 10 months in office, he’s been at the center of numerous controversies, most recently for being at odds with Stitt, a former ally, and the state Board of Education.
His tactics frustrated even fellow conservatives when he abruptly and sometimes silently made significant changes to state education policy. Doing so prompted frequent criticism from both Republicans and Democrats that Walters sought self-promotion more than academic improvement in Oklahoma’s struggling public education system.
While he also put money into improving teacher recruitment and student tutoring, Walters spent much of his time in office railing against perceived liberal ideology while promoting education with a conservative, patriotic and pro-Bible lens.
Although Walters has been widely expected to seek higher office, he mentioned no plans for a future political campaign. His new position won’t require him to move out of state, Langston said.
Like Walters, the Teacher Freedom Alliance is a vocal critic of teacher unions. The Freedom Foundation, a national conservative think tank, created the Teacher Freedom Alliance this year to offer liability insurance, professional development, and “alternative curriculums and pedagogies” to educators.
Walters celebrated the organization’s launch in March by encouraging educators to join it as “an alternative to woke teachers’ unions.”
“Today, Superintendent Ryan Walters announced intent to lead the charge to offer a private industry solution to the far left-leaning Teachers’ Unions that have infected our public education system for decades,” a March 10 news release from his office stated.
