Ryan Walters resigns as Oklahoma superintendent of public instruction to head nonprofit fighting teachers’ unions 

In a stunning move, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters announced Wednesday he’s leaving his elected post Oct. 1 to become CEO of a group battling teachers unions.

Walters, a conservative who has bullishly promoted reintroducing the Christian faith to public school classrooms, told Fox 25 he is joining Teacher Freedom Alliance to continue efforts to dismantle the unions.

“We have seen the teachers’ unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools,” Walters said in an interview Wednesday. “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 is going national, and we will get our schools back on track.”

Walters and his senior advisor, Matt Langston, did not elaborate on why he is making the job change, except to affirm the desire to expand that work nationally.

“It’s going to be an incredibly powerful position for him to drive and take a fight directly to the teachers’ unions,” Langston told The Lion Thursday in an interview.

“The unions are so entrenched in the American classroom. They’re so entrenched in keeping good teachers from doing their jobs. With Ryan at the helm, it’ll be a limitless opportunity to go into every state and break teachers away from the unions and return freedom back to them.”

The alliance aims to support educators in their First Amendment rights and “to pursue excellence in the classroom free of ideological interference,” according to its website. The nonprofit announced Walters as its CEO late Wednesday night in a post on X.

“Ryan Walters fearlessly fights the woke liberal union mob. TFA will take the fight straight to the unions and we will not stop,” the post reads. “Together, we will build a national movement that is centered on freedom and common sense, not on bullying and intimidation. Educators will now be able to break free.”

Although the alliance is based in Grapevine, Texas, near Dallas, Langston said Walters will continue to stay involved in Oklahoma schools.

There, he gained a reputation as something of a maverick, never missing an opportunity to open doors for Christianity and the Bible to be used in schools.

Among his efforts were purchasing Bibles for classrooms, sending a video to schools urging them to pray for President Donald Trump and the recent introduction of a test for teachers coming from out of state designed to root out any “woke” candidates.

He was rumored to be on the short list to become federal education secretary when Donald Trump won reelection last year, a post that ultimately went to Linda McMahon.

Just on Tuesday, Walters announced his state would partner with Turning Point USA to plant chapters in each of the state’s high schools to promote “American exceptionalism,” including freedom of speech and the sharing of faith, in honor of the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk.

“Charlie Kirk has left the most tremendous legacy, and the students are gravitating towards it,” Walters said in the same interview with Fox. “We’ve never seen a national movement like this, of so many kids, so many parents, so willing to step up and say, ‘listen, we have got to get the country back on track.

“We’ve got to turn away from this radical leftism [and] just the hate and vitriol coming out of that. Let’s get back to a place where we can talk to each other, openly discuss. Charlie Kirk was the best example of that.”

Walters, whose term would have ended in 2027, had his detractors, including some who applauded his exit from the state.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said there was a “stream of never-ending scandal and political drama” under Walters, whom Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed education secretary from 2020 until he assumed the elected position.

“The Stitt-Walters era has been an embarrassment to our state,” Drummond said in a statement. “Even worse, test scores and reading proficiency are at historic lows.”

But Langston said there’s been “a constant attack and lies told” about Walters, who faced scrutiny after a movie channel playing on his computer was accidentally displayed on a TV during a closed-door meeting in July, showing nude images from several R-rated movies. No charges were filed following an investigation, local media reported.

“It’s completely unrelated to what he’s doing,” Langston said. “The fact is that there’s an opportunity and a national surge that, quite frankly, he’s taking a step and doing a much bigger role and involvement for the future.”

The state’s school choice program expanded under Walters, who was a strong supporter of it. He also required biblical instruction in Oklahoma schools for grades fifth to 12^th, The Lion reported.

“The Bible is a necessary historical document, to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system,” Walters said in his announcement.

Despite critiques on the failure of Oklahoma’s schools, Langston said Walters’ efforts have been “a foundational reset” over the past three years so education can “have tremendous growth” over the next 10 years.

“Liberal infrastructure has been reset and it will be on a path to regaining the ranking that it deserves,” he said. “Kids are learning to read. We’re seeing parents are far more involved.”

His legacy, Langston said, “is going to be that he’s put parents back in charge, that he has tackled the big issues that a lot of people have been unwilling to do. He has driven DEI out of the classroom. He has found and recruited thousands of new teachers back to Oklahoma, and he’s resetting there. He has reset the classroom where it has gotten back to teaching, not indoctrinating.”

Staff writer Adam Wittenberg contributed to this report.