State Superintendent Ryan Walters reacts to Gov. Stitt's removal of 3 education board members

A recent decision by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt to remove three members of the state’s education board has sparked reaction, including from State Superintendent Ryan Walters.

Stitt says the removal of the board members was due to disappointing National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores.

Griffin Media’s Haley Weger spoke with Walters about Stitt's decision.

Related: Gov. Stitt Addresses Ryan Walters, Education board shakeup, Immigration in Schools

Q: Can you tell me your immediate reaction to these three board members being removed and replaced? 

“My first thought is, the governor seems to be pretty confused on what his board has done recently. And the first part of that is, I made the decision to follow President Trump's executive order to work with ICE and work with law enforcement, and President Trump's team. Now Kevin said he doesn't want me to work with President Trump on that effort. That wasn't a board vote. That was a decision I made.

The second part is the board voting to make sure that President Trump's team has the data and information that they need was a vote that they took, and I think it's really unfortunate that the governor does not want us to follow President Trump's executive orders and work with ICE and law enforcement. 

So, you know, I appreciate those board members continuing to work to make our school safer and better, and it's really unfortunate to see them go.”

Q: Did you have any communication with the governor before or after he made this decision? 

“No, I did not.”

Q: So just to be clear, did you choose those three board members or were they appointed? Who chose those three board members that were removed? 

“The governor chose the board members.”

Q: Do you see any reason to have them removed? 

“Not only do I not see any reason for them to be removed, they were some of the most premier board members in the country. What we've seen are incredible education reforms here in our state. 

We've seen record improvement, record amount of F schools coming off the F list. We've seen dramatic improvement from our urban city school. We have followed the will of Oklahomans with banning DEI, critical race theory from our schools. Transgenderism. We fought the Biden administration. We've been the first state to work very closely with the Trump administration on implementing their education agenda, and these board members have been crucial in that. 

You know, the governor does not want us to follow President Trump's guidance and his executive orders and it's unfortunate that these board members were removed, but you know, it's not going to stop us from continuing to work to bring President Trump's vision to Oklahoma and continue to work to improve our schools for parents, teachers and kids.”

Q: The governor also mentioned the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores. Can you talk a little bit about how they dropped since those board members came on? And do you think the board has any correlation with NAEP scores? 

“Again, there's a lot of confusion going on over there in the governor's office, I guess. The scores did not drop. As a matter of fact, the scores remain the same. We did see a dramatic improvement from our urban score. The Tulsa and Oklahoma City areas went up dramatically. And remember, NAEP is a snapshot of the whole state. 

So we've already been working with the Trump administration to audit these scores because we improved in the toughest area to improve on: the inner city scores are the toughest to move. We moved from 48th to around 33rd in our urban city school, so we had a dramatic, more than 10-point ranking jump in those areas that we focused on. 

And so yeah, we're working with them now to take a look at auditing that report that came out with from Joe Biden on the overall picture of the state. 

Look, we're always going to push to improve. We want to see Oklahoma as a leader. We saw a record number of schools come off the F list. Again, they’re not really articulating what the NAEP scores actually show. 

We're looking at why Joe Biden said Florida had the biggest drop in the country. I don't believe that to be true. And why they say that we had a huge improvement in our inner city schools and yet still dropped overall as a state, something is very fishy there. And so we're going to continue to work to make sure that we've got clarity on that.”

Q: Do you know any of these new board members? How do you feel about three people coming on mid-school-year? 

“I'm excited to have them on board. I'm going to reach out to them and give them whatever they need. I always love working with folks on improving our schools. There's not going to be an issue with that. We're going to bring them on board and get them up to speed as soon as possible. 

RELATED: Oklahoma Attorney General urges new State Board of Education members to act independently

So my thought is, it is unfortunate the three great board members that have done such tremendous work for Oklahomans got treated this way, but we're going to work with the new board members. We're going to continue to advance the most aggressive education reform agenda in the country. And we're unapologetic with working with the Trump administration, and we're going to continue to do that, no matter if the governor doesn't want us to follow President Trump's orders or not.”

Q: The governor has talked in press conferences and talked to us about how he aligns with many of Trump's policies. Why do you feel like he doesn't align with those now? And why do you feel like, really, the federal government has anything to do with this? 

“He removed these board members because they voted to uphold one of President Trump's executive orders. I don't know what's changed, but I know that the governor doesn't want us to enforce President Trump's agenda. 

And I'm unapologetic about that. We're going to do that. I'm going to do that in my role. I'm always going to ask that the board follow suit. 

So again, I am going to work with President Trump. I am going to work with ICE. We are going to continue to work to make sure that our schools are safe. We're going to continue to work with law enforcement and ICE and look, that's not going to change. We're going to continue to do that and that's going to be our position over here.”

Q: Your tweet on Feb. 11, Attorney General Drummond responded to it, kind of agreeing with you. What was your response to that? 

“So, you know, look, no, I made very clear my position here of we are not going to apologize for following President Trump's lead, following President Trump's executive orders. When President Trump won every county in Oklahoma for a third straight time. 

We are here to enact the will of the people of Oklahoma, we don’t back down to left-wing mobs. We don't back down to anyone who's trying to tell us not to do what the people want us to do here. 

We're going to continue to make sure that we are aligning with President Trump and his executive orders and we're going to continue to improve our schools.”