Oklahoma‘s new high school history curriculum will teach students about alleged voting irregularities in the 2020 election and the fraud risks mail-in ballots pose, among other election security concerns.
According to the Republican-led state’s Academic Standards for Social Studies, adopted by the Oklahoma Board of Education, public high school students in grades 9-12 will soon learn to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results. Noted examples include “the sudden halting of ballot-counting” in select cities across key battleground states,” batch dumps, “an unforeseen” record number of voters, and the “unprecedented contradiction” of bellwether county trends.
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These guidelines are more expansive than the previous education standards for studying the 2020 election, which simply instructed students to “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.”
The lesson plans, slated to roll out in the 2025-2026 school year, were revised under the direction of State Superintendent Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher.
Walters championed other changes to the curriculum, including a provision on the COVID-19 lab leak theory, which states that the source of the coronavirus pandemic came from a Chinese lab. High schoolers will also learn about inflation rates prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and the socioeconomic effects of state and local lockdowns.
On X, Walters hailed the reforms as “the most unapologetically conservative, pro-America social studies standards in the nation” and ones that spark critical thinking.
“For nearly a year, we engaged in a thoughtful, transparent process to deliver standards that teach students factual history, including the realities of the 2020 election, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the threat posed by Communist China,” the state superintendent said. “These reforms will reset our classrooms back to educating our children without liberal indoctrination.”
A group of Oklahoma parents and educators has since filed a lawsuit challenging the changes, alleging violations of the proper review process and arguing that the newly adopted standards “represent a distorted view of social studies.”
The lawsuit, which asks a judge to render the standards “null and void,” contends that the new curriculum “directly harms” students because they “do not align with best practices and current understandings set by national organizations and experts in the field.”
According to the complaint, the revisions also create “a significant burden” on teachers because the curriculum is not “aligned with their current understanding of the subject matter” nor matches the information outlined in classroom textbooks.
Ex-Oklahoma attorney general Mike Hunter, a Republican, is representing the plaintiffs.
In a press conference earlier this month, Hunter said, “The Oklahoma Administrative Procedures Act required the Oklahoma State Board of Education to follow its integral rules and procedures in developing, proposing, and adopting the new Social Studies Standards. They did not.”
Hunter said the APA-mandated protocols require adequate notice and an opportunity to be heard. “This lawsuit challenges the legitimacy of the OSBE’s adoption of the standards on that basis,” Hunter said. “Simply put, the OSBE broke its own rules and ignored due process.”
Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) has echoed suspicions that the state Board of Education members voted on last-minute revisions they weren’t originally shown.
“The thing that concerned me was the mechanics, how it was done,” Stitt said. “So, it’s been shown to me from the board members that they were emailed a copy of those standards, but then there was a different standard that was sitting on the desk that they actually voted on.”
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Oklahoma Democrats previously called on the state legislature to pass a resolution rejecting the proposed curriculum.
“Right now, the State Superintendent is not focused on improving education outcomes or increasing funding for our public schools,” said Cyndi Munson, the state’s Democratic House Minority Leader. “Instead, he’s solely focused on boosting his own partisan political agenda with these social studies standards.”