As Oklahomans woke up to start their work and school routines Wednesday, most had little idea State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters was beginning one of his final days in the statewide-elected job he has steered into TV cameras and controversy for the last three years.
Walters announced his resignation — to lead a Freedom Foundation initiative called the Teacher Freedom Alliance — during a brief Fox News appearance around 10:40 p.m. Wednesday.
“I’m excited to announce I will be stepping down as Oklahoma state superintendent and taking on the role as the CEO of Teacher Freedom Alliance,” Walters said with air pods in his ears. “We are going to destroy the teachers’ unions. We have seen the teachers’ unions use money and power to corrupt our schools, to undermine our schools.”
Founded in March, the Teacher Freedom Alliance is a “group of former educators that want to assist the best of our profession to stay in the classroom,” according to the organization’s website.
“We support the right of every educator in America to pursue excellence in the classroom free of ideological interference,” the organization lists as its vision. “We do this by helping educators exercise their First Amendment rights to voluntary associate in support of teaching successive generations of free, moral, and upright American citizens.”
The nonprofit’s president is Aaron Withe, who is also the CEO of the Freedom Foundation, an anti-union group founded in 1991 that describes itself as a “battle tank” as opposed to a think tank. Walters formally endorsed the Teacher Freedom Alliance this spring in his position as state superintendent, an announcement that drew a complaint to the Ethics Commission from a Democratic legislator who previously represented the Oklahoma Education Association.
Rumors of a Walters announcement percolated hours earlier, with gossipers guessing the firebrand first-term politician could be facing further scandal as opposed to pulling the rip cord on his elected platform before April’s filing period for the 2026 election cycle, where he could have chosen to seek reelection as state superintendent or run for an open gubernatorial seat.
Instead, Walters will apparently return from whence he came — taking over a nebulous education reform nonprofit and weaving himself back into the advocacy fabric between state education systems and the civic dynamics that shape their management.
“We are one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the country,” Walters said during Wednesday night’s Fox News appearance. “We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers’ union once and for all. So this fight is going national, and we will get our schools back on track. We will not allow any further union control.”
‘Focus on quality instruction in our public schools’
While Walters’ resignation may quell rumors that he intends to campaign to be the state’s next governor, Attorney General Gentner Drummond — Oklahoma’s leading 2026 Republican gubernatorial candidate — issued an immediate statement Wednesday night reminding voters that Walters’ political ascension received a boost five years ago when Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed him Cabinet secretary of education in September 2020.
“Ever since Gov. Stitt appointed Ryan Walters to serve as secretary of education, we have witnessed a stream of never-ending scandal and political drama. From the mishandling of pandemic relief funds that resulted in families buying Xboxes and refrigerators to the latest squabbling with board members over what was or wasn’t showing on TV, the Stitt-Walters era has been an embarrassment to our state,” Drummond said. “Even worse, test scores and reading proficiency are at historic lows. It’s time for a state superintendent of public instruction who will actually focus on quality instruction in our public schools.”
To that end, Stitt will be tasked with appointing someone to fill the state superintendent position — which serves as chairperson of the State Board of Education — until the 2026 election cycle concludes. Title 51, Section 10 of state statute specifies that the governor shall appoint someone to fill the vacancy, but Article 6, Section 3 of the Oklahoma Constitution notes that a person must be at least 31 years old with 10 years as a registered voter in the state.
Potential candidates for the Stitt appointment include current Secretary of Education Nellie Sanders, former House Rep. Mark McBride (R-Moore) and former Tri County Technology Center CEO Lindel Fields.
While Stitt weighs his options, political commentators are likely to begin the necropsy of Walters’ 2026 electoral potential.
Despite making dozens of other Fox News appearances and feeding red-meat beefs on social media and during State Board of Education meetings, Walters has seen his unfavorable numbers more than double in three years among Republican Party voters, according to an August Sooner Survey released by CHS & Associates. That edition of the survey reported 44 percent of polled “likely Republican primary voters” had an unfavorable opinion of the superintendent, while 31 percent reported a favorable opinion. Additionally, 34 percent of likely Republican voters reported a “strongly unfavorable” opinion.
Although his fervent support from a segment of the electorate have made him a somewhat-feared potential candidate for the OKGOP’s 2026 gubernatorial nomination, Walters has raised little campaign cash this year, according to finance reports filed with the state Ethics Commission. Walters reported $2,433.81 in total funds received for the first quarter of 2025 against $22,171.27 expended. In the second quarter of 2025, he reported $7,002.37 in funds received against $11,491 expended.
Born in Pittsburg County, Walters attended McAlester Public Schools before enrolling at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history in 2010. In 2012, Walters returned to McAlester High School, where he coached tennis and taught history. He was named McAlester teacher of the year in 2015. In 2016, he was named a finalist for Oklahoma teacher of the year by then-Superintendent Joy Hofmeister’s Oklahoma State Department of Education. Walters also taught advanced placement U.S. history at McAlester High School and Millwood Public Schools.
In 2019, Walters was named executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, an initiative by the State Chamber of Oklahoma that focused on engaging the business community in education. When Walters took the position, he said there was a need to focus on giving kids opportunities that empower them to succeed, according to the McAlester News-Capital.
Oklahoma Achieves later evolved into an independent nonprofit, Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, with Walters at the organization’s helm. With Walters serving as the organization’s CEO, EKCO was tasked with overseeing Stitt’s Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet program, which distributed $8 million in COVID-era relief funding. In 2024, after reports that some parents spent the money on non-education expenses amid lax program oversight, a grand jury found there was insufficient evidence to establish that a crime had been committed. Nonetheless, the grand jury found that Walters and other public officials were negligent in their handling of the funds.
When Stitt named Walters to his Cabinet in 2020, he became the youngest secretary of education in state history. Beyond his state compensation, Walters earned an annual salary of $120,000 as CEO of EKCO in 2021, according to a report by The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch. EKCO advocated for an expansion of charter schools and school privatization, causes Walters championed in his public roles. In 2021, while serving as secretary of education, he announced a run for state superintendent of public instruction. Walters’ campaign relied heavily on rhetoric criticizing “left-wing indoctrination,” which became a familiar talking point over his two-plus years running OSDE.
Still, Walters’ sudden partisan and vitriolic rhetoric confused some of those who knew him when he was a teacher and a potential political star. In June 2021, Walters emailed supporters about an American Enterprise Institute article that critiqued then-former-President Donald Trump’s political style as not being “persuasive.”
Walters said the “whole article is good” but that a specific portion was “particularly applicable” to “the direction we have chosen to go with EKCO” in Oklahoma:
Trump’s approach tapped into people’s frustrations and built passion for him as a candidate among a sizable base. But, conservatives need to recognize divisive and negative communications are not the winning path forward. Too many swing voters loathe the resulting conflict and blame their discomfort on the communicator, or “instigator,” regardless of the true source of the conflict. Divisive communications cause us to lose those voters and crucial elections. This voter backlash is especially true around K–12 education issues. Most of the public does not yet discern the separation between classroom teachers, who are held in the highest regard, and the union leadership, who represents them at bargaining tables and in elections. Most voters are not aware of how the unions’ activities affect our children. Few share our anger over their callousness about that impact. In addition, the unions have a substantial communications infrastructure in place to challenge everything we say. We have the facts on our side to spark reform. Our current education system is demonstrably failing millions of students.
But, if we are going to win and fix American education, our communications must always be carefully persuasive and relentlessly respectful of educators. More pointedly, a key audience for our communications is the millions of excellent, student-centered teachers across America. When enough of them start saying we need systemic changes such as more freedom for families and educators to serve all students better, we will have reached the tipping point. Without them, we will not succeed.”
After winning a Republican runoff and receiving 57 percent of the vote to defeat Democrat Jena Nelson in the 2022 election, Walters embarked upon a tumultuous tenure leading OSDE that fell short of being “relentlessly respectful of educators.”
Instead, Walters became a magnet for controversy, having been named as a defendant in 19 state-level and 13 federal-level lawsuits and appeals during his tenure, more often than not with the state picking up his legal fees. OSDE spent roughly $130,000 in legal fees in 2024, according to KTUL.
In some ways, Walters has sought the attention he received. In two years, Walters has made more than 400 national media appearances, according to FOX 25. In those media appearances, Walters has commented on a variety of topics, ranging from the Bible and immigration to antisemitism.
Walters’ most recent controversy kicked off after the July 24 Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting — the most recent one he has attended — where two board members said they saw nudity on a television in his office during executive session. The allegations prompted investigations that ultimately concluded when Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna declined to file charges, but Walters seemed to create more problems for himself by prematurely claiming the investigations had concluded and suggesting that Stitt and his appointed state board members had concocted the titillation in a “coordinated attack to crucify my character.”
Walters lodged that claim during a press conference he called in front of Stitt’s office, the final blow to a friendship that the governor said had begun at a high school tennis tournament. In some ways, the two men’s political fortunes were tied together for years, with Stitt briefly reappointing Walters as secretary of education before backtracking following a letter from Drummond that said the move would constitute holding two offices in violation of state law. While Stitt and Walters teamed up in a two-on-two basketball game, Stitt reportedly grew irritated with how Walters handled accreditation decisions regarding Tulsa Public Schools — and how Walters did or did not return his phone calls on the topic.
Their relationship declined further this year, as Stitt appointed three new members to the State Board of Education in February: Ryan Deatherage, Michael Tinney and Chris VanDenhende. In a statement at the time, Stitt said education in Oklahoma had fallen prey to politics, subsequently criticizing Walters for promoting the collection of immigration status information among school children.
Walters’ resignation Wednesday would seem to make Oklahoma’s 2026 contest for state superintendent of public instruction a wide open race.
Recently retired Bixby Public Schools Superintendent Rob Miller became the first candidate to officially enter the race in February. Miller sued Walters in August 2024 after Walters called him a “clown” and a “liar” when Miller alleged there was a delay in local school districts receiving federal funding through OSDE. Miller is running as a Republican. Other GOP candidates include Peggs Public Schools Superintendent John Cox — who ran for the post in 2014 and 2018 as a Democrat and in 2022 against Walters as a Republican — and Ana Davine Landsaw of Tahlequah.
Former Tulsa Publics Schools board members Jerry Griffin and Jennettie Marshall are also running, with Griffin now listed as running as an independent. Marshall is running as a Democrat. Griffin previously ran for the post in 2022 as a Republican, but he dropped out of the race.
What could be Walters’ final State Board of Education meeting as state superintendent is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. today.
