Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election ‘discrepancies’

TULSA, Okla. — New academic standards in Oklahoma call for the teaching of “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results, continuing the spread of a false narrative years after it was first pushed by President Trump and his allies.

The standards were enacted last month after the Republican-controlled legislature declined to block them. And while the process to advance the standards has drawn ire from members of Oklahoma’s majority party, the question of the standards’ content has gotten little pushback.

What the standards say — and how they took effect

The social studies standard for high school U.S. history references baseless claims about the ballot counting process and the security of mail voting.

It says students must: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities and in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”

The new standards have been championed by Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction and a conservative firebrand.

“These new standards will ensure that kids have an accurate and comprehensive view of historical events, while also reinforcing the values that make our country great,” Walters said at a February State Board of Education meeting.

The new standards were quietly introduced just hours before that February meeting, and Walters falsely told board members that to make legislative deadlines, the standards needed to be approved that day. They were.

New board members spent the next two months asking the state legislature to return the standards back to the board, saying there had not been enough time to review the changes.

Citing that rushed process, Senate Republicans authored a joint resolution to reject the standards, and GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt also requested the legislature send the standards back to the board.

But in April, after a closed-door meeting with Walters, the state legislature declined to block the standards.

Oklahoma Republicans, like House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, have defended the standards’ content.

“I think that students should be challenged to think critically about that particular election and what led to that high turnout as well as all the reforms that you saw states pass in the wake of that,” Hilbert said at a March press conference. “So I think if you’re going to talk about the 2020 election, that’s a centerpiece of the conversation, of challenging students to think critically about those important questions.”

Navigating teaching false election claims

Others say critical thinking is not what the standards prescribe students to do.

Anton Schulzki, the interim executive director of the National Council for the Social Studies, points out that the 2020 election standard seems to instruct students that so-called “discrepancies” are an accepted position.

“And that’s not necessarily in the best practice,” Schulzki said. “If you want someone to really do some inquiry, then you would have to let the student ask the question.”

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer for the Election Center, objects to the standards’ mention of “batch dumps” of ballots, for instance. She says without a conversation about how late-night counts are often standard operating procedure, it is a recipe for misunderstanding.

“That is not teaching critical thought,” Patrick said. “Teaching critical thought is to frame it in such a way that instructs the students to find something that sounds odd to them, and then to dig deeper into, why is it the case that the thing that sounds strange to you, when you put it into context, is it still odd? Or do you now understand better the complexity of conducting elections in the United States of America?”

Patrick said false claims about the election have eroded public confidence in the system.

“And it will continue to erode if we continue to have these false narratives being repeated continually and used in an academic setting as though they are truth and fact by teachers, educators [and] state boards putting this out as though this is the same level of accuracy and correctness as a mathematical or scientific theorem,” Patrick said.

Academic standards in Oklahoma are the required list of topics that teachers must cover to maintain their certifications and a school’s accreditation status. School districts choose the textbooks and curriculum to meet the standards.

Aaron Baker is an Oklahoma City high school government teacher. Because the standard is for U.S. History, he won’t teach them in his classroom. But he said if he had to, he would include a fact check.

“I would have no qualms at all about telling my students — in fact, I’ve been telling my students for four years — that the courts have declared over and over again, multiple times, that there was not widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election,” Baker said.

Another issue that critics like Baker decry about the new standards is how they came into existence.

Late into the review process, the standards were overhauled by state officials, dismissing months of work by educators. Walters tapped leading conservative figures like Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, which put out the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term, and Prager U’s Dennis Prager for the standards’ Executive Review Committee.

And while Walters has not answered questions about the committee’s reach, Baker said the move sent a message to Oklahoma educators: “No. 1, we don’t care what you think about these standards. And No. 2, we don’t care that this is uniquely Oklahoma. These are Oklahoma students being taught by Oklahoma educators, but the leadership at the state [education] department is perfectly comfortable with bringing in outside voices to tell us what our students should learn and what we should teach them.”

While the standards are set to go into effect next school year, a lawsuit filed by a GOP former Oklahoma attorney general could stall their implementation.

But like other criticisms coming from Republicans, the lawsuit calls out problems in the approval process — not the standards themselves.