Oklahoma to test teachers from New York, California to guard against
‘radical leftist ideology’
[August 19, 2025]
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JAMIE STENGLE
Oklahoma will require applicants for teacher jobs coming from California
and New York to pass an exam that the Republican-dominated state's top
education official says is designed to safeguard against “radical
leftist ideology,” but which opponents decry as a “MAGA loyalty test.”
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's public schools superintendent, said Monday that
any teacher coming from the two blue states will be required to pass an
assessment exam administered by PragerU, an Oklahoma-based conservative
nonprofit, before getting a state certification.
“As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded
from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and
New York,” Walters said in a statement.
PragerU, short for Prager University, puts out short videos with a
conservative perspective on politics and economics. It promotes itself
as “focused on changing minds through the creative use of digital
media.”
Quinton Hitchcock, a spokesperson for the state’s education department,
said the Prager test for teacher applicants has been finalized and will
be rolling out “very soon.”
The state did not release the entire 50-question test to The Associated
Press but did provide the first five questions, which include asking
what the first three words of the U.S. Constitution are and why freedom
of religion is “important to America’s identity.”
Prager didn’t immediately respond to a phone message or email seeking
comment. But Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, told CNN that several
questions on the assessment relate to “undoing the damage of gender
ideology.”
Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches history of education at the University
of Pennsylvania, said Oklahoma’s contract with PragerU to test
out-of-state would-be teachers “is a watershed moment.”
“Instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an
optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state
system,” he said. “There’s no other way to describe it.”
Zimmerman said the American Historical Association did a survey last
year of 7th- to 12th-grade teachers and found that only a minority were
relying on textbooks for day-to-day instruction. He said the upside to
that is that most history books are “deadly boring.” But he said that
means history teachers are relying on online resources, such as those
from Prager.
“I think what we’re now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which
is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future
teachers,” Zimmerman said.
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Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters speaks
during a special state Board of Education meeting, April 12, 2023,
in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
One of the nation’s largest teachers unions, the American Federation
of Teachers, has often been at odds with the Donald Trump
administration and the crackdown on teacher autonomy in the
classroom.
“This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in
a state already struggling with a huge shortage," said AFT President
Randi Weingarten.
She was critical of Walters, who pushed for the state’s curriculum
standards to be revised to include conspiracy theories about the
2020 presidential election.
“His priority should be educating students, but instead, it’s
getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him,”
Weingarten said in a statement.
Tina Ellsworth, president of the nonprofit National Council for the
Social Studies, also raised concerns that the test would prevent
teachers from applying for jobs.
“State boards of education should stay true to the values and
principles of the U.S. Constitution,” Ellsworth said. “Imposing an
ideology test to become a teacher in our great democracy is
antithetical to those principles.”
State Rep. John Waldron, the Oklahoma Democratic Party chairman,
decried the test as “political posturing.”
“If you want to see a textbook definition of indoctrination, how
about a loyalty test for teachers,” said Waldron. “It’s a sad echo
of a more paranoid past.”
Waldron, a New Jersey native, said he would have been in the target
demographic for this kind of test when he moved from Washington,
D.C., to Oklahoma to teach social studies in 1999. He said it would
have struck him as an indication that the state “wasn’t serious
about attracting quality teachers.”
“Teachers are not rushing here from other states to teach. We’ve got
an enormous teacher shortage and it’s not like we have a giant
supply of teachers coming in from blue states anyway,” he said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Stengle from
Dallas.
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