Teachers from New York and California will be required to pass an assessment exam administered by PragerU, an Oklahoma-based conservative nonprofit.
Oklahoma will mandate that teacher job applicants from California and New York pass an exam, according to the Republican-led state’s chief education official. This exam is said to be aimed at protecting against “radical leftist ideology,” although critics argue it functions as a “MAGA loyalty test.”
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s public schools superintendent, announced that educators arriving from these two predominantly Democratic states must successfully complete an assessment exam given by PragerU, a conservative nonprofit based in Oklahoma, before achieving state certification.
“During my tenure as superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be protected from the radical leftist ideology nurtured in locations like California and New York,” Walters stated.
PragerU, which stands for Prager University, offers brief videos presenting views from a conservative standpoint on politics and economics. It describes its mission as “changing minds through creative digital media use.”
Quinton Hitchcock, representing the state’s education department, mentioned that the Prager test for prospective teachers has been finalized and will be launched “very soon.”
Though the entire 50-question exam wasn’t disclosed to The Associated Press, the state provided the first five questions. These inquiries include identifying the first three words of the U.S. Constitution and explaining 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.
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.
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Stengle from Dallas.
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