How Oklahoma's Teacher Testing Proposal Sparks Controversy

I have no idea what they’re thinking in Oklahoma — but chances are, they’re not.

In a headline that could have been written by The Onion, Oklahoma is considering a bold and presumptuous step when hiring teachers. The plan? Test teachers from New York and California to make sure they don’t bring “viewpoints different from their own” (which is political code for liberal teachers).

This has to be one of the most asinine ideas I’ve ever heard. Let’s start with a simple fact: most surveys rank Oklahoma 49th or 50th in education nationwide. What about that record warrants saying, “think like us”? If the teachers already indoctrinated into Oklahoma’s system — teaching the way officials want them to teach — are producing those results, then maybe the problem isn’t “outside values.” Maybe the problem is boneheaded politics like this seeping into the classroom.

Why Oklahoma’s Teacher Test Is a Bad Idea

Let’s also assume most teachers are smart. The really smart ones will avoid a mess like this altogether. Sure, some might move to Oklahoma for family reasons or other personal ties — but let’s be honest, if they’re clever enough to get through years of teaching, they’re clever enough to pass a test written by politicians trying to filter out “wrong values.”

The problems don’t stop there:

First Amendment Issues – Teachers have free speech rights that this policy threatens.
Teacher Burnout – More stress and restrictions will drive good educators away.
Students Lose Out – Kids will get a narrow, watered-down education that doesn’t prepare them for the real world.

And here’s the kicker: who decides what the standards are? Ideally, it would be parents. But this push isn’t coming from parents — it’s coming from a controversial superintendent more interested in scoring political points than improving schools.

If this idea makes its way down to Texas, I hope it’s stopped cold in Oklahoma before it spreads. At the end of the day, this is nothing more than a boneheaded, shortsighted culture war stunt — fired off by someone who clearly didn’t have the brains to think it through.