EXCLUSIVE – As President-elect Donald Trump privately storyboards his cabinet choices, one top state official who is rumored to be on the shortlist for secretary of education is releasing his game plan for shifting the department’s duties to states and parents, Fox News Digital has learned.
In a memo to Oklahoma parents and school administrators, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters will state that the federal agency has “hijacked our education system using taxpayer dollars to impose harmful policies and control what’s taught in our schools.”
Some issues Walters said he is bringing to the fore both in the memo and what he is calling a Trump Education Advisory Team to be announced Monday.
The Department of Education is a relatively new stand-alone cabinet agency created under former President Jimmy Carter, which his successor, Ronald Reagan, called to shutter during his 1982 State of the Union.
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Tenets include ending “social indoctrination” in the classroom and promoting patriotism through curriculum.
In a Friday interview, Walters said the team will organize priorities for schools to be in line with Trump administration education policies, based on what the president-elect has signaled that he will do in that regard.
With the prospect of a shuttered Department of Education, Walters said that he will plan out how to fill any holes left by federal programs and develop legislative recommendations.
At an October rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Trump said he is “going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states.”
“And we’re going to do it fast. We’ll get somebody great [as secretary].” He namedropped former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y. who had accompanied him, as well as Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.
Walters also remains “on Republicans’ radar” in that regard, according to Education Week.
He said on Friday that Democrats failed to challenge Trump on education policy likely because his positions already resonated with the American public, alluding to the recent scholastic controversies in Virginia and elsewhere.
“We’re going to be the tip of the spear in instituting President Trump’s agenda. This is to ensure that we are in complete alignment with the most aggressive, comprehensive and conservative education agenda the country has ever seen,” he said.
Walters said he is confident that Trump will follow through and shutter the agency, and that it will result in increased aptitude among students less burdened by red tape, redundancies to state agencies, and social policy edicts.
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Desks in a classroom. (iStock)
“I mean, President Biden came out in the middle of the summer and told us we had to put boys in girl’s bathrooms,” he said.
Whether Trump ultimately chooses him, Walters said he will remain focused on bringing Oklahoma in-line with Trumpian policies, and creating a roadmap for other states.
Improving education, he added, goes far beyond curriculum and will have lasting impacts on the economy, jobs and more.
“Parents wanted to hear that . . . our schools are not here to tell our kids this is an evil, racist country and building this indoctrination,” he said. “We want to support families and school choice.”
The transition plan he crafted also depicts how the education system can continue to run without the influence of teachers’ unions that comes with the present top-down system.
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The Department of Education building in Washington, D.C. (Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
He said that American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten put his picture on a screen after Trump’s during a recent union convention, and that his response was Tuesday’s “definitive win” by pro-school-choice candidates.
“It’s just it’s so exciting to see this agenda come to fruition,” he said.
In the current Congress, Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., also authored a bill abolishing the Department of Education. It was referred to and remains in committee.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump campaign for information on the cabinet shortlist, as well as to the Department of Education for a response to Walters’ plans. A representative for the latter referred Fox News Digital to the Trump campaign.