Every time it seems like our public school policies can’t get any more bizarre, our education officials manage to up the ante.In the past month alone, they’ve announced that:•Bibles must be used in public school classrooms. Not as a dust collector or doorstop but as a historical text.•Rather than relying on traditional social studies experts to draft our new academic standards, we’re tapping political pundits and right-wing advocates, including one who creates offensive videos that tend to oversimplify history.•They’re moving to strip a former Norman educator of her teaching license, despite a recommendation from a neutral judge that they shouldn’t. The teacher is not accused of committing a crime. She merely shared a QR code to a Brooklyn library card with students.•And, we have a senior education official who apparently thinks it’s appropriate to leave glass bottles with small ghosts on chairs reserved for journalists at a public meeting. The juvenile display was accompanied by a handwritten message warning journalists to “Stop chasing ghosts.”Time to cue the music from the “Twilight Zone.”It’s beginning to feel like we’re part of the fictional show that started airing in the 1950s and forces its characters to face bizarre or unsettling events. The show’s stories often don’t end well and its characters face a horrendous final twist.Our problem is that this isn’t fiction.It’s real. And, the twists and turns keep coming at breakneck speed that’s enough to give any sane person whiplash.Our academic outcomes definitely leave a lot to be desired, but it’s difficult to see how incorporating the Bible, tapping an unusual cast of characters to help draft “a complete overhaul to Oklahoma’s social studies standards,” and waging war on a teacher who has committed no crimes is the solution.What are our leaders thinking? Let’s be clear. State Superintendent Ryan Walters didn’t dig our educational system into a hole.But he’s certainly not helping to pull us out as he trots out harebrained ideas.And our state Board of Education, whose members are handpicked by Gov. Kevin Stitt, take those ideas and run with them.These five board members are knowingly allowing chaos to happen.These are people that are supposed to represent all of us — not just far right-wing Republicans.We’re relying on them to reduce increasing chronic absenteeism rates, boost our statewide reading and math proficiency scores and better prepare our students for college, university or technical school .Yes, those are really complicated problems to ...
