Education
Oklahoma Proposes Teaching 2020 Election ‘Discrepancies’ in U.S. History
High school students in Oklahoma would be asked to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election as part of U.S. history classes, according to new social studies standards recently approved by the Oklahoma Board of Education.
The proposed standards seem to echo President Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat. They ask students to examine factors such as “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.”
They now head to the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which could take up the issue before its term ends in late May, or punt the issue to the governor’s desk.
The standards, supported by the state’s hard-charging Republican superintendent, have already received pushback, including from Gov. Kevin Stitt, also a Republican, whose office characterized the changes as a “distraction.” A spokeswoman said the governor had not yet seen the standards in full and it was not clear if he would support them.
The additions related to the 2020 election are among several changes that injected a strong conservative viewpoint to the state’s portrayal of modern American politics and Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election, a view that has been widely embraced by some Republicans, despite a lack of evidence.
An earlier version of the new standards — which were released for public comment in December — simply asked students to examine “issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new changes were made after the public comment period and quietly approved by the Board of Education last month. They were first reported by NonDoc, a nonprofit news outlet in Oklahoma.
The state superintendent, Ryan Walters, said that the standards were not meant to “support or negate a specific outcome” and that “a well-rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.”
In a statement, he said, “We believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”
Mr. Walters, a former history teacher and Trump ally, has emerged as a combative culture warrior in education and national politics. His push to put Bibles in every Oklahoma classroom is being battled in court, and he was briefly floated as a candidate for U.S. secretary of education, before Mr. Trump nominated the former pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon.
But within his own state, Mr. Walters has clashed with members of his party, including Governor Stitt, who was once an ally. Most recently, the two went head-to-head over Mr. Walters’s plan to collect the citizenship status of public school children, which Governor Stitt vowed to fight.
Amid his feud with Mr. Walters, and after new national test scores showed Oklahoma remaining near the bottom in reading and math, Mr. Stitt last month replaced half of the state’s Board of Education. The board is made up of five governor appointees and Mr. Walters, who was elected. At least one of the new members said he had not been informed of the changes to the social studies standards, which were approved two weeks after the new members joined.
A spokeswoman for the governor, Abegail Cave, said the governor’s priority was transforming Oklahoma into “the best state for education.”
“He thinks a lot of what has happened over the past few months and past few years has been more of a distraction,” Ms. Cave said. The new social studies standards, she said, “follow the pattern of being a distraction.”
Standards for academic subject areas are rewritten every six years in Oklahoma under state law. They include lengthy outlines on what public schools are expected to teach and what students should know at different grade levels.
For example, U.S. history students in Oklahoma learn about the civil rights movement, including key court cases, tactics such as the Montgomery bus boycott and violent responses to the movement, including the Birmingham church bombing and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The changes centered on more recent history. In examining significant events during Mr. Trump’s first term, an earlier version of the standards had asked students to “explain the responses to and impact of the death of George Floyd, including the Black Lives Matter movement.”
In the latest version, that standard was removed.
Another change involved the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students would be asked to identify the source of the pandemic as coming from a Chinese lab. That theory has long been hotly debated, but is embraced by Republicans and increasingly favored by C.I.A. officials.
The earlier version was less pointed: “Evaluate federal and private response to the Covid epidemic, as well as its lasting impact on global health and American society.”
Mr. Walters said the various changes “give students the best opportunity to learn about history without leftist activists indoctrinating kids.”
His office did not respond to questions about why the edits were made after the period of public review.
State Representative John Waldron, a former social studies teacher who is now vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, said he would oppose the changes and accused Mr. Walters of subverting the typical process to insert his own political beliefs.
“The state superintendent campaigned to end indoctrination in our schools, but what he is doing instead with these new standards is promoting his own brand of indoctrination,” Mr. Waldron said in an interview.
The edits also made more subtle changes to a unit on “the challenges and accomplishments” of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration.
They removed bullet points on the country’s economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic and on a signature $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Remaining were bullet points on the “the United States-Mexico border crisis” and Mr. Biden’s foreign policies on issues like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.
Education
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Education
They Left for the School Bus. ICE Picked Them Up Instead.
Two teenage brothers from the Republic of Congo were living their version of the American dream. They were leaders on their high school basketball team and involved in their local church. The elder was weeks away from graduating.
That dream was thrown into upheaval this month when the brothers were detained by ICE agents who had waited outside their guardians’ home in Diamondhead, Miss. Israel Makoka, 18, and Max Makoka, 15, were leaving to take the bus to school when they were arrested and later moved to separate facilities, in Louisiana and Texas, where they remained on Wednesday.
Their detention has crushed the school community in their conservative small town.
“I’m heartbroken over what’s taking place,” said Stacy Campbell, a history teacher at the brothers’ school, Hancock High in Kiln, Miss., who knows the Makokas. “They definitely do not deserve this. Some of the students are just starting to talk about it, and they are very worried. They want their classmates back at school.”
The Makoka brothers entered the United States legally on F-1 student visas to attend the Piney Woods School, a prominent, historically Black boarding institution. But they felt unhappy there last year, so they transferred to a public school in their host family’s neighborhood.
Before the teenagers transferred to Hancock High in August, a local lawyer advised their host family to become their legal guardians so that they could remain in the country. A judge granted the guardianship request.
The staff at Piney Woods did not warn the family that the teenagers’ transfer to a public school would affect their immigration status, regardless of guardianship, said Amy Maldonado, the immigration lawyer representing the brothers.
Despite doing what they could to follow the law, said Gail Baptiste, one of their guardians, nobody knew until the teenagers’ arrest last week that moving from Piney Woods had nullified their status. Hancock High was not allowed to host people on student visas, and the switch got the attention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The brothers are now facing deportation.
“The kids did nothing — they did nothing at all — and we did not do anything intentionally,” Ms. Baptiste said. She later added, “We hope we’re given a chance to set this right, for their sake.”
Ms. Baptiste remembered that when she tried to show her guardianship documents to immigration agents last week, one told her, “This is worth nothing.” An officer also told her that someone had called “and reported that there were two African kids at Hancock.”
Government documents indicate that the older brother, Israel, was targeted by ICE agents because government officials believed his student visa expired in 2024. He entered the United States in 2023 under an F-1 visa, a temporary student visa, as a minor. Mr. Makoka only recently became a legal adult — his birthday was in March.
His younger brother, Max, entered the country under the same visa a year later. In a statement, a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday evening that the brothers had “violated their student visas by failing to attend classes at Piney Woods School.”
“They were granted the opportunity to participate in a student exchange program,” the statement said. “However, they failed to attend that school. Because they violated their visas, they are subject to removal.”
Ms. Maldonado said that she submitted a motion for Israel to be released on bond and will petition for Max to be released to his guardians. She added on Wednesday that the brothers would reapply for F-1 status.
“In a situation like this, where everyone was trying to do the right thing, there’s no need to handcuff the children and drag them off,” Ms. Maldonado said. She added, “These are kids that do not need to be deported on taxpayer expense. They just want to finish the school year.”
In its mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration has been particularly aggressive toward people in the United States on student visas. Last year, the administration sought to cancel more than a thousand student visas. International students were given no reasons for the cancellations in some cases, while in others there had been documented minor infractions.
At the same time, U.S. officials have arrested college students for their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests, saying they had undermined the U.S. foreign policy goal of lessening antisemitism.
Community leaders and teachers at Hancock High School said that friends of the brothers have grieved their absence and that students have become concerned for their well-being.
Conner Entriken, the boys’ basketball coach, said that the Makoka brothers were good students who had a strong work ethic and commitment to their team and community. In the short time they attended Hancock, he said, they became involved and loved by many others.
Nothing speaks more to their character, he said, than when they joined an extra run required of teammates who had lost a drill at practice even though the brothers had been on the winning side.
“Max and Israel really took charge of that to show that they were supporting them and then the team did it without asking,” Mr. Entriken said. “You’re not going to meet two better men, period.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Education
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