By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon on Tuesday didn’t rule out a plan to end statewide standardized testing in Oklahoma during a local visit focused on limiting federal involvement in public education.
McMahon, whom President Donald Trump tasked with closing the U.S. Department of Education, said she’s “very happy to sit down with any state” to discuss new policy ideas.
“We want to give them the most flexibility that we can give them to operate within their state,” McMahon said while speaking with reporters at the state Capitol. “So, we’re happy to sit down in Oklahoma or other states that we’ve already sat down with to push those programs along.”
However, she said the proposal from state Superintendent Ryan Walters to replace statewide tests with a mixture of district-selected assessments still “has not gone through all the different steps that it needs” to gain federal approval.
Walters wasn’t present for McMahon’s visit despite being a vocal supporter of the Trump administration. She said meeting with him wasn’t on her schedule Tuesday.
Instead, McMahon joined Gov. Kevin Stitt and former House Speaker Charles McCall, now a gubernatorial candidate, for a tour of Dove Science Academy, a high-performing charter school with a new campus in Warr Acres. Once allies, Stitt and Walters have been publicly at odds with each other for the past six months.
Dove high school students demonstrated robots they had built and coded, flew drones and tested virtual reality software, even having a remote-controlled robot dog give McMahon a handshake. U.S. News and World Report on Tuesday ranked Dove Science Academy as the No. 3 high school in the state, behind Classen High School of Advanced Studies and Harding Charter Preparatory High School, both in Oklahoma City.
McMahon later accompanied Stitt at the state Capitol as the governor signed a bill prohibiting diversity, equity and inclusion programs from higher education institutions, another major policy goal of the Trump administration.
“I think Oklahoma should be very proud of what I’ve seen this morning,” McMahon said.
Oklahoma was the latest stop in McMahon’s 50-state “Returning Education to the States Tour,” which started earlier this month in Louisiana.
The tour has highlighted McMahon’s goal of cutting federal regulations and giving individual states more authority and flexibility in how they operate their public school systems. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to proceed with mass layoffs and downsizing at the federal Department of Education.
The administration has proposed sending federal funds in large block grants that individual states could decide how to spend. Congress would have to agree to any wholesale changes to the federal structure of education funding.
McMahon declined to answer whether she has any concerns over expanding the powers of the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which has been consistently in turmoil under Walters.
Stitt touted policies Oklahoma enacted in recent years that increased facility funds for charter schools, expanded student transfer options, offered tax credits to private-school families and increased state funding for public education overall.
National testing, though, has shown the state as a whole is still struggling to improve its poor academic outcomes.
While Oklahoma has promoted more choices for parents to select their children’s school, Stitt said he is eager for the federal government to grant more flexibility, as well. He said educators and school district administrators have to spend too much time on paperwork that federal programs require.
“That’s, I think, what President Trump wants and what we believe in is let’s get rid of the bureaucracy and let’s get those dollars on target to kids in Oklahoma City and in Enid and in Lawton and all over the country,” Stitt said.
