On March 26, the Oklahoma State Board of Education (SBOE) approved 2026 academic standards for social studies with last-minute changes that restore problematic material removed from the version invalidated by the Oklahoma State Supreme Court in December 2025.
The American Historical Association calls on our members, and all Oklahomans who believe in teaching honest history, to contact their state legislators and ask them to address the issues outlined below and return the Oklahoma Academic Standards for Social Studies to the State Board of Education for further review.
Together we can defend the integrity of history education in Oklahoma.
The process of revising Oklahoma’s social studies standards has been marked by controversy, including a public rift with Governor Kevin Stitt that contributed to Ryan Walters’ decision to resign as state superintendent. In December 2025 the Oklahoma Supreme Court set aside the 2025 standards because they were approved in violation of the state’s open meeting laws. Against this backdrop, it is especially troubling that the SBOE posted a new draft with major revisions—including two entire elective courses not included in the materials circulated for public comment—and hundreds of changes just 24 hours before its March meeting, while State Superintendent Lendol Fields dismissed these as merely “minor changes.”
Areas of concern include:
- Continued lack of transparency. The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the 2025 social studies standards because the board adopted “substantively different Standards not placed on the notice of the Agenda” more than 24 hours before the meeting. Although the Oklahoma State Department of Education technically met this deadline in March, it waited until the last legally permissible moment to release an amended draft, failed to identify the dozens of changes scattered across a 137-page document, and downplayed both the scope and significance of the revisions being pushed through.
- Marginalization of tribal sovereignty and its history. The approved draft systematically replaces standards about tribal sovereignty in grades 4, 5, and 6 (4.C.1.2; 5.C.6.4; 6.C.5.1) with alternatives focused on the “historical development of American Indian citizenship” in the United States, even when doing so serves no clear educational purpose. In grade 6, for example, the civics standard 6.C.5.1 now asks students to compare “the historical development of American Indian citizenship” with other “systems of government,” including democracy, constitutional monarchy, and dictatorship. Citizenship and sovereignty are not interchangeable. Instead of learning that tribes are self-governing nations with real authority over land, courts, and public services, students are now asked to study the causes and consequences of a single piece of federal legislation, the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. Stripping out opportunities for students to understand tribal sovereignty will leave students ill equipped for civic life in Oklahoma with its 38 federally recognized tribal governments.
- Deeply flawed, new elective courses on Ancient and Medieval World History (AWH) and Twentieth Century Totalitarianism. The AHA has warned during both previous rounds of public comment that these courses incorporate content copied without attribution from untested model standards published by the overtly ideological Civics Alliance. Neither is ready for classroom use. The first (AWH) is unreasonably narrow in its geographic focus and ignores insights from the last century of historical scholarship. The second misrepresents Nazism as a descendant of Communist ideology, neglecting to mention fascism.
In finalizing the new academic standards, the State Board of Education made some changes based on input from historians and educators, including the AHA. But serious flaws remain, undermining what could otherwise serve as a strong foundation for history education in Oklahoma public schools.
Legislators have an opportunity to restore public trust in a standards revision process marked by secrecy, political interference, and scandal. Under state law, the Oklahoma legislature has 30 legislative days (until approximately May 20) to review the 2026 academic standards for social studies and may approve them, amend them, or return them to the State Board of Education “with instructions” for further revision.
Oklahoma students deserve the best possible social studies standards, developed transparently and in accordance with state law. The time to act is now.
As part of its mission to promote historical thinking in public life, the AHA monitors and offers guidance on state academic standards. As outlined in the AHA’s Criteria for Standards in History/Social Studies/Social Sciences, our approach starts from the premise that every student has the right to a history-rich education.