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Education is at a Crossroads: Help Us Illuminate the Path Forward.听

In the years since COVID first hit, a small Rocky Mountain community has increasingly dealt with what the district鈥檚 superintendent called 鈥渟care tactics and half-truths鈥� by 鈥渇ar right鈥� activists, ranging from accusations that there were placed in school bathrooms for students who identify as cats to an attempt to ban 1,000 books from school libraries 鈥� even though none of those titles were actually in the district’s possession.

These tensions escalated last year when a teacher disagreed with the superintendent’s decision to follow the advice of the school district’s lawyer and honor a transgender student’s request not to share their transition with their parents. The teacher went public and the results were swift and intense.

Hundreds of people descended on the next school board meeting. A local talk radio host said the superintendent wanted to 鈥渋ndoctrinate their children and 鈥� make them become gay and transgender.鈥� Community members verbally accosted the schools chief in public saying, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e gonna go to hell. You never read the Bible.鈥� 

The fiscal consequences were also considerable, forcing the district to divert funds from planned professional development. Ultimately, five educators left their jobs in response to the spreading unrest.

This small community鈥檚 turmoil is one of many accounts included in a new , which tries for the first time to put a dollar amount on the costs of the culture war conflicts that have consumed school districts over the past several years. The researchers estimate that the nation鈥檚 public schools spent approximately $3.2 billion in 2023-24 dealing with divisive public debates over race, gender and sexual orientation, forcing them to spend money on legal fees, security, public relations and employee hours responding to misinformation, disinformation and public records requests. 

And although the researchers said their figures don鈥檛 account for the emotional and social toll on educators and students, their numbers do include a significant and related expense: staff turnover.  

鈥淭here are many different costs that are really consequential and are undermining the ability of educators to support student learning and well-being,” said John Rogers, a professor at UCLA鈥檚 School of Education and Information Studies and the report鈥檚 lead author.

Data from the report comes from a national survey of 467 superintendents across 46 states conducted during summer 2024, followed by interviews with 42 superintendents across 12 states. Of those interviewed, 12 had taken the survey and reported moderate or high levels of conflict; the remaining 30 hadn鈥檛 taken the survey and were identified through professional leadership networks.

School districts were categorized as having either high, moderate, or low levels of conflict based on a series of questions about the nature of conflict related to culturally divisive issues, the frequency of and topics associated with personal or professional threats to superintendents and district staff and the financial and human resource costs.

Moms for Liberty, a high-profile parental rights group, was named specifically in the report in relation to board members they supported and other far-right groups accusing a western school district of indoctrinating students around sexual health issues. That superintendent cited having to spend roughly $100,000 to hire 鈥渁rmed plainclothes off-duty officers鈥� and more than $500,000 in legal fees. Superintendents and school board members being attacked as pedophiles, groomers or sexual predators was a common refrain in the report.

Moms for Liberty did not respond to a request for comment. Closely aligned with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the group鈥檚 influence over school board elections is seen as waning even if battles over curriculum content and library books are still being waged.

Of the districts surveyed, roughly one-third experienced low levels of conflict, just over one-third experienced moderate levels and just under one-third experienced high levels. About 2.5% of superintendents reported no conflict. Overall, Rogers said those surveyed 鈥渓ook a lot like superintendents from the entirety of the (national) pool鈥� in terms of their race, gender and whether they lead urban, rural or suburban districts.

Half of the schools chiefs reported that they experienced at least one instance of harassment in the 2023-24 school year. One in 10 said violent threats were directed toward them and 11% experienced property vandalism.

In order to calculate the overall fiscal costs, researchers asked superintendents about direct expenditures during the 2023-24 school year that were above and beyond what they previously would have spent for resources such as legal services or security; indirect costs, such as redeployed staff time; and employee turnover costs. 

To determine the cost of redeployed staff time, researchers took the number of hours that superintendents reported across these different activities and assigned them a dollar figure based on average district administrator wages from the . For each staff member that left the district, researchers assigned a dollar figure related to recruitment and new staff training based on research out of the .

Rogers noted that 鈥渢here鈥檚 a certain imprecision鈥� when it comes to calculating the cost of staff turnover because 鈥測ou鈥檙e asking superintendents to draw upon the knowledge that they have to make this determination鈥� of why educators and administrators left their positions. Follow-up interviews, he added, helped to bolster the reliability of these figures.

The researchers, who also include Rachel White of the University of Texas at Austin, Robert Shand of American University and Joseph Kahne of the University of California, Riverside, estimated that in their entirety, the conflict-related costs were more than enough to expand the national school breakfast program by 40% or hire 鈥渁n additional counselor or psychologist for every public high school in the United States.鈥�

Beyond the dollar figures, when speaking with superintendents, Rogers said he was particularly struck by the ways in which violent threats were playing out and how frequently it appeared there was a 鈥渃oncerted effort to disrupt, to foment conflict for the sake of fomenting conflict.鈥�

For example, he heard from a number of superintendents whose districts spent an immense amount of time fulfilling public records requests they felt had been filed in bad faith. Once the materials were compiled, they often went unused, Rogers said.

The lasting implications of these in-district battles 鈥� beyond the fiscal costs 鈥� still remain unknown and appear to be shifting with the changing landscape. Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of the History of Education at The University of Pennsylvania, recently on his previous work around the culture wars鈥� impact on history teachers, writing, 鈥淚t seems like I might have exaggerated them.鈥� 

But, he noted in an interview with 蜜桃影视 this week, the effects on other educators and administrators are ongoing. Within the culture wars, he鈥檚 noticed less of a focus on race and critical race theory and more on gender and sexuality, hypothesizing that this may mean history teachers feel a lesser impact than English teachers, who might be more likely to teach directly about gender.

His sees the report as a reflection of the country’s 鈥渂rittle and abusive鈥� political culture. 

鈥淭his is the school politics chapter of a much broader story about the way that politics is conducted in America,鈥� he said.

It appears that even as some of these more divisive players move on or are voted out, their political agendas may persist. That鈥檚 been the case in Pennsylvania鈥檚 Bucks County, one of the most closely watched regions for these debates. 

According to recent New York Times , despite Democrats sweeping the last school board election, not all contested books have been returned to school library shelves nor have teachers been allowed to display identity markers, like rainbow flags. Nearly a year after the Moms for Liberty-backed candidates were ousted, their presence is still felt. 

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