Culture wars are robbing kids of good education
By John Rogers and Joseph Kahne / For the Los Angeles Times
Education policy received little to no attention during much of the presidential campaign. But, in the final phase, Donald Trump was asked during a “Fox & Friends” interview how he would fix schools. His reply: “No transgender, no operations . … There are some places, your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl.”
That was a lie. But it was far from the first time Trump, the Republican Party and a wide-range of conservative activists leveraged fears related to schooling for partisan gain. Over the last three years, there has been a coordinated and intentional political strategy targeting public schools.
Our team of university researchers spent the past months surveying and interviewing hundreds of school superintendents about the costs of dealing with culturally divisive conflict, such as battles over LGBTQ+ rights, teaching about race and racism, and efforts to ban books. Their answers are troubling. One in 10 were physically threatened. Many were barraged by false rumors and accusations. Two-thirds of the 467 school superintendents in our national survey reported experiencing moderate to high levels of culturally divisive conflict.
School districts bear significant financial costs as a result. Security, communications, legal work and heightened staff turnover related to conflict all come with price tags and can involve redeployment of staff time. We found that the costs incurred by U.S. public schools’ responses to culturally divisive conflict totaled $3.2 billion during the 2023-24 school year alone. On average, a school district serving 10,000 students is spending nearly $500,000 a year if it is experiencing moderate levels of conflict, and more than $800,000 if conflict levels are high.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-culture-wars-are-robbing-kids-of-good-education/