Culture war clashes cost schools billions, UC Riverside and UCLA researchers report

Culture war issues such as racial discrimination, LGBTQ rights and partisan politics have been lightning rods for controversy at public school board meetings in the Inland Empire in recent years. 

In 2023, parents, students and teachers sued Temecula Valley Unified School District over its policies to ban teaching of critical race theory and require teachers to inform parents if students change their gender identity. Last February, a judge allowed those policies to stand, but a new state law nullified the parental notification ban.

It turns out conflicts like these are occurring in communities nationwide and cost school districts billions of dollars per year in security, litigation and staff time, researchers with UC Riverside and UCLA reported in a recent study.

School conflicts have escalated since the 2020-21 school year, after disputes over pandemic policies such as school closures and mask requirements. During the 2023-24 school year, culturally divisive conflicts cost public K-12 schools $3.2 billion nationwide, the researchers estimated.

They calculated the total cost per 10,000 students, based on a survey of 467 superintendents who ranked their experience with problems including disinformation and harassment. The average was $249,765 for districts with low conflict, $485,065 for those with moderate culture clashes and $811,805 for districts with high levels of division.

While debate about instructional methods and materials is expected and often productive, the researchers wrote, “our measures assess conflict that violates these democratic principles, with a particular emphasis on threatening behavior, violent rhetoric, and the spread of misinformation.”

CalMatters spoke with UC Riverside Education Professor Joseph Kahne, a co-author of the study, about the price tag for culture war clashes in schools. His responses have been edited for clarity and length.

What are key issues that trigger the culture war fights you studied?

Those include teaching about race and racism. How do you talk about slavery? How do you talk about Jim Crow? How do you talk about current issues of racism in society? You can also have culture war issues around LGBTQ+ rights. Some school districts are trying to ban books. They don’t want students reading about sexuality in the contest of literature, or about slavery and discrimination. You also run into that around politics. There are people that complain about the showing of the State of the Union address in class; people felt that was biased.

How do those disputes raise costs for school districts?

Superintendents have encountered Freedom of Information Act requests in the dozens or hundreds. It takes time and money to put that information online. Sometimes you have frivolous lawsuits, so the district has to engage lawyers to respond to these things. You need security at school board meetings, because people have been yelling threatening things, and you don’t know what will happen.

How do cultural conflicts impact classroom instruction? 

There has been a chilling effect, especially in some districts where the conflict has been intense. You find principals and superintendents not promoting teacher training about topics such as the history of racial discrimination in the U.S. Or climate change, or whether or not the 2020 election results were accurate. Those are things that it would be good for schools to provide students with opportunities for fact-based discussion using evidence and argument. It doesn’t mean everybody has to think the same thing, but schools could provide students with tools for effective discussion. But teachers are saying they are not comfortable doing that.

What can members of the public do to defuse conflict in schools?

When school board meetings get particularly aggressive and violence is threatened and accusations are being hurled, many parents and community members decide ‘I don’t want to be involved in that. But that’s when there’s a bigger need for the community to show up and structure a more productive conversation