Dive Brief:
- Culturally divisive conflict in schools, including responding to threats of violence and to property damage, cost public K-12 schools about $3.2 billion during the 2023-24 school year, according to a survey of 467 superintendents in 46 states by university researchers.
- The financial costs of school "culture wars" included additional security, communications and legal expenses. Schools incurred indirect costs from using staff time to address misinformation, social media threats, media inquiries about book bans, and growing demands for public information requests.
- In addition to the fiscal hardships, superintendents also noted the personal toll taken by threats against them and their staff, as well as the professional challenge of dealing with conflicts while leading schools.
Dive Insight:
“It’s important for the public and policymakers to be aware of ways culturally divisive conflicts are harming the schools our children attend,” said Joseph Kahne, co-author of the report and an education professor at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement. “These conflicts come with a very real cost.”
The survey, conducted during the summer, was led by a team of researchers at University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Texas at Austin; American University, in Washington, D.C.; and University of California, Riverside. Researchers also interviewed 42 superintendents in 12 states.
The survey asked superintendents whether and how often their districts received pushback on teaching and learning about race and racism, policies protecting LGBTQ+ students, and books available to students in the school library.
Based on their answers, researchers created a "culturally divisive conflict score" that identified each district as having low, moderate or high conflict. Districts considered high conflict, for instance, have strife across several issue areas, and the conflict often includes violent rhetoric or threats.
Nearly all of the superintendents reported some level of conflict during the 2023-24 school year, and 66% said their district experienced moderate or high levels of conflict.
To determine the fiscal costs of conflict, researchers used per-student calculations — including direct expenditures, indirect costs, and staff turnover costs — and equated those expenses to be about $80 per student for high conflict districts, $50 per student for moderate conflict districts and $25 per student for low conflict districts.
Researchers calculated the direct and indirect costs of specific actions when addressing conflict. For example, a high conflict district spent $56,300 in direct costs for legal services to address conflicts.
If moderate and high conflict districts were able to reduce divisiveness to low levels, that would save $1.96 billion nationally, according to researchers.
"This research makes clear that culturally divisive conflicts in the nation’s schools are generating fear, stress, and anxiety that is disrupting school districts and taking a personal toll on the educators and staff members who work in them,” said John Rogers, lead researcher for the survey and a UCLA education professor, in a statement.
