Two-thirds of nearly 500 U.S. school superintendents surveyed described moderate to high levels of culturally divisive conflict in their school district over race, LGBTQ+ student rights, and book access that is disrupting education and costing U.S. schools billions of dollars, according to a report released Wednesday by academics at four universities.
In the first-of-its-kind analysis, researchers at UC Riverside, UCLA, University of Texas at Austin, and American University estimated the financial costs incurred by school districts responding to culturally divisive conflict to be approximately $3.2 billion during the 2023-24 school year for U.S. public K-12 schools.
