The Education Culture Wars Are Only Growing Fiercer. These Funders Are Fighting Back
/
Once low-profile school board meetings have become culture war battlegrounds. tongo51/shutterstock
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on May 2, 2023.
The education culture wars aren’t going away. In fact, they seem to be intensifying. Attacks on so-called critical race theory. Book bans. Restrictions on the rights of gender nonconforming and trans kids. Challenges to any curriculum that elevates the experiences of marginalized groups.
In March, House Republicans introduced a Parents Bill of Rights that would require schools to alert parents that they have the right to review curriculum, budgets and library materials. Across the country, measures to restrict what schools teach are being proposed in state and local governments. Meanwhile, normally thinly attended school board meetings have turned into pitched battlegrounds, and 2022 saw a record number of challenges to library books and materials.
For Kent McGuire, program director of education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, these attacks represent a serious threat to the progress made in U.S. education since the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
“That court case, and a whole series of public policy moves that ensued over the next decade or so, had to do with things like making sure that Black and brown kids were able to attend schools where the facilities were up to snuff, teachers were qualified and the curriculum actually began to include their own histories,” he said. “That’s what’s being unraveled here, and I would argue that it’s putting the whole public education enterprise at risk. And by extension, it’s a threat to our democracy.”
In early 2021, McGuire and Zoe Stemm-Calderon, senior director of youth-serving systems at the Raikes Foundation, were both hearing from grantee partners and educators about attacks on public education and having discussions with funders who were as concerned about the attacks as they were. Hewlett and Raikes teamed up with some of those funders to launch an initiative called Education Forward, which they describe as “a community of funders from a wide range of perspectives who recognize that public education is the cornerstone of the American Dream and an inclusive democracy.”
The effort doesn’t have a website, and Stemm-Calderon and McGuire declined to identify other funders that are participating, but say they number in the dozens, and organizers hope to get more funders and participants involved.
Over the last several years, as conservative attacks on public education have intensified, IP has reported on calls for philanthropy to do more, and a handful of funders like Hewlett and Raikes have joined the fight. Another similar effort comes from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, which became involved early on, joining Race Forward and NYU Metro Center to form HEAL Together (Honest Education Action & Leadership). The HEAL Together partnership is supported by Raikes, Hewlett and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; it also receives funding from Education Forward. The partnership provides financial and technical assistance to community organizations in 19 states. In March, HEAL Together announced its third round of grants.
Hewlett’s interest in the topic comes from its substantial K-12 education program, which gives around $50 million a year. Schott, meanwhile, is a public charity supporting racial and education justice movements, and equity and opportunity in public education. Raikes Foundation similarly supports a more just and inclusive education system. For these K-12 funders, the attacks present a serious threat to the goal of building and strengthening quality public schools that serve every student. They’re also coming after two difficult pandemic years, a time when kids and schools face more challenges than ever.
“These efforts are driving our education system backwards at a time when our kids need more from us — more from our schools — than ever,” said Stemm-Calderon.
Both Education Forward and HEAL Together support a growing network of local groups that are attending school board meetings, contacting lawmakers, organizing against legislation, providing public education, and training others who want to get involved. To date, these efforts haven’t attracted the headlines that book bans, threats to teachers or “Don’t Say Gay” measures routinely receive, but there are signs they are making a difference.
Student power
The Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, one of the groups that HEAL Together supports, is an organization of young people aged 14 to 22 “fighting for education justice from the classroom to the capitol.” Yana Batra, a coalition student organizer, elaborated on this description: “From organizing in your local school or district, to having a strong student presence and voice lobbying for legislation at the state capitol.”
Batra first became involved in activism when she was in seventh grade. After the shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, she organized a walk-out at her Georgia middle school. Now 18 and a freshman at Georgia Tech, Batra sees the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition as a force for change in a rapidly diversifying state. And it’s having an impact — in 2022, it helped secure over $1 billion in school funding, blocked proposed book bans, worked to defeat anti-critical race theory and anti-LGBTQ bills in the state legislature, and prevented some of the most extreme provisions in the measures from being passed.
The group has also experienced blowback. In Forsyth County, for example, a student who attended multiple school board meetings to call for more resources for schools received physical threats from parents who disagreed with her. In another case, the coalition had to cancel a rally in support of trans youth because organizers received a bomb threat. “We’re young people who actually represent the future of Georgia, just trying to make the changes we need to see for the betterment of our lives and our future,” Batra said. “And that faces a lot of opposition.”
The Georgia Youth Justice Coalition also receives support from the Student Action Network for Equity (SANE), a project of Seek Common Ground; SANE, in turn, is an Education Forward grantee. SANE is a “space for student- and intergenerationally led groups focused on racial justice, equity in education, and achieving the promise of a multiracial democracy in K-12 schools,” according to the website. SANE was created just over a year ago; it is now working with 55 groups in about half the states. It offers office hours, an active Slack channel and programming so students can connect and share ideas and experiences. Student groups can also apply for grants to support their work.
Sandy Boyd, Seek Common Ground cofounder and CEO, is inspired by the young people SANE works with. “I sit and listen during office hours, and the students talk about incredibly difficult issues, legislative strategies and losses,” she said. “But they are so hopeful, and it’s encouraging, because unlike adults, so many of them have a long view. They are certain that the arc of justice is going to bend in their direction.”
Philanthropic funding helps the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition pay its student organizers. It also helps support education programs, including legislative bootcamps and Ed Justice University, which provides training for students from across Georgia and beyond, and publication of toolkits and other resources. Finally, Batra says the funding will allow the coalition to expand its efforts to reach rural youth, students at Hispanic-serving institutions, and more. “Our goal is to serve as the backbone of a diverse and long-lasting movement in the state of Georgia that serves and is led by young people,” she said.
Grassroots mom power
Katie Paris created the group, Red Wine & Blue, in 2019 to give suburban women a voice in politics. The organization started in Paris’ home state of Ohio, but has steadily grown and now has nearly a half-million members around the country. Education was always a priority for the group, Paris said, but it has become even more of a focus since conservative attacks on public schools began.
“In early 2021, our DMs and our phones and our Facebook group started lighting up with women asking, ‘Are you having people you’ve never seen before show up at your school board meetings? They don’t even have kids in the district. They’re all talking about CRT — has anyone even ever heard of that before?’” Paris said. “We were hearing the exact same tactics, the exact same talking points being used all across the country…. Women were seeking support — ‘What do we do? How do we respond? This is wreaking total chaos, not just in the schools, but in our communities.’”
Red Wine & Blue responded by organizing what it calls “Troublemaker Trainings” to show women how to organize and push back on book bans and other attacks. Paris says over 11,000 women have participated in Troublemaker Trainings, and over 26,000 joined education events and trainings in 2022 alone. The group also provides resources, including voter guides and a Parent Playbook that offers tips on how to organize, speak up at school board meetings, and even run as a school board candidate.
Red Wine & Blue is an Education Forward grantee, and Paris said that when she first heard about the group, “It felt like the cavalry was coming, like maybe we wouldn’t always be on our own doing this work.” The funding has allowed the group to build some sustainability and to hire full-time organizers in four (soon to be five) states. “It’s basically allowed us to put some muscle behind this grassroots mom power,” she said.
“These funders understand that public education is a fundamental pillar of our democracy. They see the urgency and the pervasiveness of this threat and the importance of having the response come from impacted communities. They understand what’s at stake in terms of our democracy, and that we need to fight for our democracy at the most local level.”
Wins, losses, and answering the call
There are some signs that attacks on public education are falling flat. A number of extremist school board candidates in Illinois and Wisconsin lost badly in recent races, for example, suggesting that, as Politico observed,“General election voters are less interested in crusades against critical race theory and transgender students than they are in funding schools and ensuring they are safe.”
There are even glimmers of resistance in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has aggressively pushed Don’t Say Gay measures and vowed to wipe out “woke” in K-12 schools and colleges. Common Purpose, another HEAL Together grantee based in West Palm Beach, Florida, is just a year old, but it’s already organized a diverse group of parents and activists. Maria Cole, who founded and directs the group, says that last year, Common Purpose members attended a school board meeting to support an equity statement and policy goals created by the school district with community input. Members of the conservative group Moms for Liberty attended the meeting to oppose the equity statement and policy goals.
“We show up and we’re happy and we’re joyful and we’re hugging each other,” Cole said. “And when our members got up to speak each one said, ‘We’re with Common Purpose and we stand in solidarity.’ By the fifth time one of our members got up to speak, the Moms for Liberty people started leaving the meeting. They just left.”
As Megan Hester, national campaign director at NYU Metro Center, a HEAL Together partner, observed, “It’s important to remember that most people are on our side. Most people actually like their public schools. ... People know this is worth fighting for. We just have to reach them.” To do so, Education Forward, HEAL Together and the grassroots groups they are supporting need more resources.
“One year ago, we surveyed the field and we asked how much money was needed to push back against these false narratives and efforts to bring us backward, and that number was nearly $50 million,” said Raikes’ Zoë Stemm-Calderon. To date, Education Forward has raised a fraction of that sum.
While it sounds like they’re receiving a lot of interest, it is perhaps an unnerving issue for some funders to take on. The fact that the group is hesitant to share its full funder list may be indicative of just how searing the culture wars have become. The level of rage and even threats of physical violence surrounding these crusades likely scare off a certain type of education funder who may be more comfortable supporting research on learning trends or new models of early education. For the funders who are meeting this problem head-on, however, these attacks threaten the very core of the American education system, and even the country’s future.
“We see this as the fight of a generation,” Stemm-Calderon said. “We hope that more funders will begin to wrap their heads around what’s at stake — not just for our education system, but for our democracy — if we continue to go down this path that’s really dragging us backwards. We need more philanthropy leaders to answer the call from grantees and join this important work.”
