Overview of the Conflict Campaign

• In Event: Teaching, Learning, and Leading Amidst the Conflict Campaign: Voices From Educators and Youth

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives

This presentation will introduce the symposium by outlining the arc and extent of the national Conflict Campaign. Since 2020, nationally networked efforts have sought to caricature, limit, and prohibit learning related to issues of race and LGBTQ experience in school. Efforts to restrict discussions, learning, and student support related to race and gender/sexual identity in educational settings target schools and libraries with state legislation, politicians’ orders, school board directives, and disinformation campaigns to inflame local communities and fuel further restrictions. This Conflict Campaign–a strategic and coordinated attack to stoke anger about public schools and for some, win elections– started with efforts to ban “Critical Race Theory” as a caricatured catch-all for race- and diversity-related education. By Fall 2021, in our first study on this issue, we and colleagues found nearly 900 school districts--serving 35% of all K-12 students-- had experienced “CRT ban” efforts (Authors et al, 2022).

National organizations have now documented legislation in 45 states targeting a broad range of race- and LGBTQ-related conversations, often employing baffling lists of concepts that must be avoided in discussing the nation and signaling wide domains of inquiry off limits (Young, Sachs, & Friedman, 2022). Organizations have also tracked book ban efforts affecting millions of students (Meehan & Friedman, 2023), and local measures to limit learning (Alexander, 2022) (see counts above).

Mode of inquiry/data sources

Our session will set the stage with a “conflict campaign” framework and updated numbers/punchlines from other studies exploring a perilous moment for teaching, learning, and leading. National surveys have since found teachers limiting their own curricular and instructional choices due to “limitations placed on how teachers can address topics related to race or gender” (Woo et al, 2023). New research is showing teachers afraid to talk about topics like “race and gender” or “controversial issues” (Author 2023), and principals often curtailing professional development and support for such work in the very schools where there is substantial conflict (Rogers & Kahne, 2023).

We will share key findings from our own first “conflict campaign” survey of 275 educators, the majority of whom described experiencing 2020-2021 anti-“CRT” action and restriction of race- and diversity-related learning (Authors, et al., 2022). Educator respondents in our study also indicated that responses from local district leaders, school leaders, and other community members amidst multi-level restriction efforts were crucial in effecting restriction or protecting the ability to talk and learn – an issue taken up in our next studies.

Results and scholarly significance: This research and others’ indicates concerning trends toward educator censorship and self-censorship, and so denial of student learning opportunity. The work begs a next research question taken up in subsequent studies to be presented: How, if at all, have educators and youth continued to experience and respond to any efforts to restrict K12 teaching and learning about race, racism, gender, and LGBTQ+ and other minoritized experiences?

Authors

• Mica Pollock, University of California - San Diego

• Andrew Matschiner, Chapman University

• Erika R. Reece, University of California - San Diego

• Benjamin C. Kennedy, University of California - San Diego

• Cicely Bingener, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jaleel R. Howard, University of California - Los Angeles

• Alexander Kwako, Cambium Assessment