Poster #44 - Networked Far-Right Advocacy and the Transformation of Education Governance in California

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

U.S. school districts and state education systems have faced a surge of far-right activism in recent years, placing new pressures on school and district leaders and reshaping debates over curriculum, student rights, and local governance. While prior research has focused largely on far-right activity in historically conservative states, California offers an important case because it is widely understood as politically progressive yet has seen growing far-right organizing around education. This paper examines how far-right actors are building influence in California education and what their activity reveals about the policy infrastructure connecting local school-board conflict to broader state and national agendas. Specifically, we ask: How are far-right groups mobilizing around education in California? Which organizations have emerged, and how are they connected within broader networks? And how do these networks link local school-board politics to state and national policy agendas?

We use network analysis and network ethnography to trace relationships among organizations working in California to advance far-right education policy goals. We began with a seed list of 207 unique actors generated through systematic analysis of news coverage of school-board conflict and conservative education activism. From that set, we identified organizations explicitly active in California and used organizational websites to code their positions, affiliations, partners, and collaborations. We mapped these relationships to identify central actors and examine how influence moves across local, state, and national levels. To contextualize our findings, we draw on approximately 10 qualitative interviews with state- and local-level individuals engaged in education policy and advocacy, both within and outside of schools, including those aligned with far-right movements as well as those engaged in resistance efforts.

Our analysis identifies a robust and rapidly changing network of 490 actors. Many of the organizations in this field are new, with a substantial share founded in the past five years, suggesting that this is a challenger network that is still forming and expanding. These groups have been especially active around censorship, anti-trans politics, curriculum restrictions, and school-board elections. Local organizations often serve as mobilizers and visible public-facing actors, while state-level organizations translate broader ideological goals into California-specific campaigns and national organizations provide framing, legitimacy, and model policy language. The most central actors include constituency mobilization groups, state policy organizations, and longstanding national think tanks, which together help move ideas from national discourse into local school governance.

These findings are crucial for education policy because they show that local school-board conflict is often not local in a meaningful sense. School and district leaders are operating within a coordinated policy environment shaped by organizations that connect community-facing activism, state-level advocacy, and national ideological infrastructure. Understanding these coalitions is critical for recognizing how policy demands are formed, how they spread across districts, and how they may become institutionalized over time. For policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, the study underscores the need to look beyond isolated controversies and toward the organized networks that drive them.

Authors

• Michael Grigsby, University of Southern California
  Presenting Author

• Huriya Jabbar, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Co-Author