We’ve learned that extremism cost our public schools $3.2 billion last year. Now we’re also seeing that President Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon fully intend to defund and destroy the U.S. Department of Education entirely. That means our public schools can expect to lose even more money that they can’t afford.

With 97.5% of public schools experiencing some level of the extremist-driven culture wars last year, almost every one of nearly 50 million students¹ and 3.8 million teachers² in public schools has felt — or will feel — the impact of this assault. Their stories deserve to be heard.

The Costs of Conflict report includes compelling stories directly from superintendents who were interviewed. Earn your Easy A this week by downloading the full Costs of Conflict Report and giving them a look!

Want to take it one step further? Once you download the report, share it with everyone you know. We give you an easy way to share when you get your copy of the report. Let’s get loud with our support of public education!

The post Do This: Get Your Copy of the Costs of Conflict Report! appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Watch this short video to hear directly from one of the researchers, Dr. John Rogers from the University of California – Los Angeles, about what else was learned in their study.

Mainstream parents don’t want this level of conflict in our schools. We want our teachers to be able to focus on their teaching, our students to feel safe and supported, and for our schools to spend their funding on their needs, not on fighting extremism. We must speak out when politicians and other groups hurt our kids, waste our educators’ time, and waste our schools’ precious funding like this. We’ll have one more action for you to take on this next week!

The post Watch This: The Costs of Conflict appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Between 2021 and 2024, more than 300 bills were introduced in state legislatures to ban books, restrict schools from teaching about race and racism, and set restrictive policies for LGBTQ+ students. It’s all part of an extremist effort to attack our public schools with culture wars.

You’ve probably already heard a lot about this, especially if you’ve been reading our Easy A blog for awhile. And you probably know that these culture wars are hurting our kids’ mental health and taking a toll on our educators.

But a lot of us have been asking, what is the financial cost of these culture wars? Well, now we have the answer!

According to a recent report, “The Costs of Conflict: The Fiscal Impact of Culturally Divisive Conflict on Public Schools in the United States”, these culture wars cost our public schools $3.2 billion just last year. That’s right, we said $3.2 BILLION!

How is that possible? The report found that for an average-sized school district experiencing high levels of culture wars, fighting them cost $812,000 last year. Here are some more findings from the report:

• Two-thirds of the schools in the study were experiencing moderate or high levels of “culturally-divisive conflict.” Only 2.5% reported no conflict at all.
• When schools become the center of these culture wars, districts and school boards have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on:
  • Hiring lawyers and paying legal fees to fight the challenges.
  • Increased security to protect board members and educators at meetings.
  • Paying for additional staff hours spent responding to overwhelming public records requests, emails, and online disinformation.
  • Community and government relations.
  • Recruitment of teachers due to high staff turnover rates. 29% of the superintendents interviewed in the study had lost teachers due to culture wars!

We can all agree, this is not what mainstream parents want. We can think of a lot of ways that $3.2 billion could be better spent, and so did the study. Things like: hiring more counselors and teachers, upgrading supplies and technology, offering nutritious meals to all students, and providing more opportunities for kids and educators to prepare for the 21st Century.

You can learn more about “The Costs of Conflict” study on our website here. Please join us in speaking out in support of our public schools and against these divisive — and expensive! — culture wars!

The post Read This: The Costs of Conflict appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

More than 80% of Americans disagree with banning books about history or race. And a Washington Post study found that in the 2021-2022 school year, only 11 people were responsible for the majority of book bans. Book bans are being driven by a small but vocal minority, so we can stop them. And that’s exactly what we do with Book Ban Busters!

So earn your Easy A today by signing up to receive Book Ban Busters updates. We’ll keep you up to date on book bans and ways to take action. Together, we can reverse this dangerous trend.

Here are a few ways Book Ban Busters take action:

• Raising awareness by sharing information about book bans with friends and family.
• Publicly showing support for authors, educators, and librarians.
• Going to local school board and library board meetings to stay informed and ready to fight book bans if they arise.
• Voting for candidates who support the freedom to read.
• Running for a school or library board or volunteering on a campaign.
• Joining our banned book club.
• Hosting read-ins.
• Writing Letters to the Editor.
• Contacting elected representatives about legislative threats to our freedom to read.

Basically, the way we fight book bans is to organize — and that happens at the local level! Localized efforts are the most effective way to beat book bans. We win when people like you take action with the same boldness and fervor as the small groups bringing the bans in the first place. So let’s do this! 

The post Do This: The Growing Movement to Ban Books appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

According to PEN America, from 2021-2023:

• 37% of all book bans targeted books about race, racism, or books with characters of color;
• 36% targeted books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes; 8% featuring transgender characters or stories.

We read last week about how diversity in books is invaluable to students. Now hear more about this from someone who knows firsthand.

Ellen Oh is an author and founding member of We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit that strives to diversify the publishing industry. Their goal is to create a world where everyone can find themselves in the pages of a book. Ellen tells us why this is so important — even life-saving.

We Need Diverse Books has helped fuel an increase in new children’s books featuring characters of color. Twelve years ago, only 7% of children’s books published were about children of color. Now that figure is 40%. As we celebrate this, we also have to protect these stories from becoming the next targets of book bans. Next week, we’ll tell you how!

The post Watch This: The Growing Movement to Ban Books appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

It’s Banned Books Week! Since 1982, this annual event supports our freedom to read and brings attention to the growing movement to ban books. So, let’s talk about the increase in book bans and why it’s so important for us to push back.

Book bans have been around for centuries. They started when governments and religious institutions wanted to censor what they saw as threats to their authority or moral standing. We’re now seeing everyday citizens challenge our access to books in schools and public libraries, and those bans are increasing rapidly.

These modern book bans are defined as when, for any period of time, a student’s access to a book is restricted or completely prohibited. PEN America has been tracking the increase in book bans since 2021. Their latest research found that there were more than 10,000 instances of book bans in the 2023-2024 school year, which is almost triple the number in the previous year!

These recent book bans are being driven by extremist groups like Moms for Liberty. They are targeting what they consider to be controversial or objectionable content, which is usually books with LGBTQ+ or non-white characters, histories of minorities, religious or political viewpoints different from their own, or sex education. “Controversial” and “objectionable” to them is really just code for ideas and viewpoints they don’t like or don’t understand, and often involves marginalized communities. When extremists are successful in getting these stories and narratives banned, they are unjustly erasing the voices and representation of entire groups of people. That erasure has very real consequences for all children.

Book bans narrow our children’s worldview by taking away their exposure to stories about other people and places. It keeps them from exploring ideas and perspectives that are different from their own, which hinders their ability to build empathy. Book bans also teach them that it’s ok to hate and censor things you don’t agree with.

For kids in the communities whose stories are being banned, it hurts even more. When kids don’t see themselves represented, they think their stories are not worthy of being told. And when they see them banned, they think their stories are shameful. All kids deserve to see themselves and relatable characters in stories to know that they are valued and are not alone.

There’s also a financial cost to all these book bans. When books are challenged, most school districts and public libraries have a process in place to review the books and rule on the challenges. That takes extra staffing and personnel hours. For example, last year in Texas, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, school districts reported spending between $30,000-$100,000 and hundreds of full-time staff hours reviewing book ban attempts! There are better ways for this taxpayer money to be spent and for these professionals to spend their time.

All this harm is being caused by a loud but small group of people. The majority of us — more than 80% — don’t want book bans, so we also have to be loud and push back. Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore how to put a stop to this increasing trend of book bans before it gets any worse.

The post Read This: The Growing Movement to Ban Books appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Whether you’re in one of the four states that approved PragerU (Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma) or you’re trying to keep your state from becoming the next one on that list, the good news is, there are things you can do. Communities are pushing back on this kind of extremism in schools, and they’re winning!

For example, last year in the Pennridge School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a local group called the RIDGE Network successfully activated community members to defeat extremism. Laura Foster, co-founder of RIDGE Network explained how they did it on our Cost Of Extremism podcast episode about PragerU (season 2, episode 3).

Extremists held a majority of seats on the Pennridge School Board, and they secretly arranged to contract with Vermillion Education — a group similar to PragerU — for curriculum. Under the extremist majority, students were subjected to whitewashed history and other inaccurate lessons. But after the RIDGE Network and other community members organized and turned out voters in the 2023 elections, five open seats on the Pennridge School Board were won by common-sense candidates who oppose extremism, and the contract with Vermillion was canceled.

Here’s what Laura and other experts recommend you do to effectively fight extremism in schools:

• Regularly talk with teachers and school administrators. This is how you learn what is going on at school, and how you let them know you’ve got their back.
• Volunteer in your local school(s).
• Go to school board meetings.
• Have conversations with people in your community about your schools. Many of us are busy and just assume everything is okay unless we hear otherwise, so let people know what is going on.
• Get parents involved. Ask everyone you know who cares about your schools to join you in supporting them.
• Be the biggest cheerleader for schools in your community. Promote school activities and showcase the hard work educators are doing everyday to help children become well-educated, better citizens.

Download our Parent Playbook for even more ways to keep extremist BS out of your local schools.

With these actions and our Playbook in hand, you’ll be ready to defeat extremism — like that of PragerU — if it ever shows up in your local schools!

The post Do This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Watch this video where Jo from Red Wine and Blue pokes a little fun at some clips from PragerU videos, but seriously explains the threat they pose to our kids’ education.

Next week, we’ll talk about how to keep PragerU (and other extreme companies like them) from becoming part of the curriculum in your local schools.

The post Watch This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

Sounds too unlikely to be true? Think again! These are real videos created by PragerU, and they have been approved for use in public schools in at least four states (Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma). And because they are free and publicly available, they are likely being used in countless other educational settings.

So what is PragerU? Well, it’s certainly not a university or accredited academic institution of any kind! PragerU is a conservative media company whose goal is to spread right-wing ideology to our kids through “edutainment” — videos and handouts created to appeal to children. Educators, news organizations, and historians have repeatedly found that their content includes inaccurate and false narratives on history and climate change, and politically biased rhetoric.

In their own words, PragerU was “created to inoculate children against the ‘woke’ and anti-American leftist narrative taught in most schools.” One of PragerU’s founders, Dennis Prager, has said he doesn’t understand what the problem is with his organization wanting to “indoctrinate” kids. The Southern Poverty Law Center says PragerU’s content is a dog whistle for the extreme right.

How do they get away with this in our public schools? For starters, they are extremely well funded. They get hundreds of millions of dollars from conservative donors, in addition to tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from product sales. They are associated with big names in far-right politics like Elon Musk and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, who we’ve talked about in previous Easy A blogs (“Read This”, “Watch This”, and “Do This”).

While it might be tempting to brush this off, trusting that most reasonable educators would never let this sort of propaganda enter their curriculum, the scary truth is that many students are being taught this content. That’s because they’ve been approved in school systems where extremists have been elected to serve on school boards and as superintendents, like in Florida and Oklahoma. In their 2023 bi-annual report, PragerU says that their materials have been viewed eight billion times.

It’s dangerous for our students to be exposed to the factually inaccurate content that PragerU is serving. It’s especially dangerous when it’s taught in classrooms that aren’t diverse and where there aren’t other viewpoints from students or teachers to challenge PragerU’s narrative. But that’s exactly what PragerU wants. They want to keep our students from learning about diverse backgrounds and viewpoints because they want to keep us from moving forward as an inclusive, multiracial, multicultural democracy.

Every kid has the right to learn about themselves and others in school, and receive an accurate and honest education. Over the next few weeks, we’ll learn more about PragerU and how you can keep their content from being used in your local schools.

The post Read This: PragerU: Coming To A School Near You appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.

In our Cost of Extremism podcast episode on Turning Point USA, we spoke with college students Francesca Martin and Jacob Marson of Keep Arizona Blue Student Coalition. They told us that no matter how well-funded Turning Point USA is (which makes them successful in reaching young voters), their values do not align with most young people.

Our values — protecting reproductive rights, supporting public education, reducing gun violence, protecting the environment, and valuing diversity and inclusion in our communities — are more appealing! We want to safeguard their rights and provide for their future. We’re leading with our hearts, not hate. We’re just trying to be, and raise, good people who care about our communities. That’s a far more appealing message than Turning Point’s bullying, angry, hateful, and violent rhetoric, so we have to make sure young people hear from us too.

Our Rally Together program is specifically designed to help you identify people in your life who you can talk to about these important issues, and how to do it. Rally Together has proven to be the most effective way to educate and turnout voters, and turning out young voters this election will be crucial to our success.b>So that’s your Easy A this week — join Rally and get started talking to young people in your life about the dangers of Turning Point USA today!

If you’re in Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Virginia, start here!

If you’re in any other state, start here!

The post Do This: Turning Point USA: The Alt-Right Radicalization of Young Men appeared first on Red Wine and Blue.