The Unique Challenges Posed by Problem Identification and Progress Monitoring in Equity-Focused Continuous Improvement

• In Event: Adapting Continuous Improvement Methods to Advance Equity-Related Goals

Abstract

Purpose

This case study is designed to understand how district leaders in a community school district in the New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) integrated the discipline of improvement science (IS) (Bryk, 2015) into the ongoing development of principals. Specifically, the district established principal networks to address three issues: strengthening culturally responsive-sustaining education (CR-SE), strengthening social emotional learning (SEL), and reducing chronic absenteeism. This work is part of an ongoing effort to strengthen racial equity
by sharpening leaders’ “equity lens” through training focused on leading conversations about race and implicit bias. District leaders used improvement science to create what one described as “action oriented” networks that met once or more each month.

Background

Engaging in continuous improvement (CI) generally, and IS specifically, presents a challenge for educational leaders. CI requires relatively high level of problem-solving capacity since it requires leaders to define problems and design appropriate solutions based on context-specific understanding rather than to simply implement externally designed interventions (Mintrop & Zumpe, 2019). Additionally, it requires using data to identify problems and measure progress, which may require either using or developing the metrics needed. While there is much literature on how leaders can organize schools for continuous improvement (Author, 2017), much less is known about learning to lead equity-oriented organizational improvement. Irby’s (2021) research on racial equity improvement suggests that data that reflects Black and Brown people’s perspectives is essential for understanding problems and monitoring progress with attention to the influence of race and racism. However, most schools and systems do not systematically collect this data. Thus, understanding and addressing equity-focused problems will likely require educational leaders to learn to collect and use new and novel data that brings attention to the perspectives of the students and communities they seek to better serve.

Methods

This multiple site case study of three principal networks draws on interviews with district and school leaders, team observations, and document review to answer two research questions: 1.) How do leaders use IS in principal networks to address equity-focused problems of practice? 2.) What changes can be made to the design of principal networks to better support leaders in making improvements in the three focus areas?
Findings

Findings suggest that principals in all three principal equity networks took action in their schools to address the focus areas. However, district and school leaders were likely to define problems as the absence of preferred solutions and collaboration in networks focused primarily on implementation planning rather than problem investigation or solution design. These results suggest that the district faced challenges in developing an improvement mindset among leaders (Mintrop & Zumpe, 2019). Further they failed to apply equity-specific skills they had previously developed, such as identifying levels of racial disproportionality (Fergus, 2016), to new problems, which limited their equity focus.

While integrating improvement science into principal development is promising, addressing issues of equity requires careful problem definition and progress monitoring practices that require changes in leadership dispositions, knowledge, and skills.

Author

• Elizabeth Leisy Stosich, Fordham University
  Presenting Author