Understanding the Emergence of Equity Director Positions in Suburban Public Schools

• In Event: Working Toward Equity in Suburban School Districts

Abstract

The adoption of equity director positions in suburban public school districts in the United States was partly accelerated by the racial unrest experienced in 2020 and the call for material changes by students, parents, and other school district constituents (Irby et al., 2022). Exploring the landscape in which equity directors have been hired and subsequently work in requires understanding the racialized nature of school districts as organizations. Through the analysis of publicly available materials such as position announcements and job descriptions, this paper seeks to leverage scholarship within the field of organizational theory to examine how establishing the equity director role as a newly minted position that targets organizational change is considered, adopted, and negotiated across the organization.

Racialization can be broadly defined as a political and social process that creates racial social identities (Omi & Winant, 2014; Ray, 2019). Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations draws from the research of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Moon-Kie Jung, and William Sewell to bring together work on racialized social systems and social structures to challenge the assumption that organizations are places where racial dynamics happen but not places where racial dynamics are generated or maintained. The theory posits that “organizations are racial structures that reproduce (and challenge) racialization processes” (Ray, 2019, p. 27). Ray argues that organizational theory scholars have approached organizations as if they were race-neutral while race scholars have mostly neglected the study of organizations in favor of studies of macro or microstructures (such as nation-states or interpersonal relationships).
Suburban communities have also been viewed as race-neutral while emerging as part of a larger project of racial exclusion that has been characterized by opportunity hoarding, particularly concerning goods such as public education (Diamond & Posey-Maddox, 2020). Thus, schools, which serve as intermediary racialized organizations, play a role in realizing “racialized institutional scripts that link material and social resources with organizational rules and rewards” (Ishimaru et al., 2022, p. 6). Examining public statements regarding equity director positions can help us understand how the setting (school district), the agents (superintendents and school boards), the process (“equity work”), and the outcomes (the hiring of an equity director) exist within the racialized context of suburban schools.

Diamond, J. B., & Posey-Maddox, L. (2020). The Changing Terrain of the Suburbs:
Examining Race, Class, and Place in Suburban Schools and Communities.
Equity & Excellence in Education, 53(1–2), 7–13.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2020.1758975

Irby, D. J., Green, T. L., & Ishimaru, A. M. (2022). PK–12 District Leadership for Equity:
An Exploration of Director Role Configurations and Vulnerabilities. American
Journal of Education, 128(3). https://doi.org/DOI: 10.1086/719120

Ishimaru, A. M., Irby, D. J., & Green, T. L. (2022). The Paradox of Organizational Double
Jeopardy: PK‑12 Equity Directors in Racialized and Gendered Educational
Systems. The Urban Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-022-00653-2

Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial Formation in the United States. Routledge.

Ray, V. (2019). A Theory of Racialized Organizations. American Sociological Review,
84(1), 26–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122418822335

Author

• Dayna Muniz, University of Pennsylvania