Sensing the variation in the way district leaders perceive equity-centered schools

• In Event: Equity by Design: Redesigning Principal Pathways for Systemic Change

Abstract

How leaders understand equity will influence how they pursue it in their organizations. The collaborative design of large-scale initiatives, such as the ECPI, often surfaces competing assumptions of what counts as equity by actors in different organizational roles. While successful design processes can draw on this diversity of perspectives to create a richer product, often these different perspectives can stall or derail multi-level design efforts (Johnson, 2011). We argue that successful design requires building mutual understanding of how others see equity that is built not through consensus but through interaction. Therefore, districts aiming for equity-centered improvement can benefit from finding ways to surface and build on conceptual variations in understanding equity.

Our paper explores the conceptual variation in how district leaders understand equity. The following research question is at the heart of this inquiry: What do district leaders’ notice and name as key indicators of equitable schools? We examine the rationales that 18 district leaders from two large urban school districts provided when asked to nominate equity-centered positive outlier schools in their districts. By positive outliers, we refer to schools perceived by their nominators to outperform their peers on measures of equity. We treat these nominations and accompanying justifications as windows into leaders’ equity conceptions.

We asked district leaders to identify which schools in their district exhibit the best equity leadership. “Best in class” judgments often reveal just as much about the nominator as they do about the nomination, such as what is on the nominator’s organizational radar and the organization’s usually unspoken rubrics for what “best” means. (Bryk, et. al. 2015). By analyzing district leaders’ rationales for recognizing schools as equity-centered positive outliers, a story emerges that helps address a primary issue for assisting districts to become more equity-centered .

To anchor our analysis, we utilize Gutiérrez’s (2012) equity framework, which delineates conceptions of equity into four dimensions—access, achievement, identity, and power—arranged along dominant and critical axes. This framework allows us to examine how different equity conceptions may prioritize some dimensions while marginalizing others. Building on this, we introduce the concept of balanced and dimensionally-focused understandings of equity.

A balanced equity conception makes room for perspectives across all four dimensions, aligning with what equity scholars refer to as robust notions of equity (Osher et al., 2020).

A dimensionally-focused conception privileges one or two dimensions, often at the expense of others, potentially limiting a district’s capacity to listen to the diversity of community perspectives, and can thwart profound and sustainable, equity-centered change.

An equity-centered theory of action should not drive districts toward uniform definitions of equity. Instead, when districts can create a common, inclusive language and foster an appreciation for different conceptions of equity, leaders can better understand how to support local intent and channel coordinated action. A contribution we hope to make is to encourage systems to engage in critical, ongoing conversations about what equity means in their specific contexts and how their actions align with their local vision of equity.

Authors

• Louis M. Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Mary Louise Leger, University of California - Los Angeles