Commanding Through Change: A Conceptual Model for School Leadership Amid Gentrification

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Educational Leaders Engaging in Decision-Making and Sensemaking of Policy and Practice

Abstract

This project analyzes the literature on school gentrification and presents a conceptual model of school leaders and leadership practices in gentrifying contexts. Our model foregrounds the municipal and educational policies (e.g., the expansion of school choice) that drive neighborhood and school gentrification processes and considers the strategies that school leaders use to respond to changing contexts. Specifically, we outline the ways school leaders respond to school gentrification’s features: school leaders’ reactions to middle-class families, how they manage upgrades to school facilities, programmatic changes, and material resources, how they build the learning and work environment, and leadership’s response to the needs of their local community.

Authors

• Alisha Butler, Wesleyan University

• Rachel Whitney Boggs, University of Texas - Austin