Reframing Race in Education: Improving Leadership and Learning Through Racial Literacy

• In Event: Inclusive Leadership Promoting Social Justice Praxis

Abstract

Background and Purpose

Despite decades of stated support for equal and equitable education in the U.S., educational leaders continue to face challenges associated with racial inequality in educational investment, expectations, and achievement (Singleton & Linton, 2005). This paper seeks to discuss why racial inequality persists in U.S. education and how flawed conceptions of “race” undermine efforts to improve academic achievement for all students. By interrogating the use of race as a construct used to measure, and arguably reproduce, equality and inequality in schools, this paper will examine how an understanding of the origins and function of race in U.S. society is essential to the work of educational leaders committed to improving learning and advancing social justice in U.S. schools. It puts forth the concept of “racial literacy” (Guinier, 2004; Author, 2009, 2011) as a practical approach to improving school leadership practices and their implications for student learning and achievement in racially diverse school communities.

Conceptual Framework

Building on the concept of “racial literacy” – what Guinier defined as a framework that “requires us to rethink race as an instrument of social, geographic, and economic control of both whites and blacks” (2004, p. 114), this paper will offer a theoretically and conceptually rich interrogation and discussion of why racial inequality persists in U.S. education and what school leaders must know in order to resist and transform schools for social justice.

New Understandings and Conclusion

While the U.S. quest for post-racialism reflects the nation’s desire to move beyond the historical, legal, social, and political implications of race, the field of education (and educational leadership in particular) continues to organize, measure, analyze, and report its performance according to racial categories, despite the limits of this approach in complex 21st century schools. Given increasingly immigrant, multiracial, and ethnically diverse student populations and the outdated nature of non-scientific, socially constructed racial categories, investigations of race and its relationship to how we identify student populations and report their respective student achievement requires greater attention with important implications for education policy and practice.

Significance

The paper concludes with a list of resources and recommendations to assist educational administrators and practitioners in their efforts to advance educational equity through a clearer understanding of race and how it functions in schools.

Author

• Sonya Douglass Horsford, University of Nevada - Las Vegas