Principals' Responses to School-Based Student Protests: Balancing Agency and Control

• In Event: Leadership for Democracy: How Are Principals Responding in Troubled Times?

Abstract

A recent poll shows that 27% of young adults aged 18-24 have participated in at least one protest, a dramatic increase from 16% in 2018 (CIRCLE, 2020). Based on our own data, we observe that many protests take place on campus during school hours. These school-based protests raise unique challenges for educational leaders, and principals in particular. Student protests call forth an inherent tension between administrators and students, the resolution of which has important implications for civic education (Gutman & Ben-Porath, 2014; Rapp, 2002). Yet, a paucity of research examines this tension and the challenges that educators encounter. Aside from short documents about legal obligations (e.g. ACLU, 2018) and ensuring student safety (USDoE, 2008), principals have little guidance in how to respond thoughtfully to student protests. Many principals we interviewed expressed not knowing how best to respond. This paper seeks to address this gap in the research and to provide principals with the beginning of a framework in which to understand and address student protests. To support our claims, we draw from a dataset involving a nationwide survey of 505 public high school principals and in-depth interviews with 40 of those principals.

To estimate the frequency of protests and principals’ survey responses, we used Monte Carlo techniques, controlling for sample bias using regression-based probability weights. To analyze transcripts of principals’ interviews, we used a combination of procedural and in-vivo coding (Saldaña, 2016). We started with 2 sets of codes revolving around (1) principals’ primary concerns regarding student protests and (2) principals’ responses to student protests. Codes were refined over 3 waves of coding.

Based on our analyses of the 2017-2018 school year, students organized protests at 56.3% of all public high schools in the US. The most prevalent social movement driving student protests was gun violence (88.5% of protests). Survey results also revealed that nearly all principals (97.0%) communicated with students and families ahead of time, and the majority of principals (68.2%) stated that they talked with students after the protest to discuss lessons learned. Interviews with principals revealed a broader set of challenges which included: providing for student safety, supporting student voice or agency, tending to students’ civic education, and easing political conflict. In responding to these challenges, principals balanced control and agency differently depending on the concern they were addressing. For instance, in order to ease political conflict, many principals exerted less control and communicated a stance of neutrality, while other principals pushed students to change the messaging of their protest to focus less about the partisan issue of gun control and more on memorializing the victims of gun violence. Principals’ decisions were held accountable by diverse stakeholders that included students, parents, district officials, as well as the broader public. How they negotiated these concerns and the decisions they made determined, in some cases, the outcome of the protest.

Authors

• Alexander Kwako, University of California - Los Angeles

• John S. Rogers, University of California - Los Angeles

• Joseph E. Kahne, University of California - Riverside