How Principals Learn to Lead for Equity

• In Event: From the Teacher to the Superintendent: Building Educational Systems to Support Racial Equity

Abstract

Learning is social and emotional as well as academic, and children are most successful when actively constructing knowledge in supportive contexts (Darling-Hammond et al., 2020; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018). This learning approach requires teaching focused on higher order thinking and problem solving, that is experiential and collaborative, builds on students’ assets, connects to their experiences, and authentically assesses their progress. It also requires principals who have the ability to make this vision a reality. Faced with increasingly diverse student populations, strengthening principals’ capacity to ensure all students have access to such high-quality learning opportunities is critical for advancing educational equity. Thus, it is important to understand how leadership preservice and in-service programs are effectively preparing their graduates to shape policies, practices, and resource priorities that meet all students’ needs.

This paper focuses on how principal development programs cultivate principals’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for leading for equity. Findings are based on case studies of exemplary leadership preparation and in-service programs. We used snowball sampling, and selected program based on effectiveness, as determined by extant data, and an explicit focus on deeper learning as determined by reviews of program documents and curricula. The case studies included stakeholder interviews (faculty, mentors, participants, graduates, district leaders); participant surveys; observations of participants in their school placements; observations of coursework; and analyses of extant data.

Through a cross-case analysis, we first analyzed how programs conceive of leading for equity—the vision guiding their learning objectives. We found a consistent vision driving their programs, that their graduates will: make equity central to their entire leadership approach; understand the social, historical, economic, and political contexts of their communities; understand how race, class, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other factors shape student learning; espouse that all students are capable of achieving at high levels and structure opportunities to enact that belief; and seek out inequities in their schools and work to disrupt them.

The cross-case analysis also identified common program elements to support principals’ development to lead for equity. Programs:
• recruit candidates from diverse backgrounds who have the dispositions to engage and confront inequities
• infuse equity throughout all courses, rather than treating the subject separately
• place interns in schools with diverse student populations that prioritize equity, so interns are immersed in the challenges of and strategies for addressing inequities
• use a cohort structure to create learning communities with trusting relationships so participants can engage in difficult conversations around race and racism
• use real-world projects to teach participants to look at disaggregated data through an asset-based lens
• provide models to show principals that leading for equity is possible, powerful, and vital

By providing specific program examples, this paper will deepen the field’s knowledge of what it means to lead for equity and the features of principal development programs that successfully prepare principals to meet the needs of diverse learners. The goal is to offer practitioners and policymakers who are interested in developing principals capable of leading for equity an opportunity to learn from existing programs.

Author

• Marjorie E. Wechsler, Learning Policy Institute