UCEA 2022 Presentation on Equity Leadership Practices

1. Presentation
Title Goes Here
Subtitle of
Presentation
Equity-Oriented School
Leadership: A Practice-
Grounded Framework

2. Background

3. Previous Frameworks
• My interest is in investigating equity-oriented leadership practice
• Several definitions of equity-oriented leadership but few frameworks
for what these definitions entail in practice
• Examples descriptions of equity-oriented leadership practice
• Theoharis, 2007—Raising student achievement, Improving school structures,
Recentering and enhancing staff capacity, and Strengthening school culture
and community
• Riester, 2002—Promoting democratic culture; Adopting prescriptive approach
to literacy and academic success; Demonstrating a stubborn persistence in
“getting there”

4. Weaknesses in the Literature
• Frameworks rely on theory and may not reflect practitioners’ day-
to-day experiences
• Frameworks use language not readily interpretable for
practitioners
• Frameworks provide overview language without specific sub-
categories of practice or examples
• Frameworks do not integrate community/ecological lens
• Frameworks examine one leadership focus (e.g., anti-racist,
inclusive)
• Frameworks use data derived from a small sample size (e.g.,
Theoharis, 2007, had 7 leader participants)

5. Beginning Framework of Equity-
Oriented Leadership Practice

6. Beginning Framework of Equity-
Oriented Leadership Practice

7. The Study

8. Purpose
Create a framework readily applicable and interpretable by
practitioners that will show the breadth of what equity-oriented
leadership can look like
Include several school contexts to capture many sorts of equity
practices
Include in-school and community-oriented work

9. Research Questions
1. What are the key domains of equity-oriented leadership that
occur within schools?
2. What are key practices within each of these domains?

10. Method
• Seven school districts across the U.S.
• Interviews with 24 school leaders in winter 2020/2021
• Interview questions were open-ended and asked leaders to
discuss four buckets of equity work:
• Student-oriented; staff-oriented; family-oriented; community-oriented

11. Participants
• Urban districts in Texas (2), Ohio (1), Florida (2), Arizona (1),
and Colorado (1)
• Mean % white students: 25.8%
• Mean % low-SES students: 61.8%
• School type
Elementary 10
Elementary/Middle 2
High 7
Middle 4
Middle/High 1

12. Findings

15. More kids into AP, dual enrollment, and it's
about encouraging the kids. It's about
having the open access to it. So no kid
is denied the opportunity to go into an
AP class. Before they were, they were
being very selective in who got to go in
and we opened it up and nearly doubled
the number of kids in AP…So, but it
worked because the kids, they were still
successful. And our first year, the, the AP
scores didn't go up, but the numbers
doubled, but the AP scores also didn't go
down.
Like we know that we've
got to make sure that
we're trying to reach all
kids and if there are
barriers, we got to
remove them. It sounds
sort of, um, I dunno,
altruistic and I don't mean
for it to, but I do believe
that once everybody sees
that, you know, that just
can't be that way and we
have the resources to take
care of it, then we need to.

17. And so I've had to work with the staff,
because when I first came, the kids that
live in the hotels, the staff would would
say, well, they're transient. And we
had to like, clean that up. I've said,
how would you like to be called that?
They're not transient, they live in a hotel,
you know, that’s a kind of label and we're
not going to judge them. And whether
they're here these two months or two
years they're our kids and they have to
be greeted that way. So just having that
culture shift and, and really learning
what it means, what the differences
between equal and equitable.
I can tell when I interview
someone, when they answer
my equity questions and
diversity questions, and then I
ask questions around
underrepresented
populations, it gets, it's real
clear on who can get there
with us.

19. Parents, um, we normally, so we have a
parent meetings every week through our
parent meetings. We offer different
types of classes. So we'll do ESL
classes, we'll do finance classes,
we've done, um, cooking classes, like
healthy cooking, eating, um, because
we live in, I mean our community is
Hispanic, so they're at high risk for
diabetes. So we do those things too.
So what I did in my previous
school, because parent
engagement was low, I would
have parent events at the
community center, that's in the
neighborhood and I will set out
fliers. And interestingly, they'll
show up there because the kids
are already there for basketball
practice or something. So I had to
think of innovative ways to
connect to the parents by
actually having those types of
meetings in the neighborhood.

21. I have hosted for the last
four years adult English
classes for them to come
in and learn English. So
two teachers, one in the
afternoon and one in the
morning that teach classes
each week, all year long. I
just really believe in
giving, and they love
coming, they get excited.
And then our PTCO will do
like movie nights and they
have all sorts of events they
do.
So our community knows we have a
beautiful pool facility, um, for our swim in
water polo team. And so, um, the
community will ask to utilize that, um,
you know, various afterschool groups
and inside, which is good, cause we
view that as positive PR as well, if you're
happy with the facility and you know,
your kids are used to coming here then,
you know, for that they'll want to come
for school as well.

22. Discussion

23. Strengths of the Framework
• Grounded in real data from large number of leaders across wide
variety of contexts
• Inclusion of family and community
• Substantial xamples in the data for every practice listed on
framework
• Clarity of language, accessible to practitioners

24. Putting the Framework to Use
• Practitioners/practitioner journals
• Preparation programs design with the end in mind (i.e., what do
we want aspirants to be able to do?)
• Guide researcher understanding of a phenomenon
• Guide instrument creation and future studies generally

25. Future Research
• Expand with the goal that all practitioners can see avenues for
their own work within the framework
• Examine each domain of work more deeply
• Examine in additional contexts
• Examine in relation to preparation program improvement work

26. Thank You
Meagan Richard, mricha44@uic.edu
@MeaganSRichard
College of Education | Policy Studies in Urban Education