Leadership for Increasingly Diverse Schools

George Theoharis, Martin Scanlan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317663843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Leadership for Increasingly Diverse Schools provides both practicing and aspiring leaders with the theory, research, and practical guidance to lead socially just schools. Today's schools are growing more pluralistic and diverse, and leadership is central to reversing long-standing trends of educational inequities, exclusion, and disparate school outcomes. This book helps readers sharpen their awareness of how multiple dimensions of diversity intersect as well as develop strategies for working with students of all socioeconomic statuses, races, religions, sexual orientations, languages, and special needs. Leadership for Increasingly Diverse Schools provides school leaders the tools to foster teaching and learning environments that promote educational equity and excellence for all students.

Special Features:

• 
  
  

• Each chapter focuses on a specific dimension of diversity and discusses intersectionality across other areas of difference, including ability/disability, linguistic diversity, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and social frontiers.
• Chapters synthesize literature, provide practical strategies and tools, and include school-level and district-level cases illustrating inclusive leadership.
• End-of-chapter resources point readers toward further discussion of conceptual elements, practice connections, and research applications.
• A companion website features modifiable downloads and further resources for each chapter.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Intersectionality in Educational Leadership

Martin Scanlan and George Theoharis

In the 21st century, elementary and secondary school communities are growing more pluralistic across multiple dimensions of diversity, such as race, ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status (Taylor, 2014). Schools in the United States have historically responded to dimensions of diversity by privileging some and marginalizing others. Dimensions of diversity that have enjoyed privilege include being White, of European heritage, of moderate to high socioeconomic status, Christian, heterosexual, native English speaking, and without disability. By contrast, dimensions of diversity that have been marginalized include being of color; of non-European heritage; of low socioeconomic status; non-Christian; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ); of limited proficiency in English; or with a special need or disability. If schools are to serve the common good and promote social justice, school leaders need the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to create schools that eliminate marginalization across these multiple dimensions of diversity. The purpose of this book is to help leaders accomplish this.

Core Expectations of School Leaders

Across sectors (public, private) and regions (urban, suburban, rural), schools consistently fail to provide equitable educational opportunities to students across these dimensions of diversity (Deschenes, Cuban, & Tyack, 2001; Duncan & Murnane, 2011; Gamoran & Long, 2006). School leaders—including both those with positional authority, such as school principals, department chairs, and formal teacher leaders, as well as those lacking positional authority who are viewed as leaders by peers, such as revered teachers—play a central role in eliminating these educational inequities. Effective school leaders set directions for school communities to be academically ambitious and ensure that the organizational structures support these ambitions—such as by building the instructional capacity of the faculty and staff and including various stakeholders (e.g., teachers, parents) in decision-making (Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). While school leaders are key drivers of organizational learning (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010), effective leadership is not a solitary charge, but rather a collective enterprise engaging multiple individuals (Darling-Hammond, LaPointe, Meyerson, Orr, & Cohen, 2007). It entails scaffolding structures and routines across the school community.

Social Justice and Leadership Standards

Generally speaking, standards of the field—the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2008, 2014)—charge school leaders with engaging in an array of responsibilities. The ISLLC Standards are valuable in articulating the leadership responsibilities in broad brushstrokes (Table 1.1, column 1). However, they have historically fallen short of providing concrete guidance for school leaders on how to carry out these responsibilities through the lens of social justice (Table 1.1, column 2).

Table 1.1 Extending ISLLC Standards to Social Justice Leadership

2008 ISLLC Standards^*	Distinctions of social justice leadership
1. Setting a widely shared vision for learning	• Vision foregrounds a critical analysis of educational inequities and the intersectionality of these across multiple dimensions of diversity
2. Developing a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth	• School culture and instructional program are inclusive, students across areas of difference have authentic access to heterogeneous peers and the core instruction, affirming each student as an integral member of the school community
3. Ensuring effective management of the organization, operation, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment	• Learning environment integrates the delivery of support services into the classrooms; prioritizing access and opportunity over separation
4. Collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources	• Faculty and staff embrace shared responsibility for the education of all students, building capacity to collectively and collaboratively meet each students’ needs; families and community members are engaged in authentic partnerships
5. Acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner	• Ethical commitment places emphasis on eliminating educational inequities and eliminating structural "isms"
6. Understanding, responding to, and influencing the political, social, legal, and cultural contexts	• Prioritizing the provision of educational opportunities for all students across these contexts

* Council of Chief State School Officers (2008).

By fleshing out these distinctions, this book provides school leaders clear, cogent guidance for enacting social justice leadership. We assert that these social justice distinctions are not peripheral, but rather are core aspects of school leadership in increasingly diverse schools. Consider the ISLLC 2008 Standard, involving a vision for learning in the school. Socially just school leaders do not first focus on cultivating this vision, and then consider how issues of race, ethnicity, language, religion, socioeconomic status, disability, gender, and sexual orientation fit into it. Rather, eliminating marginalization and promoting educational opportunities for all is central to the vision. In a similar manner, each of these standards needs to be tuned and refined by school leaders to place a preferential option on those who are marginalized.

As this book was being published, the ISLLC Standards were in the process of being reauthorized (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2014). Preliminary drafts suggest that the reauthorized standards place more emphasis on the interconnections of community, justice, and school improvement, as well as on cultural relevance. For instance, several additional standards are included in this revision, including one emphasizing communities of engagement for families and another emphasizing equity and cultural responsiveness. We are encouraged that the standards of the field of school leadership seem to be evolving in this manner. This underscores the relevance of this book for future educational leaders.

Another way of making this point is to say that enacting social justice is a holistic endeavor. Social justice leadership entails attending simultaneously not only to the multiple dimensions of diversity, but also to multiple aspects of leadership: from student achievement to school structures to curriculum and instruction to culture and community (Theoharis, 2007). Teachers have the most direct influence on student learning, since they are at the heart of the instructional core—the intersection of teachers, students, and content. By influencing teachers and the conditions of the schools in which teachers work, school leaders affect student learning (Wahlstrom, Louis, Leithwood, & Anderson, 2010). Since school leaders are increasingly held accountable for the academic outcomes of all students, school leaders must be mindful of and responsive to how these multiple dimensions of diversity intersect with one another in manners that affect student learning (Scanlan & Theoharis, 2014).

What Does Social Justice Leadership Look Like?

One way to summarize these core expectations of school leaders is to say that effective leaders engage in practices that create socially just schooling. Socially just schooling is evident when educational opportunities abound for all students, when ambitious academic goals are held and met by all students, when all students and families are made to feel welcome in the school community, when students are proportionately distributed across all groupings in the school, and when one dimension of identity (such as one’s race or home language or gender or sexual orientation) does not directly correlate with undesirable aspects of schooling (such as being bullied, struggling academically, or dropping out of school). As these outcomes suggest, socially just schooling is both a tangible reality that one can describe and create, and at the same time an ideal goal to which we are always aspiring. In this sense, it is analogous to our personal health. We can at once be accurately described as a healthy person while at the same time recognize that there are aspects of our health that can be improved. So too with socially just schooling. We can point to schools as exemplars and at the same time recognize within these exemplars areas for continued growth and improvement.

One way to parse social justice school leadership is across four outcomes: (a) raising student achievement, (b) improving school structures, (c) recentering and enhancing staff capacity, and (d) strengthening school culture and community (Theoharis, 2007). Empirical literature addressing the intersectionality of various dimensions of diversity (namely race, ethnicity, language, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status) addresses each of these outcomes.

First, raising student achievement—as evidenced by multiple measures of student learning outcomes—is often a core objective for leaders focusing on these various dimensions of diversity. Federal legislation—such as Title IX, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004)—have directly spurned schools to attempt to develop rigorous academic environments that expect and foster high achievement for all. Results are mixed. For instance, despite significant gains by girls in the areas of math and physics in K–12 settings that have resulted in parity with boys (Hyde & Lindberg, 2007), gender inequities persist (Grogan & Dias, this volume). As another example, school leaders are increasingly focused on how all learners—regardless of disability labels—can meet high academic standards (Hardman & Dawson, 2008), yet students with such labels continue to be underserved, and disability labels continue to be disproportionately assigned to students of color (Artiles & Klingner, 2006; Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, & Higareda, 2005).

Second, school structures—particularly those shaping service delivery—directly affect the degree to which students’ needs are met holistically. We know school leaders drive organizational change around school structures (Bryk, Sebring, et al., 2010) and that the integrated arrangement of these services is essential for maximizing student achievement and belonging (Frattura & Capper, 2007).

Third, the literature directs school leaders in recentering and enhancing staff capacity. For instance, research shows that school leaders can build the capacity of all teachers to effectively educate culturally and linguistically diverse students through integrating language supports into general education settings (Scanlan & López, 2012, 2014). Clearly, it is important for leaders to know this and to facilitate it happening.

Finally, the literature shows that addressing intersectionality is tied directly to the broader structures of strengthening the school culture and community. This entails building partnerships across dimensions of diversity, such as race and ethnicity (Horsford...