The Moral Imperative of Social Justice Leadership: A Critical Component of Effective Practice

This study examined how four principals in urban middle and senior high schools with a social justice orientation responded to hypothetical scenarios involving teacher prejudice. The principals in this study did not reference their leadership preparation programs in describing the evolution of their equity-focused leadership philosophies, nor did they reference theory. Rather, the principals were predisposed to support the goals of equity and fairness because they believed they had a moral obligation to do so. The research suggests that school leaders who enter the position with a predisposition for equity and fighting injustice may be better equipped to handle scenarios involving prejudice in ways that advance the overall goals of social justice.     

An Institutional Theory Analysis of Charter Schools: Addressing Institutional Challenges to Scale

This article presents a conceptual framework derived from institutional theory in sociology that offers two competing policy contexts in which charter schools operate—a bureaucratic frame versus a decentralized frame. An analysis of evolving charter school types based on three underlying theories of action is considered. As charter school leaders pursue new and different forms of schooling, they are challenged by well-established bureaucratic rules and norms that define what it means to be a legitimate school. Microlevel institution-building efforts, however, may represent viable alternatives to the institutional order of public education as charter school leaders attempt to achieve scale.     

Struggling for Educational Equity in Diverse Communities: School Reform as Social Movement

This paper argues that those seekingequity-focused educational reform have much tolearn from social movements and grassrootspolitical organizing. We explore how theknowledge, skills, strategies, and passionatenarratives emanating from suchnon-institutional change efforts can shed light onthe difficulty of equity-focused educationreform and provide equity reformers with anexpanded repertoire of change strategies. Wepursue our analysis using an ``exemplary' caseof reform at Wilson High School. The case datawere collected as part of a four-year study documenting the college preparation experienceof students of color in diverse, comprehensivehigh schools. We conclude that the logic andstrategies employed in social and politicalmovements – in contrast to those found inorganizational change models – are more likelyto expose, challenge, and if successful,disrupt the prevailing norms and politics ofschooling inequality that frustrateequity-focused reforms. Without attention tothese dynamics, such reforms are abandonedentirely or implemented in ways that actuallyreplicate (perhaps in a different guise) thestratified status quo. We also conclude thatthose of us whose research focuses on equityreforms would be well advised to use social andpolitical movements as lenses to more clearlyview the course of these much advocated, butseldom achieved efforts.     

Finding the Customers: Challenges and Experiences Marketing K-12 Full-time Virtual Schools

Full-time virtual schooling is a growing alternative to traditional schools, although it is an option still unknown to many students. The ability to inform students through marketing is thus foundational to the success of virtual schools. Using a qualitative case study methodology, this article examines marketing patterns for nonprofit virtual schools, including how students find out about virtual schools; the ways in which school leaders market their schools; and changes reported in schools’ marketing and recruitment needs and strategies. This analysis suggests that students find out about virtual schools in many ways, including being referred, rejected, and urged by their local schools. Implications include issues around socioeconomic equity, especially in terms of school access, funding, and educational quality.     

Navigating the Religious Landscape in Schools: Towards Inclusive Leadership

This article identifies historical and contemporary influences of religion in US public schooling. It provides analytical questions that social justice leaders can use to evaluate the practices embedded in their own schools, including an equity audit.     

Professional norms in school leadership: Change efforts in implementation of education for sustainable development

This study identifies and analyses professional norms as a means of illuminating school cultures and how norms are distributed in the system. Of special interest is the role of school leaders and how they lead, organize and realise school development. The study research question is: What professional norms do school leaders highlight in change efforts? We are also interested in identifying the support mechanisms and obstacles to implementation and norm setting exhibited by school organisations. The case we used explores change processes in the implementation of education for sustainable development at three upper secondary schools in Sweden. It was conducted in three phases, starting with a questionnaire for all teachers and principals. In the second phase, each of the principals was interviewed individually. The third phase used focus groups consisting of the principals that made up the leadership groups. Our results indicate that professional norms are set when principals and teachers experience expectations from each other, from students and from policy documents. There is also a need for well-functioning communication in the organisation to set and disseminate norms. The school principal plays a crucial role in these norm setting processes. By becoming more aware of existing norms in the organisations, and how norms can be changed, this knowledge can support principals in change efforts.     

Developing Urban School Leaders: Building on Solutions 15 Years after the Los Angeles Riots

The 15th Anniversary of the Los Angeles riots serves as an impetus to continue efforts in addressing how institutionalized theories, norms, and practices in schools and society lead to social, political, economic, and educational inequalities. The challenges of school inequalities continue to be chronic and remain unresolved through traditional practices, scholarship, theory, and professional training of school leaders. The intersection between urban school leadership and diversity is examined through critically reviewing hurdles that school leaders encounter, such as low socioeconomics, low representation of leaders of color, violence, and academic underachievement. We argue that urban school leaders can change school conditions by facilitating the development of proficient and culturally-competent teachers and administrators, and creating a positive school climate. Two existing frameworks were used to guide the researchers in the development of the Leadership in Diversity Continuum Model (LDCM) that can help guide leaders in their efforts to transform schools through an introspective analysis of their own identity development.     

Using Charter Schools to Alleviate Racial Exclusion in Rural America: An Innovative Idea or a Trojan Horse?

ABSTRACT

Racial segregation has remained a lasting legacy of rural schools in southern states. Our article explains a case where community leaders created a diverse charter school to change its historical practice of an isolated White private school and isolated African American public schools. We scan documents and literature related to this integration strategy to surface key themes when using rural charter schools to alter patterns of school segregation. First, we explain pressing issues in rural schools. Second, we describe how segregation and inequality have evolved in the South. Third, we explain research showing how charter schools maintain patterns of school segregation, but with exceptions and nuances in certain contexts. Fourth, we consider the benefits and tensions surrounding one rural charter school that offers an integrated educational program. Benefits range from societal to individual as the school fosters an environment where students are exposed to diverse educational experiences. Tensions include shifting power and funding dynamics and the possibility of using a good example to shepherd in less effective charter models elsewhere.     

School Management Teams’ Instructional Leadership Role in Closing the Achievement Gap in Impoverished Schools

Abstract

Although the South African government has made numerous strides in addressing equity and social justice in education, significant inequalities still exist in learner performance, especially in many impoverished schools. One of the reasons cited for poor learner achievement is the ineffective leadership role of school management teams (SMTs). This article reports on a study that explored the instructional leadership role of SMTs of public schools with the view to closing the achievement gap in poor performing schools. To gain better insights into the SMTs’ realities and experiences of their work as curriculum leaders, qualitative research located within the interpretivist paradigm was undertaken. The findings revealed that SMTs of impoverished schools exhibit consistently low to moderate instructional leadership competencies which ultimately affect student learning. In order to close the achievement gap in poor performing schools, SMTs should play a more pronounced instructional leadership role by leading and managing core curriculum matters and educational resources effectively and efficiently.     

对“混合制学校”有关问题的思考

"混合制学校"在办学体制上兼具公办教育与民办教育的双重资源和特点,在管理体制、运作机制和资源品牌等方面拥有比公办学校和民办学校更多的优势,但其发展中所存在的产权关系不明、政策界限不清等问题对教育公平和民办学校发展有负面影响。应进一步完善相关政策法规,推进管理体制和运行机制改革,促进各类体制学校的共同发展。     

Teacher Satisfaction and Turnover in Charter Schools: Examining the Variations and Possibilities for Collective Bargaining in State Laws

Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours. There have been many recent efforts to improve teacher voice in charter schools (Kahlenberg & Potter, 2014), including engaging in some form of collective bargaining, but we know little about the possibilities dictated by state laws. Therefore, this article describes the possibilities and variations for collective bargaining by state and for different charter types (e.g., conversion vs. newly created charters), as well as laws that have the potential to improve teacher satisfaction in charter schools. Ideally, state laws and the collective bargaining process should provide the appropriate balance between flexibility for charter school leaders, teacher voice, and protections for teachers.     

Weaving Curriculum Connections in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools

In this article we discuss how school leaders address challenges when implementing innovative international education curricula, namely International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. Specifically, we frame challenges in curriculum implementation of and transition between IB programs from a “disconnection” perspective. We have often noticed when innovative programs are parceled together without preparation and thrust at great speed at schools, they become disconnected. The hasty implementation of multiple IB programs simultaneously at a school also causes disconnection. Drawing on extensive interview data from principals, mid-level leaders, and teachers in five IB schools adopting multiple IB programs in Asia, we detail curriculum disconnection facing IB schools and how school leaders, including teacher leaders, address such challenges by weaving various disconnected points, namely instrumental, intellectual, cultural, professional, and communicative disconnections. Based on findings from the multisite case study, we argue that school leaders in the case of IB schools adopt a range of leadership strategies to weave disconnection points. We reframe the leadership strategies as two aspects of distributed leadership: distributed instructional leadership and teacher leadership. In conclusion, we suggest that a central facet for successful leadership of IB schools that adopt multiple IB programs is about finding, focusing, and facilitating ways to address disconnections in curriculum implementation of and transition between different IB programs.     

Schools and Leadership in Transition: the case of Scandinavia

This article will set the context of democratic leadership in Scandinavian countries. This concept will be discussed in a dual perspective. On the one hand there are pressures to transform the governing of the schools towards a more ‘rigorous’ form of New Public Management (NPM) with models of leadership/management from the world of business and industry. This trend is affected by a new wave of economical and cultural globalisation, while the discourse of NPM is exerting a strong influence on how municipalities organize and govern the schools in Scandinavia (Moos, 2000; Peters et al., 2000). On the other hand there is a growing consciousness of the need for sustaining trust and loyalty in the school as an organisation. This may be seen as an effect of European/Scandinavian societies becoming increasingly complex. These societies are often called hyper complex societies with no one single centre from which government can be exercised. The governing of the public sectors therefore has largely to rest on trust and communication (Kirkeby, 1998; Giddens, 1991; Thyssen, 2001). This article will discuss how Scandinavian school leaders try to cope with this dual pressure while maintaining distinctive aspects of Scandinavian educational culture. This is one of many dilemmas being faced by school leaders coming to terms with notions of accountability. As an illustration we will refer to some findings from an international research project in which Danish and Norwegian school leaders participated (Biott et al., 2001; Sugrue, 2003, forthcoming).     

Confessions of the ‘unhealthy’ – eating chocolate in the halls and smoking behind the bus garage: teachers as health missionaries

By drawing on interviews with administrators, faculty and staff at one school in the northeastern United States, this qualitative work considers the ways in which school leaders negotiate, resist or draw upon discourses associated with health, weight, nutrition and fitness to understand and experience their own bodies and interpret their roles and responsibilities at the school. Analysis of the narratives suggest that school leaders saw themselves as public examples from which students might resist and/or mimic (ill‐)health. Further, school leaders believed that it was only through their active engagement in and display of health that they were able to effectively evangelize their commitment to the social project of self. Thus, while schools could provide an important venue for young people to experience diverse notions of health and well‐being, without a school leader’s knowledge of or commit to exploring these alternatives, this outcome is unlikely.     

The Ongoing Pursuit of Educational Equity in Japan: The Accreditation of Ethnic High Schools

In 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Education accredited the high school diplomas of most “ethnic high schools,” which are schools by and for specific ethnic minority populations, such as Korean, Brazilian, or Chinese students in Japan. Prior to this policy, diplomas from most ethnic high schools were not recognized by the Japanese government as valid, and if graduates wanted to apply to universities or colleges, specifically national universities, they were required to take a high school equivalency exam. This article examines the policy's evolution toward championing equity for equal treatment, a concept that ensures that individuals with similar levels of schooling have access to similar levels of status. Through heated debate and resistance, the policy furthered equity for some ethnic minority students while maintaining inequitable circumstances for others, specifically students in ethnic high schools that serve North Korean communities. The analysis reveals four important features of the policy's development that furthered equity: (1) protesting by non-governmental actors, (2) taking advantage of a policy window, (3) using strategic value-laden language, and (4) facilitating incremental change. Often, Japanese education policies rightfully are critiqued as assimilative and discriminatory. However, this article reveals some potential to move the conversation beyond these critiques and offers suggestions to promote and iteratively come closer to educational equity for ethnic minority students.     

Schools as racial spaces: understanding and resisting structural racism

Analyzing schools as racial spaces can help researchers examine the role of teachers in the perpetuation of structural racism in schools. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic work, this article offers examples of schools as racial spaces, spaces where whiteness controlled access. It also highlights four teachers who pursued racial equity in their teaching, and how a structural understanding of race was key to their efforts. It makes the argument that racial spaces analysis can help researchers work with teachers to understand structural racism and to better counter it in school practices.     

Innovation and Enterprise in Singapore Schools

Schools in Singapore are now tasked to develop the spirit of innovation and enterprise in their students. This is in line with the national vision of ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’. This policy initiative, which began in 2004, is set to change the fundamental nature of education in Singapore. This article discusses the innovation and enterprise (I&E) initiative, its major implications for schools in Singapore and the areas still to be addressed in the implementation of the policy. In particular, the article discusses the issues of teachers and school leaders as role models of I&E, I&E as an organic part of school business, the influence of the wider societal culture and values system, and the measurement of success of I&E. The challenge for schools is to go beyond the form of the initiative to bring real substantial and sustainable change through this movement.     

Reconstructing Local Knowledge

Building on the idea that "discourse does ideological work" (Wodak, 1996), this article examines how school leaders use metaphors that convey as well as construct concepts of diversity, intergroup relations, and equity. The author draws on data from interviews with school leaders in the United States who were focusing on improving race relations in their schools. An analysis of metaphors in these interviews reveals differing ideologies of equity and intergroup relations. Based on this analysis, the author suggests that professional development programs for school leaders ought to include a critical approach to language to enhance leaders' awareness of the way discourse creates and reinforces ideologies, and to enable them to use language strategically to support equity-based reforms.     

Leading for Change: School Leader Advocacy for Undocumented Immigrant Students

School leaders can ally with other educational stakeholders to encourage undocumented student persistence in Pk-12 schools. We explore (1) how school leaders create systems of support for undocumented and newly arrived immigrant students, and (2) how school leaders interpret and implement policies or school structures that affect student educational access. Border crossing theory guides our examination of how school leaders traverse and transgress borders that can impede students' education. This embedded case study included interviews with nine administrators working on the US-México border. The study finds that leaders expected to make a difference in students' lives by focusing on relationships and programming, committing to equity, and resisting deficit thinking about students and their families.     

Marketing Small Schools in New York City: A Critique of Neoliberal School Reform

The objective of this article is to critically examine a school reform effort that has taken hold in New York City over the past seven years. A largely privately funded venture, the New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI), opened hundreds of new small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City starting in 2002. The theory behind opening small schools on a such a large scale has come from market principles of competition and consumer choice. By flooding the market with hundreds of schools, competition for students would, in turn, drive up the quality of the schools. Although support appears to be ubiquitous for the market-based reforms in New York City, this article argues that we need to look critically at reforms like NCSI, especially with the recent failure of market-driven policies to deliver on their promises. Using neoliberalism as a conceptual framework, this article asks two main questions: (a) How do neoliberal school reform policies play out in individual schools? and (b) To what extent do neoliberal policies contribute or detract from educational equity?