Full Description
This book reveals the complex and crucial work of sustaining justice-focused educational systems change in the face of subtle resistance and outright attacks.
Scholars and practitioners, who have worked together in various capacities across different school systems, examine systemic equity leadership in U.S. public schools over the course of nearly a decade and across a time of profound racial and historical change.
This volume weaves together real-world insights, research-based strategies, and practical tools for transforming P-12 education systems into more equitable and just learning spaces. Contributors explore the early days of district equity leadership sparked by the Obama administration's focus on civil rights in education; Black Lives Matter (beginning with the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice); the proliferation of formal equity director roles, policies, and priorities; and the recent politically driven anti-DEI backlash.
This book is important reading for school leaders, district personnel, policymakers, and everyone who cares about a public education that works for all students.
Book Features:
Provides bird's-eye and on-the-ground accounts of equity leadership to address broad questions and map invisible trends that have influenced how equity leadership happens.
Explores approaches to district-wide equity leadership that emerged on the heels of Trayvon Martin's death, in what we now understand as the era of Black Lives Matter.
Uses a frame of mornings, middays, and evenings to account for the cyclical nature of equity leadership and the limits and possibilities of working from within school systems to affect transformative change.
Goes beyond the experience of any one school leader or team by illuminating organizational conditions, routines, networks, and practices.
Includes insights on establishing district equity offices and institutionalizing equitable processes; using data to influence change and create accountability; and designing formal and informal networks that support the day-to-day work.
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Wake Up Decoteau J. Irby and Ann M. Ishimaru 1
Part I: Morning Work
1. Beyond Visions and Missions: Navigating Resistance to LGBTQIA Protections in Schools 13
Latish Reed
2. Shocking the System: Black Women's Equity Leadership in "Nice" White School Districts 29
Shannon Paige Clark
3. Appreciating the Fruits of "Unsuccessful" Leadership: Looking Back to See(d) Forward 43
Decoteau J. Irby, Ann M. Ishimaru, and Terrance Green
4. Reshaping the System: Paradoxes of Leading From Within Oppressive Organizations 64
Ann M. Ishimaru, Decoteau J. Irby, and Terrance Green
Part II: Midday Work
5. Marathons, Not Sprints: Institutionalizing Equity Through Organization-Wide Learning 83
Teresa Lance
6. Designing Work Routines and Process(ing) Tools: An Infrastructure of Strategic Equity Leadership 99
Maurice Swinney and Decoteau J. Irby
7. A National View of Equity Leadership Activities 114
Andrew Matschiner and Ishmael Miller
Part III: Evening Work
8. Sisterhood as Leadership Beyond the Central Office 133
Constance Daw, Fannie Martinez, and Ann M. Ishimaru
9. Breathe and Rest: Designing Networks of Critical Care for Equity Leaders 148
Dayna Muñiz
10. Holding Space, Holding On: Precarity and Turnover as a Feature of Equity Leadership Work 162
Ahreum Han and Decoteau J. Irby
Conclusion: Dream 179
Ann M. Ishimaru and Decoteau J. Irby
Afterword: Firesticks for Fretful Nights Keisha Scarlett 183
Index 187
About the Editors and Contributors 193
