Equity at the Center of District and School Leaders’ Discourses

By Kristen C. Wilcox

It’s time again for the American Educational Research Association’s Annual Meeting. This conference brings together policymakers, researchers, and educators from around the globe to share research findings, connect with each other, and make progress toward improving educational opportunities for people of all ages around the world.

I had the pleasure to work with other researchers Dr. Francesca Durand (The Sage Colleges), Dr. Hal Lawson and Dr. Kathryn Schiller (University at Albany) in exploring how leaders in positive outlier schools frame their priorities and communicate those priorities to others.

We drew from research literature and frameworks that highlight the different ways people frame issues. For example, leaders may frame issues in relation to state regulations (a regulatory frame) where compliance to state mandates and reaching accountability targets are central. Other leaders may frame issues through a motivational frame to compel people to improve something and still others may frame issues through a normative frame: how work is expected to be done. Other frames we focused on were related to the diagnosis of problems or causes of problems (diagnostic frames) and prognosis—what will and can be done about solving those problems and achieving ultimate aims (prognostic frames). People frame issues in multiple ways in their day-to-day discourse, which is what we found in our analysis, but in what combination and with what emphasis was our central concern.

We found commonalities among positive outlier district and school leaders’ framings of priorities and also contrasts with district and school leaders in typically performing schools.

Our paper on this topic was accepted for presentation at the AERA meeting – scheduled for virtual presentation at the AERA Meeting on April 9^th at 4 pm.

Key Findings and Implications

• Positive outlier district and school leaders emphasized equity of opportunity as the distal outcome of their work and melded a variety of discourses including motivational to galvanize educators around shared social justice goals.
• In contrast, typical district and school leaders emphasized policy compliance and faithful implementation (a regulatory frame) and without a clear equity focus.
• This difference is noteworthy because it indicates goal displacement in typically performing schools, and it signals needs and opportunities for future research and improvement-focused policy and practice as well as district and school leader preparation.

This analysis highlights important lessons about the roles of leaders in supporting equity of opportunity for young people from different ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. See the entire PowerPoint presentation on our resources page and reach out to us at nykids@albany.edu if you or your leadership team would like to know more about how to use NYKids research findings in supporting district and school leaders in achieving equity aims.

Please visit our webpage for other reports and presentations from our research in NY’s schools and as always, we welcome you to sign up for our Newsletter and reach out to us with feedback at nykids@albany.edu.