How Leaders Effectively Communicate Equity Priorities

By Hal Lawson and Francesca Durand

Principals and district central officers are entrusted with an important, challenging mission. They and their respective workforces must ensure that all the children and youths in their care are provided with equitable opportunities to learn, achieve, and succeed. Educational equity, in this view, means fair and just treatment, especially for vulnerable young people who come to school with learning and developmental challenges, including some caused by external factors.

Equality and equity in education

All in all, educational equity is the foundation for America’s constitutional promise to its vulnerable citizens: Demography is not destiny. As with other leadership challenges, “the devil’s in the details”. For example, even though educational equity is not the same as equality, the two concepts are routinely conflated. What is more, some equity-focused priorities depend in part on the popular concept known as equal opportunity.

The fact remains that equity and equality are different, and educators need to know the differences and their consequences. For example, if equality is the dominant frame, vulnerable students do not receive the assistance, supports, and resources they need to learn, achieve and succeed. When equality is the frame, there are no special education teachers and services. In these ways and others, the differences between equality and equity are consequential for students, parents, school professionals and school system performance.

Leading with an equity agenda

How do school and district office leaders establish and advance equity agendas? This practical question structured a newly published study in the American Journal of Education. It focused on leaders’ communications with their respective workforces. Sample schools were called “positive outliers” because they achieved better results with diverse student populations in their respective locales than matched, comparison schools. These schools’ progress in achieving educational equity, especially for diverse students, recommended more research.

Like the communications employed by coaches for winning team sports, school/district leaders’ frames of reference and language choices turned out to be consequential for the advancement of equity agendas in their respective locales. The communications-related alternatives employed by leaders participating in this study provide a menu for others.

Our study highlighted five leadership-delivered communications frameworks. Each included a somewhat unique communications strategy and special language (called “discourse”).  Leaders employed diagnostic frames when they established their respective improvement agendas. They employed action-oriented, prognostic frames when they prioritized improvement mechanisms that promised educational equity. Sometimes they employed motivational frames, particularly when their respective workforces needed reminders and equity-related boosters.  Leaders also drew on local traditions and preferences when they employed normative frames, sometimes emphasizing “the way we do things around here”. Last, but not least, they employed regulatory frames, especially when they deemed it important to connect local, equity-oriented improvements with state policy requirements.

Conclusions

These five frameworks with their respective language systems provide a menu for practicing leaders, professional development specialists, and professors charged with preservice education—with four-related reminders. School and district-wide improvement initiatives depend on coordinated, collective action in the pursuit of common purpose. Unity of purpose cannot be assumed; it must be established by leaders and shared widely. Unity of purpose for collective action starts with, and depends on, leaders’ framing of their respective local agendas, including their communications to their respective internal and external constituencies. Leadership development programs, especially those prioritizing educational equity, must prioritize leaders’ communications frameworks and language systems, emphasizing how the alternatives can be employed contingently and effectively.

Finally: The importance of leaders’ planning frameworks and language systems extends beyond the all-important equity agenda. The environmental turbulence, transitions, and challenges associated with the COVID pandemic also necessitate and compel leadership in support of collective action in schools and entire districts. The five communications frameworks and their language systems they implicate have considerable import for all manner of school districts during these challenging times.

To learn more about advancing equity and leaders’ discourse in education, check out NYKids’ research page. As always, we encourage you to reach out to nykids@albany.edu with any questions and/or inquiries about our continuous improvement resources, and be sure to follow NYKids on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter.