Bridge the gap in opportunity to overcome the gap in achievement! Although out-of-school factors that limit student success may seem like obstacles too big to address, this guidebook provides the necessary direction to bridge the opportunity gap and close the achievement gap. Step-by-step instructions on how to conduct a community equity audit, along with detailed case studies, activities, and discussion questions give readers the power to assess opportunity gaps and eliminate them. A community equity audit asks questions such as: • Do the children in my community have the same opportunity as children in other communities? • Does my community have the same resources as other communities? • If my community needs more resources how can we provide them?

Equity Audits and School Resource Allocation explores how to apply Critical Resource Theory (CReT) to conduct school equity audits, ultimately preparing educational leaders to find equity disparities, engage in more equitable resource allocation in their schools, and improve equal educational opportunity for every student. With case study scenarios woven throughout the book, the authors explore key equity factors, including per-pupil expenditures, poverty, teacher and principal quality, program equity, and achievement equity. They also walk through the process of implementing the 5-step CReT equity audit within a school district or school at any level. Owings and Kaplan also describe the communication and interpersonal factors that equity advocates will need to leverage to gain community support for equity process, considering the data, and rethinking their policies and practices. In today’s education context, the problems of equitably funding public schools and allocating learning resources to generate more equal opportunities and higher outcomes for traditionally underserved children are particularly relevant. This important book is designed for course use in leadership preparation programs, for practicing principals and superintendents, and for educational leadership scholars.

Building a better data culture can be the path to better results and greater equity in schools. But what do we mean by data? Your students are not just statistics. They aren't simply a set of numbers or faceless dots on a proficiency scale. They are vibrant collections of experiences, thoughts, perspectives, emotions, wants, and dreams. And taken collectively, all of that information is data—and should be valued as such. Equity in Data not only unpacks the problematic nature of current approaches to data but also helps educators demystify and democratize data. It shows how we can bake equity into our data work and illuminate the disparities, stories, and truths that make our schools safer and stronger—and that help our students grow and thrive. To this end, the authors introduce a four-part framework for how to create an equitable data culture (along with a complementary set of data principles). They demonstrate how we can rethink our approach to data in the interest of equity by making five shifts: * Expand our understanding of data. * Strengthen our knowledge of data principles. * Break through our fear of data. * Decolonize our data gathering processes. * Turn data into meaningful, equitable action. We have an opportunity to realign school data with what students want out of their educational experiences. When we put equity first, we put students first.

This volume offers the personal narratives of school, district, and state education leaders engaged in ongoing pursuits of equity, as well as findings from research and from research-practice partnerships. The chapters offer glimmers of hope through glimpses into the experiences of education leaders in the US and New Zealand. None of the stories told offer a fool-proof formula for achieving the goal of culturally responsive, socially just, equity-minded schools. They each present the inherent complexities of enacting change in schools and school systems, and the blunders that happen along the way. Each chapter begins with guiding questions to focus readers’ attention as they listen to – and really hear – the lived experiences of these authors. Chapters end with reflection questions to push others to work to move aspiration into action, to build ideas of how to engage with communities in meaningful and productive ways, and how to keep stoking the passion and dedication to face the next hurdle. Taken as a whole, the book offers a reminder to pause and celebrate small successes along the way. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color make an edited volume with accessible stories of culturally responsive leadership for social justice particularly relevant, even necessary.

The purpose of this work is to broaden the scholarly dialogue in educational leadership and to address the changing role of the American school principal in the twenty-first century with regard to increasing diversity in the United States. This book seeks to provide theoretical and practical insight into the role of school principals dealing with an ever-increasing multicultural student population. We cover an array of issues that we believe are critical in order for the twenty-first century school principal to be effective and relevant. A primary inquiry that needs to be made is: Are school leaders taking seriously the increasing social and cultural diversity in their schools? It is the school principal who sets the tone for the school culture and who provides the vision as to the direction of the organization. We endeavor to help scholars and practitioners have a better understanding of the importance of the diversity of their students, and to give them the tools to appropriately lead schools in ways that ensure all students, regardless of their life circumstances and status, are provided a school climate that promotes high academic achievement and a sense of belonging.

A revolutionary framework for teacher learning centered on justice-focused coaching that encourages culturally responsive practice and disrupts systems of oppression. In Coaching in Communities, researcher Melissa Mosley Wetzel and her coauthors distill the lessons of an eight-year study into a transformative educator training model, Coaching with CARE (critical and content-focused, appreciative, reflective, and experiential). They demonstrate how effective, contextual teacher training can be a cornerstone of educational justice, which occurs when all learners are supported to be successful in school and when schools expand notions of success to include diverse ways of life and learning. The authors show how this new framework, which draws from behavioral, cognitive, humanistic, and critical models of coaching, can be used in professional and informal learning contexts, and in dialogue with families and communities, to upend the status quo, break down the expert-novice distinction, and cultivate just forms of practice. As they note, the work of justice is collaborative, sustained engagement in resistance to marginalization, racism, and other inequities. Coaching in Communities presents a set of tools, including shared inquiry and coaching cycles of observation, reflection, and debriefing, and demonstrates how they work in real-life settings. With these tools, teacher education programs as well as districts, schools, and other organizations can train for change, which is one essential step in school transformation.

This book identifies and emphasizes the need for a holistic approach to school improvement when it comes to both the development of the whole child and the relationships among student, family, and community development. In recent years, the emphasis in PK-12 education in the United States has been on the measurement of student and school performance by high-stakes achievement tests. This emphasis has resulted in a narrowed curriculum emphasizing lower-level cognitive learning, with little attention paid to the moral, social, and creative development of students, families, and communities. This book argues that PK-12 education needs to shift its focus to holistic qualities of the successful school, qualities that reflect a moral rather than a technical approach to education while also improving students’ academic performance.

In light of recent sociological events and the COVID-19 pandemic, education has undergone an incredible change in both policy and delivery. As a result, many educators have sought different career paths. It is essential to maintain a concentrated effort to retain educators; however, recruiting teachers into the profession is only one area of focus; there must be intentional support for teacher development along the educator continuum in order to sustain the profession through institutional struggles. The Handbook of Research on the Educator Continuum and Development of Teachers expands on the body of research related to the educator continuum with a holistic view of teacher development. This book combines theory, concepts, and research studies that pinpoint facets of the educator continuum, providing researchers with scholarly contributions that advance the profession. Covering topics such as instructional coaching, special educator career development, and teacher retention, this major reference work is a valuable resource for educational faculty and administration, teacher colleges, educators of K-12 and higher education, pre-service teachers, government officials, teacher education administrators, libraries, researchers, and academicians.

Written by experienced leaders in gifted education, this book is a foundational guide for supervisors, administrators, and districts seeking to create culturally responsive and equity-focused gifted policies and programs. Engaging chapters supported by real-world vignettes and interactive contemplation corners outline key elements of culturally responsive leadership and the administrative actions necessary for disrupting systems of oppression within gifted programs. Topics covered include culturally responsive gifted education, multitiered systems of support, authentic family engagement, the use of data to inform systemic change, and more. Featuring authentic applications of culturally responsive gifted leadership practices and an innovative tool to evaluate gifted program inclusivity, this book is essential reading for all current and future leaders in gifted education.

For the past five years, American public schools have enrolled more students identified as Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Asian than white. At the same time, more than half of US school children now qualify for federally subsidized meals, a marker of poverty. The makeup of schools is rapidly changing, and many districts and school boards are at a loss as to how they can effectively and equitably handle these shifts. Suddenly Diverse is an ethnographic account of two school districts in the Midwest responding to rapidly changing demographics at their schools. It is based on observations and in-depth interviews with school board members and superintendents, as well as staff, community members, and other stakeholders in each district: one serving “Lakeside,” a predominately working class, conservative community and the other serving “Fairview,” a more affluent, liberal community. Erica O. Turner looks at district leaders’ adoption of business-inspired policy tools and the ultimate successes and failures of such responses. Turner’s findings demonstrate that, despite their intentions to promote “diversity” or eliminate “achievement gaps,” district leaders adopted policies and practices that ultimately perpetuated existing inequalities and advanced new forms of racism. While suggesting some ways forward, Suddenly Diverse shows that, without changes to these managerial policies and practices and larger transformations to the whole system, even district leaders’ best efforts will continue to undermine the promise of educational equity and the realization of more robust public schools.