June 8, 2022

AJE Feature | A First Look at K-12 Equity Director Roles: Configurations and Vulnerabilities by Decoteau J. Irby, Terrance Green and Ann M. Ishimaru

The full-length American Journal of Education article by Irby et al. can be accessed here.

In 2016, when we first designed our research study to learn about the work K-12 equity directors, we considered ourselves lucky to find people to interview. At the time, equity directors held numerous titles. For example, our study participants held titles such as cultural proficiency & inclusiveness director, executive director of equity for scholar and family success, and deputy chief of equity to name a few. Indeed, the fact that none of the participants in our initial study shared a common title complicated our recruitment as much as did the second challenge: they were few and far between. But much has changed.

Today, school districts throughout the US are hiring equity directors at a rapid pace. Despite this, we still know very little empirically about their roles. Districts create these positions to offer their organizations strategic leadership to mitigate and transform systemic historical and current school-based inequities. In our publication PK-12 District Leadership for Equity: An Exploration of Director Role Configurations and Vulnerabilities, we offer a first look at how equity directors explain their roles, with an emphasis on the constraints and affordances they experience in the role.

Here we briefly highlight the ways that equity directors’ positions differ from other district leadership positions due to the ambiguous and often misunderstood nature of the role. While directors may have the requisite knowledge and skills for the position, boards and longstanding district leaders must be intentional about configuring the director role with adequate power and authority to allow directors to put their equity leadership “know-how” and skills into action.

Role Configurations Defined

Most superintendent and cabinet-level district leadership roles are well established and defined with clear responsibilities, resources and domains of influence. This is not the case for district equity directors. Instead, they often inherit roles that are ambiguous, volatile, and not as well-defined as more established district positions. In our research, role configurations describe how directors are situated organizationally with regard to the resources and authority to carry out their equity-based leadership work and includes consideration of:

The location of the role within the organization
Supervisory responsibility and authority,
Influence on superintendent and board relations,
Financial resources and budgetary discretion, and
Influence on district professional development and instructional matters

Role configurations are important for ensuring district-level leaders can accomplish their charge. But because the equity director role is still so new and empirically under examined, it is not clear whether the roles are configured with the organizational resources and authority to engage in the transformative leadership that will make their systems more equitable.

Configuration Influences on Director Leadership Activities

In our study, we identified four role configurations that helped us make sense of equity directors’ leadership affordances and constraints. To understand the role configurations, we drew on in-depth interviews with 13 equity directors representing suburban, urban, and rural districts across the United States. Eight participants identified as female. Five identified as male. All but one identified as a person of color, with most identifying as Black women. We describe their role configurations below.

Equity Seeding role configurations afforded directors power to influence equity changes through drafting and ushering through the adoption of district policies, delivering presentations, gathering outside resources and supports (e.g., articles, consultants). Leaders in this role configuration also spent time organizing data to make the case for equity to internal and external stakeholders. Their leadership activities planted core equity ideas into districts’ guiding documents, policies, and discourses.

Equity Collaboration role configurations enabled directors to work with school and community stakeholders to advance equity by supporting and/or implementing district-wide or school-based equity initiatives. These however occurred mostly in the form of professional development, workshops or workshop series, and speaker events. People whose work was configured as such described their work as being “all things equity,” including the emotionally laborious work of “putting out fires.”

Equity Management and Compliance role configurations offered directors managerial and compliance-oriented supervisory responsibility. They spent most of their leadership activities on the improvement or logistical maintenance of partnerships and programs. Often, the work entailed reorganized district programs or initiatives into a single unit or portfolio or oversight of pre-existing efforts, such as bilingual education or family engagement for example, that in years past may have been treated as not related.

A fourth role configuration Equity Innovation and Development allowed directors to develop, innovate, and influence the start-up, direction, or expansion of district equity programs and initiatives. While these role configurations shared similarities with management and compliance roles, in terms of levels of supervisory authority and responsibility, interactions with superintendents and board members, and financial resources, these roles afforded a higher level of autonomy and room to try new ideas and seek out partnerships that was not the case for other configurations.

Although some equity director role configurations fit more neatly into a single category, several enabled more than one type of equity work or evolved over time. For example, some roles were configured in Seeding-Collaboration hybrids, meaning that equity directors created equity policies, designed and led professional learning, and interfaced with community stakeholders.

However, in hybrid instances, a dominant role configuration usually existed, which created constraints for directors who wanted or needed to branch into equity leadership activities the dominant role did not afford. In addition to the role itself, directors’ attempts to operate outside of, or reconfigure their roles, surfaced as a central point of vulnerability, which compounded the obvious vulnerabilities of leading for racial equity, particularly as leaders of color.

Vulnerabilities of the Equity Director Role

Taking on any professional role that aims to advance racial equity and justice comes with obvious vulnerabilities. In addition to the longstanding resistance people experience leading with anti-racism or social justice at the forefront and the well-documented racism experienced by educators of color, the recent movement against Critical Race Theory and racial justice in general continues to sweep through states and districts. This further complicates equity directors’ work.

According to Education Week, as of January 2022, state legislatures in twenty-nine states introduced bills or took steps to restrict the alleged teaching of critical race theory or limit teachers’ autonomy to discuss racism and sexism. Of these 29 states, thirteen succeeded. In these states, teaching or leading for equity is now more difficult and, in some cases, illegal.

Although the movement to ban critical race theory mischaracterizes the framework and even overstates its role in public schools, the backlash has the potential to stifle teaching about how racism and sexism have shaped the country’s past and continue to affect its present. These efforts could end districts’ recent efforts to address racism in a systemic manner.

But even in states where legislative efforts have failed, equity directors often encounter a barrage of racism from within their own organizations. An organizations’ stated commitment to equity should not be confused with its capacity to operate as an equitable organization that values and affirms people of color. Or that values and affirms the equity director role.

Equity directors in our study were subjected to the ambiguity of the organizational role (i.e., unclear or inconsistent work portfolio) and misaligned role configurations that left them working with inadequate resources and influence. When they could not carry out the work they considered most consequential, their performance did not yield the results they were capable of producing, resulting in workplace and performance self-doubt and stress, otherwise known as symptoms of psychological vulnerability.

Finally, the ever-present reality of racial-gender oppression leaves women and people of color in vulnerable positions. This is amplified in the past several years, as equity director roles proliferated in the context of the resurgence of Trump-era white nationalist ideology and politics, the global Covid-19 pandemic, and a Black Lives Matter movement for racial justice reinvigorated by the murders of Black people at the hands of police and white vigilantes.

Conclusion

The equity director role is a not an easy leadership position. The people who fill the role −primarily women and people of color− are subjected to vulnerabilities their peers are not: role ambiguity, misaligned role configurations, and the racial-gender oppression that stems from working for equity in racist and patriarchal districts and society.

But for the moment, districts are putting their resources behind creating more equitable schools through the creation of this new role. As districts continue to create equity director positions, willing and capable leaders continue to fill them. Although we do not know the exact number of equity directors or how much the role has increased, it appears that the role will remain for the foreseeable future.

As such we encourage researchers to continually seek to understand the role and its impacts in PK-12 education settings. We encourage districts to pay attention to role configurations. Doing so might reduce the structural and psychological vulnerabilities of and harm to individual equity directors who commit to this much needed kind of leadership. Well-defined and supported roles matter not only for equity directors themselves but for the children, families, and communities who are most likely to benefit from their success.

References

https://www-edweek-org.proxy.cc.uic.edu/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06

Gronn, Peter, and Kathy Lacey. 2004. “Positioning oneself for leadership: Feelings of vulnerability among aspirant school principals.” School Leadership & Management 24, no. 4: 405-424.

Mitchell, Coral, Denise Armstrong, and Catherine Hands. 2017. “‘Oh, Is That My Job?’ Role Vulnerability in the Vice-Principalship.” International Studies in Educational Administration (Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management (CCEAM)) 45, no. 1: 3-18.

Rosenberg, M. (2021). New to the Table: The Chief Equity Officer. School Administrator Magazine.