GSE Theses and Dissertations

In the United States and globally, there is growing recognition of the extensive cognitive, emotional, social, and economic benefits of multilingualism, multiliteracy, and multiculturalism. At the same time, a double standard persists in the way that society—and many education systems—view language development: monolingual English speakers who learn a second language are typically seen as high achievers, lauded for developing a valuable 21st-Century skill. However, students who are in the midst of learning English as a second language (while simultaneously studying core academic content in English, in most cases) are often viewed through a deficit-clouded lens—labeled as “Limited English Proficient,” over-classified as learning-disabled, and/or insufficiently challenged by educators who may mistake still-emerging English capacity for a lack of overall academic ability. Meanwhile, many school systems do not capitalize on students’ linguistic and cultural heritage to support learning and academic achievement, which not only contributes to language loss among children, but also represents a significant missed opportunity to increase student engagement; build a positive sense of social, cultural, and academic identity; and improve learning outcomes.

This strategic project aimed to challenge this deficit-minded orientation by infusing a school system with an assets- and equity-based perspective on students’ linguistic and cultural heritage. Over the course of nine months, I worked with a dynamic and dedicated team of educators in Chelsea Public Schools to develop a district-wide strategy for cultivating, valuing, and formally recognizing multilingualism, multiliteracy, and multiculturalism. Chelsea is a vibrant gateway city just north of Boston, Massachusetts that has long served as the first home to recently arrived immigrants from around the world. Today, approximately 85% of students in the district are Hispanic and over 25% are classified as English Language Learners.

In this capstone, I describe and reflect on our effort to develop and win support for a strategy grounded in research, best practice, and local context; to lay the foundation for its successful implementation; and to harness this process to begin establishing the mindsets, structures, and educational approaches that would contribute to a strong assets-oriented culture throughout the system and ultimately, we hoped, improvements in student outcomes.

This capstone examines how a newly formed senior-level team worked together to complete a complex task, while driving towards a larger goal of becoming a learning organization. For the 2014-2015 academic year, central office leaders in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) worked to develop a new approach to the execution of their strategic plan, “Impact Learning. Impact Lives.” In a continued attempt to decrease SFUSD’s persistent achievement gap and to increase academic performance of all students, district leaders renewed their commitment to deeper levels of implementation for the strategic plan. During a series of senior-level team meetings in the spring of 2014, central office leaders realized that a number of district departments were inadvertently working at cross-purposes or duplicating efforts. Likely reinforced, in part, by previous and current SFUSD organizational systems and structures, district departments had become accustomed to working in silos, which, in turn, required limited system-level interdependence. Given the SFUSD senior leadership’s desire to shift their organizational culture to one of learning together, this capstone explores the district’s transition from silo driven work to cross-departmental teaming.

The research section of this capstone outlines the principles of effective strategy execution and teaming. The analysis section describes the impact of the district’s organizational culture on the application of these principles. The implications section identifies important components - communication plans, cycles of inquiry, teacher and leader voice that are needed to ensure effective strategy execution in large, urban school systems. This capstone concludes with an acknowledgement of the challenges associated with organizational change and calls for continuous reexamination of strategy execution guided by research and reflection.

By almost every measure, American schools have not educated poor, minority, and disadvantaged children to the same level as their White, some Asian, non-poor and non-disabled counterparts (American Institutes for Research, 2013; Gándara, 2010; NCES, 2014; Rojas-Lebouef & Slate, 2011; Thurlow, Bremer, & Albus, 2011) despite increased accountability expectations for all student subgroup performance outcomes (DeNisco, 2013; Payne, 2008). Students who do not achieve academically are potentially forced to contend with negative health and social difficulties, as well as unemployment, underemployment and a cycle of marginal, low paying and often part-time jobs (Buddin, 2012; Darling-Hammond, 2009/2010; Holmes & Zajacova, 2014). Aside from the moral and social costs of these disparities, the economic loss of underperforming students could range into trillions of dollars in lifetime earnings (Hanushek, 2010; Hanushek and Woessmann 2012).

High-stakes accountability systems, based primarily on standardized test data, have become the cornerstone of federal education policies designed to close those achievement gaps among student subgroups (Supovitz, 2010). The shift from comparing educational inputs such as reduced class size and increased per-pupil expenditures to an emphasis on achievement outcomes offers a highly public measure for determining comparative school and student success. Financial and nonmonetary rewards and a range of sanctions and interventions for schools and districts considered underperforming are outlined in Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s summary of A Blueprint for Reform (2010). From an outcomes-based achievement perspective, current policy supports equitable results for all students, with more flexibility around means to achieve those outcomes. This challenges superintendents to prioritize among many programs, responsibilities, and reform efforts that promote demonstrable student achievement gains, equitable outcomes, and responsive learning experiences.

Social justice in education involves the persistent pursuit of equitable educational experiences and results across social identity groups in schools, a much broader mission than the focus of today’s accountability policies. Questions arise as to how the current accountability context and social justice leadership intersect. While some argue that today’s accountability provides a great opportunity to advance goals of social justice and equity (Skrla & Scheurich, 2004), others contend that accountability policies per se are “flawed as equity-producing initiative[s], lacking adequate consideration of power relations, democratic participation, and rich, diverse philosophies of education” (Gunzenhauser & Hyde, 2007, p. 490). How superintendents understand, leverage, and balance accountability conditions with their perceptions of social justice impacts their leadership.

In the end, this study examines how three superintendents in districts recognized for closing achievement gaps among student subgroups understand the relationship between social justice and accountability, how the concepts intersect in their practice, and what the actions are that superintendents take in their attempt to satisfy accountability conditions while addressing various causes of social injustice in their districts. This research is guided by a conceptual framework shaped by McKenzie et al.’s (2008) tasks of social justice leadership: increasing student achievement, raising critical consciousness among staff and students, and doing this work in inclusive communities. It is also guided by Lashway’s (2002) description of role shifts superintendents face as a result of high-stakes accountability: tensions between accountability and authority, heightened expectations for instructional leadership, and the impact of public and transparent evaluation criteria on superintendent effectiveness. Framed by these researchers and the findings from the superintendents studied here, this work offers a set of strategies, understandings, and observations for current and aspiring superintendents who wish to improve educational outcomes for all children as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is currently being revised and implemented.

In Massachusetts, 40% of children attending public schools in grades K-12 are of color. In contrast, 4% of superintendents in traditional school districts in the Commonwealth are of color. While the demographic profile of students in public schools has become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse over the past ten years, the trend line for superintendents of color has remained flat. I argue that a variety of root causes contribute to this phenomenon, including racially and ethnically isolated professional networks, bias at all stages of the hiring process, and a desire to avoid being specifically race-conscious when designing strategies to address this challenge. It is important to note that race-conscious work that focuses explicitly on diversity, equity, and inclusion is nascent in most state education agencies, as is a focus on diversifying the superintendent role. The role of race-consciousness in transformation efforts remains an area of ambiguity, particularly as it is clear that federally funded educational entities such as state education agencies are under incredible pressure to remain race-neutral given recent Supreme Court rulings. At the same time, K-12 schools and districts are pushing in a variety of ways for these entities to become more race-conscious in order to address longstanding gaps in student achievement and educator diversity. In this capstone, I analyze the development of Influence 100, a race-conscious leadership initiative designed to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of superintendents in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which I developed and led over the course of my ten-month residency at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as a Special Assistant to the Commissioner. My findings suggest that there is a unique opportunity for state education agencies to take the lead on race consciousness and provide valuable support to districts and schools to engage in robust strategy development and action around increasing educator diversity at all levels—teacher, principal, and senior leadership. The opportunity also comes with a unique set of challenges if State Education Agencies are to lead on and support this consequential work given the traditional role of State Education Agencies that is, in many ways, in tension with the role that is required of them to serve the students and communities of the future.

In this capstone, I examine the interplay of power, influence, and relationships in the context of a systemwide effort to improve Madison Metropolitan School District’s capacity to support its Opportunity Youth, a population of students put highly at risk of dropping out of the system. To some degree, my emphasis on meaningful relationship-building helped to align organizational resources, support, and public value. However, the uneven distribution of these connections, coupled with a quickly shifting environment driven in part by local and national events, complicated support-building efforts to create a dedicated districtwide office to directly support Opportunity Youth. I analyze the role of other contextual factors that influenced the degree of capacity, support, and public value I organized to move this work forward. Implications highlight the potential benefits of Opportunity Youth–focused efforts led by community-based organizations, population-specific central office teams, and intentional relationship-building engagement. The work discussed in the capstone is a potential case study for idealistic and emerging leaders who have yet to deeply explore the reality of enacting change at the system level.

When a school has been persistently low performing, it is unlikely that the school will improve without expert leadership. Principals serve as a key lever in the quest to improve low performing schools, but many districts struggle to recruit, hire, and develop principals to take on some of the most challenging and persistently low performing schools. The focus of my work in Boston Public Schools was to establish the foundation for a pipeline of leaders poised to enter low performing schools ready to engage in the work of dramatic improvement. Building leadership pipelines into low performing schools for a large urban district ultimately has both technical and adaptive challenges, and facing both in the context of unclear authority can be challenging. In the capstone that follows, I unpack the work that my team set out to accomplish and the challenges we faced along the way, as well as the evidence of progress and work that remains. I close with recommendations for other school districts seeking to build their leadership pipelines.

This capstone chronicles my leadership in piloting, designing, and creating both a district-wide and school-based partnership definition along with partnership effectiveness elements and standards for the Boston Public Schools (BPS). From July 2015 to March 2016, I accomplished these tasks by using two guiding frameworks: the user-centered design processes known as Design Thinking and the Strategic Triangle. The Design Thinking process enabled me to collect and understand perspectives from multiple district stakeholders while designing and piloting initiatives. The Strategic Triangle leadership framework enabled me to optimize my leadership and garner buy-in while leading changes within the Boston Public Schools.

To guide my efforts I asked one central question: How could I advance BPS’ work to design a process to create a school-based partnership definition and to test these standards at one of the district’s pilot schools? To answer this question, I have included encounter descriptions, findings, analysis, and recommendations about the leadership strategies I used to develop BPS’ new school-based partnership definition and standards. I’ve also included the development of a district wide definition and a school-based definition of partnership, along with the development of a team of leaders to support the design and pilot of the BPS’ partnership initiative. Additionally, I have included analytic evidence of how the pilot fared at the pilot school.

In the Introduction, I present background information about BPS’ current strategic plan and specific initiatives regarding school-based partnerships. Within the Review of Knowledge for Action, I present relevant research that informed my theory of action, which guided my BPS’ work. Within my overview of the actual work, I include the following phases: (a) building strategic relationships; (b) developing effectiveness quality standards; (c) designing a partnership assessment tool; (d) coordinating and conducting the pilot; and (e) collecting feedback on the efficacy of BPS’ partnership tool, definition and standards.

In my Outcomes section, I offer my perspective on what worked well and what didn’t, along with questions raised during the process. Finally, I share implications for myself, for BPS, and for the educational sector–that are outgrowths of my capstone analysis and my residency leadership experiences.