Abstract
Keywords
In March of 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), first identified in December 2019, had become a global pandemic. This declaration had a profound impact on the global community across nearly every sector of life. In education, the recommendations from the WHO to member nations, including the United States, and by extension their local communities around the world, included clear guidelines on the amount of distance—6 feet—that people who were not living in the same household should maintain between one another. This resulted in the closing of traditional in-person instruction for students in primary and secondary schools in the United States, and a pivot toward remote work and online instruction using platforms like Zoom to facilitate interactions between students and their teachers.
In nations like the United States that are overall very wealthy, yet maintain deep structural inequalities that reflect and cleave to histories of slavery, genocide, and racial apartheid, the COVID-19 pandemic intersected with and highlighted the structures and patterns of practice that result in anti-Black racism and racism toward people of color throughout society. Thus, while lethal violence and police brutality against Black and brown people has been a persistent problem in the United States, in the summer of 2020, racial protests in response to ongoing anti-Black racism from the police broadly, and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Daniel Prude and too many others specifically, erupted across the nation and world, as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Schools, irrespective of where they are located—urban, rural, suburban, are embedded in their local communities (Green, 2015; 2017; Ishimaru, 2013; Slaten et al., 2015). Local schools are not separate entities from their surrounding communities—indeed the structure of school district administrative leadership, with a publicly elected board of education comprised of local citizens, illustrates this (Gamson, 2009; Land, 2002). Reflecting the embedded nature of schools, following national protests in 2020, many school districts and professional organizations within the field of education made pointed statements about the importance of addressing systemic racism (e.g., AASA Superintendents Association, 2020; National Association of Secondary School Principals, n.d.; Hite, 2020). However, school district efforts to promote equity and anti-racism 1 are being met with organized efforts at the federal, state, and local levels to undermine or ban this work, targeting phrases such as “white privilege” and critical race theory (CRT) (Executive Office of the President, 2020), and referring to anti-racist work as “divisive” and “anti-American” (Executive Office of the President, 2020). Most notably, strategically distorted narratives of CRT (Bell, 1980; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado, & Stefancic, 2013), including an inaccurate portrayal of CRT as a curriculum that is taught in schools, are being propagated as a strawman to undermine anti-racism and equity-oriented work in the field of education (López et al., 2021). More accurately, CRT is a theoretical framework with origins in the field of law that can provide a valuable and illuminating lens to examine issues such as the curriculum, funding, assessments, and desegregation (Ladson-Billings, 1998).
Nonetheless, state legislatures, state education agencies, and state boards of education in multiple states (e.g., Arizona, Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Utah, Florida) have passed legislation or approved rules that place restrictions on how race and racism can be discussed in schools (Education Week, 2021). At the district level, similar measures have been the topic of heated discussions during school board meetings (Kingkade et al., 2021). In September of 2021, a high school principal who acknowledged systemic racism was placed on administrative leave after a community member complained about his alleged “extreme views on race” and promotion of “the conspiracy theory of systemic racism” (Chavez, 2021). As these examples illustrate, while the work to dismantle systemic racism in education and beyond is a long overdue imperative, navigating the politics and resistance is a practical reality for many educational leaders and educators as they do their part to promote systemic, anti-racist change in schools.
In response to various challenges and a commitment to equity district-wide, specifically for students from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds, a growing number of local school districts have added a position to the superintendent's cabinet, often titled “chief equity officer” (Samuels, 2019). While the exact titles may vary (Starr, 2020) (see, e.g., Orange County Schools in Hillsborough, NC—Chief Equity Officer, Fort Worth Independent School District in Fort Worth, TX—Chief of Equity and Excellence, and Sommerville Public Schools in Sommerville, MA—Director for Equity and Excellence), these cabinet-level district leaders are typically charged with a range of objectives related to a focus on equity-oriented leadership and instructional practices, structures across the organization of the district and its schools, and district policies that need to be developed, instituted, or changed to shift the culture and behavior in the district away from pervasive racism and toward an equitable learning environment for Black and brown students and families. Similar positions can also be found in the organizational charts of local nonprofits (e.g., the YWCA in Lancaster, PA), city governance (see, e.g., Tucson, AZ and Loudon County, VA), and in the health sector (see e.g., the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Cambridge Health Alliance, and Columbia University), which signals a renewed effort for public and service sector institutions to better meet the needs of all members living in a democratic society.
The formal role or position of chief equity officer is increasingly being introduced and incorporated in senior administrative levels across the public sector, specifically in education (Samuels, 2019; Starr, 2020). For example, in 2016, Dr. SeriaShia Chatters, a professor at The Pennsylvania State University, joined the State College Area School District in Central Pennsylvania as the Director of Equity and Inclusivity in a unique joint position that reflected her scholarship and leadership related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). At the time, Dr. Chatters was one of five chief equity officers out of the 500 districts in Pennsylvania (State College Area School District, 2019). A similar role is also quite common in the university president's cabinet and is typically charged with diversity planning and implementation efforts on their campuses (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). For instance, Pennsylvania State University announced earlier this year that it would appoint its first chief diversity officer (CDO), who will report to the president and will “address apparent challenges in recruitment” and “focus on accountability” (Castronuovo, 2021).
While the chief equity officer position was initially developed, adopted, and adapted in response to historic and systemic inequities in the organizations and institutions that engage in this work, over time, as this position becomes standardized through a process scholars call mimetic isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), it runs the risk of becoming symbolic, only serving to signal or perform an organization's commitment to equity-oriented work without meaningfully attending to its structures, policies, or practices. Unfortunately, there is limited empirical research in this area; in fact, we are only aware of one published study on the role of the school district chief equity officer (Irby et al., 2022).
Although the chief equity officer position is still in its early stages, P-12 researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have an opportunity to examine what we have learned from this work in the higher education context—both to support the adoption and implementation of the position, and the change work the chief equity officer will lead throughout the organization. Indeed, the theoretical and empirical literature base that has amassed at the postsecondary education level over the past 20 years offers promising and cautionary insights that can help guide the development and institutionalization of chief equity officer roles in schools. Further, we should explore related theoretical and practical scholarship on leadership practices that result in meaningful change across organizations, particularly as it relates to equity work, and investigate the processes that support ongoing learning, reflection, and development toward equity-oriented praxis for educators (teachers, leaders, and other personnel) in primary and secondary schools in support of students’ learning and growth.
Prior change efforts have shown that organizations have a way of absorbing reforms while maintaining the status quo (e.g., Sampson, 2019). While structural roles and formal positions are important and can facilitate learning and lead impactful change efforts, leadership work is something that everyone can (and is called on) to engage in, irrespective of formal title. Further, equity work specifically requires participation and engagement from everyone within organizations to bring forth meaningful, transformative change (Hines-Datiri & Carter Andrews, 2020; Shields, 2010). Thus, formal leaders in administrative roles in school districts have a responsibility to provide the structural supports that will allow the chief equity officer to implement the duties of the position; however, the ongoing system-wide work of dismantling racist practices, norms, and dispositions that uphold white supremacy, and reimagining and implementing practices oriented toward equity will require leadership collaboration, reflection, and dialogue from everyone at the various levels within our schools and districts. In recognition of this important moment in time, the following conceptual questions guides our analytical review: How can the role of chief equity officer be meaningfully and thoughtfully adapted for K-12 schools and districts in a critical, anti-racist manner? Moreover, how might insights from higher education and scholarly knowledge on the nature of educational institutions, change within organizations, leadership practice, and learning inform the development of this role?
In the following section, we review the scholarly literature on equity-orientated leadership and transformative change in public educational institutions, focusing primarily on K-12 schools and including a review of related scholarship from higher education. We begin by examining concepts from organizational theory and institutionalism that apply to both K-12 and higher education to locate a common framework that explains the proliferation of roles like chief equity officer across a given sector. Then, we turn to theoretical scholarship on how individuals and organizations learn to understand some of the mechanisms that might be helpful to an educational leader in the role of chief equity officer as they work to develop, foster, and institute new learning structures toward equitable, inclusive, socially just, culturally relevant, anti-racist practice throughout the district. We continue with a review of scholarship examining educational leadership in the K-12 space, focusing on transformative leadership practices that result in anti-racist educational practices in classrooms, schools, and senior leadership offices across school districts. Specifically, we offer insight into the varied theoretical underpinnings of equity-orientated leadership, and the competencies, skills, and professional standards that guide it. Next, we synthesize postsecondary literature on CDOs. We draw on insights from these respective bodies of literature to chart new directions for policy, practice, and research related to chief equity officers in the K-12 context.
Organizational Learning and Change
Change Through Mimetic Isomorphism Across an Organizational Field
Foundational scholarship in the study of organizations offers frameworks to understand both the ecology of institutions that accommodates the introduction and spread of new positions within a given sector, or organizational field, and how new positions can serve as strategic structures that facilitate learning and change throughout an organization or institution (see Scott, 2004). Specifically, the concept of mimetic isomorphism explains that how innovations are introduced and advanced by one or two organizations and can be adopted and adapted relatively quickly by peer institutions across an organizational field (see DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). For example, prior to the recent introduction of the chief equity officer position, school districts, responding to the business or corporate sector approach to school reform (see Lipman, 2013; Shipps, 2003), created chief academic officer positions as part of their school improvement efforts. In primary and secondary education, the chief academic officer position is often found in medium to larger sized school districts; however, the scope of the role is similar to more traditional titles for this work such as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, director of curriculum and instruction, and deputy superintendent of teaching and learning (e.g., Fort Worth Independent School District, New York City Department of Education, Rochester City School District, and Syracuse City School District). Irrespective of title, these are cabinet-level positions that focus on curricular content, instructional practices, accreditation, assessment, and alignment to standards across multiple content areas including: English/language arts, social studies, science, math, visual and performing arts, career and technical education, special education, health and physical education, and professional learning for educators in the district. While equity should be a focus of the curricular work across these areas, it is often distinct from the approach of the work of the chief equity officer, who will engage with a focus on equity throughout the district, not only in the area of curriculum.
Mimetic isomorphism allows us to trace the development of the CDO position in higher education and the chief equity officer in primary and secondary education, and note that while many school districts and universities, particularly early adopters, are earnestly engaged in the work of addressing structural racism through a focus on equity, once these positions become standardized across the field, they run of the risk of becoming symbolic positions that signal the school district's intention to focus on EDI, without meaningfully doing the work. School districts that seek to go deeper will have to lean on leadership practices that augment the organizational and socio-cultural learning work needed for meaningful change in culture and practice that will support both the structural position of the chief equity officer and change the systems of practices within the schools and district that this person will lead.
However, recent theoretical scholarship has advanced our ability to examine the mechanisms through which institutions and organizations resist meaningful change related to EDI by describing how race is explicitly encoded in the foundations of organizations and institutions (see: Ray, 2019). In his framework, Ray (2019) advances a theory of organizations as “racial structures” through four tenets that describe how the relationship between race and organizations is manifested through (1) agency, (2) distribution of resources, (3) Whiteness as a type of certification or qualifying artifact, along with (4) the decoupling of rules from daily practice (p. 26). Through Ray's (2019) fourth tenet specifically we can trace how the chief equity officer position is an attempt to re-couple formal organizational commitments to EDI with related policy and expected practice, while at the same time running the risk of quickly becoming ineffectual through decoupling.
Communities of Practice
In order for the position of the chief equity officer to be meaningfully effective within a district, it is important to consider administrative resources related to time, budget, and support staff to accomplish the work across the district—as well as the effective mechanisms through which we expect the chief equity officer to impact the culture, practices, and collective knowledge within the central office and the schools in the district, through their agentic leadership practice (Modeste et al., 2021). Through their positional authority, the chief equity officer can impact their district by creating structures that facilitate ongoing learning for educators (i.e., teachers, personnel, formal leaders) within their professional units that allow them to build trust; and, over time, engage in reflective dialogue, and trial and error implementation of practice oriented toward equity in their daily work.
Scholars of educational research have studied the processes that inform learning through two broad areas of learning theory: socio-cultural learning theory, and organizational learning theory (see, e.g., Brown & Duguid, 1991; Knapp, 2008; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Levitt & March, 1991; Rogoff, 1994; Senge et al., 2012; Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 1998; Wertsch, 1985). One conceptual framework developed under these theories focuses on how people learn through situated practice, collective reflection, and dialog (see, e.g., Brown & Duguid, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Two central tents comprise the communities of practice conceptual framework: (1) knowledge is produced through direct experience, and (2) learners, make sense of a knowledge-producing experience through a social process that involves thinking and deliberating with peers who share the same or comparable experience (Buysse et al., 2003). While scholars have explored the communities of practice concept in relation to anti-racism (see, e.g., Truong et al., 2021; Ravitch, 2020; Scanlan et al., 2016), to the best of our knowledge at the time of writing, scholars have yet to draw on these concepts to develop a framework to inform practice for a district-level position like the chief equity officer.
Communities of practice can be fertile places for authentic learning about equity-oriented pedagogy when the social aspect of learning remains focused on improving practice and culture (e.g., Brown & Duguid, 1991; Buysse et al., 2003; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005). At this level of professional learning, the chief equity officer can model the kinds of professional reflective dialogue that should be occurring in these groups. Further, they can use their authority to establish a structure for the groups to share their process and progress in larger professional development meetings at the grade, subject, or school level (e.g., Honig, 2008; Honig & Honsa, 2020; Honig et al., 2017; Trujillo, 2013). While communities of practice and professional learning communities have been critiqued for their potential to descend into unfocused dialogue that is not focused on the work at hand, they remain vessels for professional learning when used intentionally.
The role of the chief equity officer is intended to both enact change and represent change symbolically within the organization. They signal the organization's intentions to engage in equity work. Nevertheless, without meaningful structural resources and a supportive culture, the positions may remain symbolic only. While symbolic communication is important within organizations, symbolism alone will not lead to meaningful growth in organizational learning or change in individual practice. The communities of practice framework can serve as a conceptual lens to examine how professionals learn and embrace new approaches to their daily work. Anti-racist leadership practice requires a shift in mindset and a change in practice toward the goal of transforming schools and districts into inclusive, safe, and affirming learning environments for Black and brown students. To realize this goal, the communities of practice framework can serve as the structured learning process within a district's schools that educators engage toward becoming an anti-racist organization. When applied in practice, educators can use communities of practice to deepen their engagement with anti-racist work by bringing challenges or problems of practice they may experience in classroom instruction, decision-making related to student conduct, or academic programming, to augment thinking and processing of those experiences with colleagues who share similar experiences.
Schools and Districts as Learning Organizations
Recent scholarship grounded in sociocultural and organizational learning and its application to empirical research helps us understand the potential for the chief equity officer's position within the structure of district leadership and consider the various mechanisms through which it can be effective (Honig, 2008, 2012; Honig et al., 2017). District leaders who create chief equity officer positions may recognize that they will be better able to move toward the change they seek in a given area of practice, instruction, leadership, and learning in their schools and district(s) if they hire someone with external expertise and provide them with the positional authority to lead the change work they seek to incorporate into their daily practice. By creating a position like the chief equity officer in the central office leadership, districts can incorporate and encode the knowledge and expertise of the person in the position in relation to the district's desired equity goals and thereby support schools through a range of “assistance relationships” (Honig, 2008, p. 634).
Collectively, organizational learning theory emphasizes how organizations learn, develop, and potentially transform themselves through routines; incorporating, sharing, and interpreting new information; and engaging in trial and error or novice/apprenticeship exploratory practices that allow for success and struggles as part of the learning process. Schools and school district central offices are learning organizations (e.g., Honig, 2008; Honig et al., 2017); the question is, how can districts use the chief equity officer position to incorporate new information through various learning processes to change their practices? As scholars have documented, organizational learning theory, coupled with communities of practice, can be an effective vehicle for implementing a vision for equity into practice (e.g., Hatch et al., 2016).
Equity-Oriented Leadership and Change in K-12 Schools
Advocates, policymakers, practitioners, and scholars have long called for the need to address inequities in the educational context (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 2006). Nonetheless, the literature demonstrates that educational inequities persist and are deeply imbedded in structures, policies, and practices within school districts nationally (e.g., Lewis & Diamond, 2015). For example, research highlights disparities in student discipline policies and practices (e.g., Carter et al., 2017). This work targets systems, structures, and institutions, rather than focusing on individuals (e.g., Ladson-Billings, 2006; Venzant Chambers, 2009). Notably, inequities exist in urban, suburban, and rural school districts alike (e.g., Diamond et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2021). Equity-oriented leadership is critical to addressing systemic racism and discrimination. The K-12 educational leadership literature, with a specific focus on equity, social justice, and anti-racism, provides a foundation for understanding the context in which the school district equity officer is situated.
Theoretical Underpinnings
Recent scholarship on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks educational leadership researchers have developed and used in their inquiry work has marked a shift toward focusing on leadership as a practice that formal and informal leaders take up in their daily work in schools and districts, and the responsibility for formal and informal leaders to proactively engage in transformative leadership practices toward equitable, socially just, and anti-racist organizations that structurally support—instead of harm—Black and brown students (e.g., Brooks & Watson, 2019; Capper, 2015; Dumas & Ross, 2016; Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015; Shields, 2010). Given that educational leadership is an applied field in education research, these frameworks—often informed by theoretical scholarship in other disciplines—have been adapted and applied to examine leadership work with the purpose of transforming schools and districts.
Transformative and Social Justice Leadership
Following an initial development and introduction of theoretical scholarship oriented toward social justice in educational leadership, scholars called for a deepening of the research in this area through an ideological shift away from an objective use of social justice frameworks toward more critical, social justice scholarship that explicitly focused on change, transformation of the school environment, equity, and anti-racist practices (Marshall, 2004; Shields, 2004, 2010; Dantley, 2003; Weiner, 2003; Theoharis, 2007). In her influential work, Shields (2010) summarized the varied scholarship on transformative leadership and explained how it departed from other frameworks for conceptualizing the role of leadership practice in K-12 schools. Through her synthesized conceptualization, Shields (2010) formulated a framework that calls into question the inequities in the external social environment surrounding students and educators in schools, underscores the expectation for leadership to work toward meaningful and equitable change, and draws on critical pedagogy to shape learning processes. This incorporation of critical pedagogy in a formulation of transformative leadership, when applied in practice with educators, can lead to a recognition and critique of how power and privilege operate within organizations and society, which thereby requires work toward freedom, democracy, equity, and justice (Shields, 2010).
Within this line of research, scholars have developed frameworks and extended existing frameworks to describe the magnitude of structural racism within the institution of education and its composite organizations, and to describe the work that formal and informal leaders must engage in to bring sustained, structural change and transformation to the learning environments Black and brown students, and their families, navigate in our schools (see, e.g., Brooks & Watson, 2019; Liou & Hermanns, 2017). For example, scholars have described racism as a “pathology” that impacts students, educators, and educational leaders throughout the various institutional levels of primary and secondary education in the US (Brooks & Watson, 2019, p. 639). Specifically, Brooks and Watson (2019) describe the endemic nature of racism in public education, which serves to underscore the magnitude of the problems that anti-racist leaders and leaders oriented toward social justice have faced in their leadership practice. Further, this highlights the task assigned to chief equity officers in districts committed to this work. This scholarship underscores the role that cultural texts and artifacts can have in supporting meaningful conversations on race. Through their ecology framework, Brooks and Watson (2019) establish the need for anti-racist leadership work at every level, from the individual to the societal. For this work to be effective, the chief equity officer must employ learning processes from organizational learning theories and sociocultural learning theories.
The scholarly learning processes developed under organizational learning theory and sociocultural learning theory are central to the leadership work of the chief equity officer because one person cannot singlehandedly bring about the collective deep learning and change in practice that is necessary for districts to transform into anti-racist organizations. While the chief equity officer may have the positional authority as a district-wide leader to inform disciplinary procedures or advise the curriculum director on more inclusive texts or approaches to classroom instruction, educators themselves will need to internalize and commit to anti-racist work. This requires opportunities for learning, reflection, and attempts toward changing practice.
If the chief equity officer can strategically draw on learning processes from organizational learning theory such as informing the flow of information (Huber, 1991), encoding new routines in practice by developing district policy to inform practice (Knapp, 2008), or shaping the shared or collective knowledge on a given topic, such as anti-racism (see Honig, 2008, 2012; Knapp, 2008), and also utilize learning processes from sociocultural learning theory such as shared activities that serve as a catalyst for learning (Engestrom, 2000), instituting a focus on practice embedded within the school or classroom context (Wenger, 1998), and the use of tools to concretize or reify abstract ideas and concepts for a group of practitioners (see: Herrenkohl & Wertsch, 1999; Herrenkohl, 2008; Wenger, 1998), then the chief equity officer will be able to bring about structural change within the district's schools while also scaffolding learning processes that support educators’ learning toward anti-racist leadership practice embedded in their daily routines. If the chief equity officer is provided the professional authority to draw on these learning processes in guiding the district's equity-oriented anti-racist work, then they may be able to achieve a re-coupling of the district's public commitments with its policies and practices (see: Ray, 2019).
Anti-Racist Educational Leadership
The educational leadership literature uses many terms to frame equity-oriented work, including social justice leadership (e.g., Bogotch, 2002; Theoharis, 2007), transformative leadership (e.g., Shields, 2010), culturally responsive school leadership (e.g., Khalifa, 2020; Khalifa, et al., 2016), and anti-racist leadership (e.g., Brooks & Witherspoon Arnold, 2013; Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Welton et al., 2019). Scholars warn of the possibility for diluting, misusing, or misunderstanding terminology in either theory or practice (Dantley & Green, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2014). In this article, consistent with Galloway et al.'s (2019) emphasis on the need for explicit and targeted language, and reflective of our critical orientation as scholars, we are guided by an anti-racist framework (Diem & Welton, 2020; Gooden et al., 2018; Pollock, 2008). By centering race and racism, we aim to avoid “‘depoliticiz[ing],’ ‘soften[ing],’ and in essence water[ing] down the critical work needed to promote long-lasting change for racial equity” (Welton et al., 2018, p. 120).
Within the field of education and beyond, researchers have long called for the need to center race in research, policy, and practice (Capper, 2015; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2013; Ladson-Billings, 1998; López, 2003). This focus on race and racism is directly tied to the work of educational leaders (Allen & Liou, 2019; Gooden, 2012; Brooks & Watson, 2019; Khalifa et al., 2013). A recent statement from Philadelphia Superintendent Dr. William R. Hite Jr. following the murder of George Floyd speaks directly to the importance of centering race in equity work: Some may ask, ‘why are we only talking about racism when there are other systems of oppression that need to be addressed?’ To that I will answer, race is the social construction that set the foundation and built the infrastructure for the United States we know today. Racism is the root of all other forms of injustice and provides the nourishment needed for other systems of oppression to thrive. As such, in order to destroy the tree, we cannot simply pick at the leaves or chop away at the trunk, we must destroy the root (Hite, 2020)
Notably, efforts to promote anti-racism do not come without resistance or protest from those who wish to maintain the status quo. Writers for conservative media organizations and policy institutes like Christopher Rufo catastrophize the adoption of equity-oriented leadership practices in public institutions like education by developing papers or articles that present an inaccurate or hyperbolic interpretation of CRT; its application in academic scholarship, and its role in practice (Bokat-Lindell, 2021; Goldberg, 2021). The response to CRT from parents and community members is a backlash against the introduction of equity-oriented change efforts in districts—including the creation of positions like the chief equity officer—designed to lead equity-oriented work across the district (e.g., Starr, 2021). Specifically, protests against what is often described as teaching CRT have taken several forms: parents and community members vociferously protesting CRT at school board meetings, the introduction of state legislation intended to prohibit teaching CRT in public schools, and individual resignations from educators. These and other forms of protest are all part of an effort to prohibit educators from presenting students in elementary and secondary schools with a more critical perspective on historical narratives that describe the founding, development, and key events in nations like the US and UK (Farag, 2021; Kim, 2021). Further, through the theoretical framework of CRT, these protests can be interpreted as a manifestation of the structure of white supremacy that rears up when threatened, by any form of critique, with the intention of maintaining structural power at all costs (see Bell, 1980; Capper, 2015; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado, 1989; Ladson-Billings, 1998). Thus, protesters have adopted a range of false, erroneous, and inaccurate descriptions of CRT in its applications to schools, as a proxy for the discussions related to equity, inclusion, and anti-racism that are occurring in schools and school districts; and which may have been harder to initially refute when introduced as local district policy initiatives in public schools (see, e.g., Horsford et al., 2019; Irby et al., 2019).
The educational leadership literature stresses that anti-racist, equity-oriented work is not the work of one individual; it requires an organizational commitment (e.g., Ishimaru & Galloway, 2014; Welton et al., 2018). Moreover, this work should be done in collaboration with the community (Green, 2017; Khalifa, 2012). Reflecting this emphasis on the relationship between an individual leader and broader norms, routines, structures, and systems of oppression and discrimination, scholars have merged social justice and anti-racist leadership literature with literature that focuses on the broader organization (e.g., Brooks et al., 2007; Irby et al., 2020). Welton and colleagues (2018) focus on anti-racism and institutional change, stating “we need anti-racist leaders that are developing anti-racist institutions, and anti-racist institutions that are continually going through the process of renewing direction, structure, and capabilities” (p. 12). Similarly, Galloway and Ishimaru (2020) stress the importance of “shifting power and constructing leadership as a collective activity” in equity work (p. 17). As such, while the role of the chief equity officer is a singular role, the work should be part of a broader commitment to equity and anti-racism.
Leadership Preparation and Practice
Anti-racist and equity-oriented educational leadership requires competencies, skills, and training. Educational leaders must be prepared to confront and dismantle racism embedded in education policies and practices. Unfortunately, research identifies significant limitations of leadership preparation programs in preparing leaders to identify, address, and prevent racial inequities (e.g., Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Gooden et al., 2018; Miller, 2021; Young & Laible, 2000). This work specifically calls for the need to address anti-Black racism in educational leadership preparation programs (e.g., Genao & Mercedes, 2021). Scholars argue that leadership standards similarly fail to address equity and racism in meaningful, targeted ways (e.g., Davis et al., 2015; Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015; Welton & Freelon, 2019).
While equity-oriented, anti-racist educational leadership literature emphasizes the role of principals (e.g., Theoharis, 2007; Khalifa, 2012; Swanson & Welton, 2019), research also features the experiences of superintendents (Alston, 2005), and central office leadership (e.g., Mattheis, 2017). From the literature, we know that educational leaders encounter resistance and adopt strategies to overcome this resistance.
Resistance at the school, district, and community levels affects the work and lives of equity leaders in profound ways (e.g., Solomon, 2002). Social justice and anti-racist principals encounter resistance from parents and staff as they challenge the status quo (Theoharis, 2007, 2008a, 2008b; Welton et al., 2018). At the district level, principals report a lack of institutional support, including resources and support from central office administrators. Leaders describe the emotional and physical toll of facing resistance in their work (Theoharis, 2007). Through their work, social justice leaders adopt strategies to promote social justice, including remaining steadfast in their commitment, developing networks, engaging in collaboration, and intentional and authentic communication.
Social identity, power, and privilege impact the experiences of educational leaders (e.g., Theoharis, 2008b). For example, scholars have highlighted the experiences of Black principals and superintendents (e.g., Horsford, 2010, 2012; Lamotey, 2019; Tillman, 2004), Latinx administrators (e.g., Rodela & Rodriguez-Mojica, 2020). Scholars identify the importance of culture, spirituality, criticality, and purpose in the work of Black educational leaders (Dantley, 2009; Tillman, 2004). Given the pervasive nature of systemic racism, research also notes that Black principals experience racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue (Krull & Robicheau, 2020). This scholarship also accounts for intersectionality and the experiences of multiply marginalized educational leaders (e.g., Lomotey, 2019; Peters, 2012, Peters & Miles Nash, 2021). Research also documents the experiences of white principals who struggle to implement an anti-racist vision, noting efforts to maintain racial neutrality, outward opposition to conversations about race, and general feelings of a lack of preparedness to address systemic racism (Swanson & Welton, 2019).
Overall, within the field of educational leadership, scholars note a “predominance of whiteness” (Welton et al., 2019, p. 621). Chief equity officers exist within the same ecosystem as other leadership positions in school districts. Thus, this article builds upon what we know about the experiences of principals, superintendents, and other educational leaders in the K-12 context, including systemic and institutional barriers that undermine racial equity. In the following section we synthesize relevant findings from literature about the role and evolution of CDOs in higher education. Such insights are useful for considering possible new directions for the growth and professionalization of chief equity officers at the K-12 level.
Chief Diversity Officers in Higher Education
Challenges associated with increasing the recruitment and retention of racially minoritized students, faculty, and staff at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) have resulted in the development of hundreds of CDO positions across the country. While their moniker may vary (e.g., “Vice Provost for Diversity” versus “Special Assistant to the President for Equity and Inclusion”), much like they do in the K-12 context, the term CDO generally refers to executive-level administrators who are charged with diversity planning and implementation efforts on their campuses (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007, 2013). As of 2016, it was estimated that roughly two-thirds of all major colleges/universities have a CDO (Bradley et al., 2018). This number has likely increased given the noticeable spike in racially motivated crimes on college and university campuses following the 2016 presidential election (Garibay et al., 2020) and the onslaught of state-sanctioned violence against Black people in the summer of 2020, which fueled calls to defund campus police. Indeed, CDOs are often narrowly viewed as “diversity fixers”—those who are expected to resolve and advise senior level leaders on handling diversity matters such campus protests and campus climate (Griffin et al., 2019). Similar perspectives are likely already forming of chief equity officers in the K-12 context, given the way in which these roles have developed.
The rapid growth and popularity of CDOs resulted in the formation of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) in 2006. Recognizing the importance of efforts to professionalize the work of CDOs in higher education, the association published its first set of 16 professional standards shortly afterwards (Worthington, et al., 2014) and has since updated them (Worthington et al., 2020). For instance, the fourth standard emphasizes the importance of efforts to address institutional policies, practices, and norms that contribute to differential access and success of marginalized students, faculty, and staff. While the standards are designed to reflect the definitional aspects of the growing profession, search committees have misused them as “competencies” in position descriptions for CDOs, focusing on the individual skills and practices one might deploy to respond to and manage diversity crises (Worthington et al., 2020). According to the NADOHE (2020), Whereas CDOs may (or may not) have specific competencies to carry out a comprehensive campus climate study or deliver a workshop focused on implicit bias for faculty search committees, they are committed to the standards of practice that ensure the competent delivery of such critical activities within an institution. (p. 4)
Research on CDOs in higher education has also directed attention to factors that foster and stymie their success in institutionalizing EDI on their campuses. For instance, CDOs are too often left to shoulder the weight of EDI work on their campuses with limited institutional infrastructure (e.g., budget, hiring capacity, reporting lines) and little formal authority to hold individuals or units accountable (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). CDOs may also “be seen as an instrument or even a pawn of their senior leadership, which limits their ability to develop relationships and initiatives or challenge the leadership that appointed them” (Nixon, 2017, p. 302). For those who are hired into their roles from outside of the institution, feelings of distrust may be heightened, resulting in difficulty developing supportive relationships with partners across campus (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Nixon (2017) makes an astute observation: The CDO's lived paradoxes of simultaneous visibility and invisibility, high rank and low resources, and recognition and tokenism can result in marginalization achieved not through sidelining or sweeping under the rug, but in essence by hiding the CDO in plain view. This raises a critical question about the personal and professional costs of this kind of isolation… (p. 302)
Given how important social identities are to ones’ professional practice, several studies have devoted attention to the unique professional experiences of various subgroups of CDOs including Black (Norris-Hill, 2020), Latinx (Chavez-Haroldson, 2020), and women of color (e.g., Marana, 2016; Nixon, 2017). Findings from Nixon's (2017) qualitative study of five women of color CDOs at PWIs indicate that all but one experienced isolation in their roles given their racial/ethnic underrepresentation in their cabinets. Participants were “insiders” by virtue of their title and physical seat at the leadership table, but their social identities (as women of color) positioned them as “outsiders.” So too did their area of focus (i.e., EDI), which is often seen as marginal to the core of the institution (Nixon, 2017). Participants also bemoaned experiences with microaggressions and racial and gendered stereotypes, which created undue pressure “to perform their role in ways that often seemed incomplete and sometimes false” (Nixon, 2017, p. 315). Suffice it say, one's social identities and positional power impact one's ability to alter and transform institutional structures in service of EDI. Nixon advocates for institutional support structures that are responsive to the unique social locations of CDOs and for commitments to share the responsibility of EDI work among leaders to maximize effectiveness.
To aid institutions in the design of CDO roles at colleges and universities, Williams and Wade-Golden (2013) advanced the Chief Diversity Officer Development Framework (CDODF). This framework, which originated out of their empirical research on CDOs, is composed of five key elements: strategic diversity platform, vertical diversity infrastructure, lateral diversity infrastructure, change management systems, and officer skills, knowledge, and abilities. The strategic diversity platform “establishes the strategic span of the position in terms of the mission, scope, and priority areas on which the CDO will focus [their] efforts” (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013, p. 103). In other words, how is diversity defined institutionally? And what role will the CDO play in advancing this definition of diversity? The second element, vertical diversity infrastructure, considers the span of control in term of reporting lines, budgets, and other aspects of the CDO's organizational authority and power. Lateral diversity infrastructure refers to the span of influence of the CDO—that is, the extent to which the CDO is an “integrator of institutional diversity capabilities” (p. 102). The fourth element, change management systems, encompasses the strategies (e.g., educational, political, communication) and techniques (e.g., accountability systems) a CDO employs to implement campus diversity efforts. The final element focuses on the knowledge, skills, and abilities one must possess to effectively carry out the work of a CDO (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Taken together, the CDODF framework offers a useful template for institutional leaders to maximize the success of CDOs. Given the parallels between CDOs and chief equity officers, this literature offers valuable insight as the K-12 chief equity officer role expands in school districts across the country.
Avoiding Mimetic Isomorphism and Promoting Anti-Racist Systemic Change
Nationally, school districts and professional membership organizations are engaging in unprecedented and long overdue efforts to prioritize equity and anti-racism. The role of the chief equity officer sits within this broader shift in education. As school districts consider hiring chief equity officers or seek ways to better support the work of current chief equity officers, we can turn to both the K-12 literature and the higher education research for useful lessons to take into consideration.
Implications for Implementation and Practice
The higher education literature emphasizes the structural, financial, and personnel-oriented supports that can impact the work of CDOs. Based on this literature, we know that preparation for the position is critical to ensuring that chief equity officers join an organization and community that is supportive of their role and work. Specifically, school districts should collect data and have a basic awareness of the climate related to equity and diversity. Through an inclusive, collaborative process, school districts should develop an anti-racist vision for the position. Shared support for this position is critical to the chief equity officer's ability to fulfill this vision.
Leadership should communicate unequivocal support for the position and the vision. District leaders need to use language that is clear and explicit to communicate their intentions for the equity work they want to engage in across the district. Educational leaders at the district level should also communicate their intentions for the chief equity officer position across all levels of the organization. The work of the chief equity officer must have capacity and support to reach beyond the superintendent's cabinet. The chief equity officer will need administrative support and access to everyone in the district if the district's equity goals include a deep and meaningful shift away from current practice. Further, as a part of the leadership work to bring about a significant change toward an equity-oriented district, the community of educational leaders and pedagogical practitioners will need to identify what positive change should result from engaging in equity-oriented practice over a specific timeframe. The community of educators can define their vision for equity, and then with a timeline, and meaningful support, plan backwards for the learning and processes needed to bring about this change.
Organizationally, school districts should consider models used in higher education, where experts have argued for the importance of support staff, independent control over finances, and clear reporting structures. According to Joshua Starr, an experienced superintendent,
Unless the equity leader has a clear and elevated status within the district hierarchy, their appointment may be seen as just a symbolic move. They need their own budget and staff, too, including people with expertise in data analysis, policy, legal issues, curriculum and instruction, and student and community engagement. A serious commitment to equity and social justice requires working across all of these areas (Starr, 2020).
In the words of one chief equity officer, “institutional racism manifests itself in districts articulating the desire to address equity, but there aren’t resources attached to the work, nor is there staff…Districts have equity officers with a small number of staff, and they’re expected to implement these enormous changes” (Samuels, 2019). Early research on the chief equity officer similarly reveals the importance of the “configuration of the role” and the “vulnerability” associated with the associated expectations (Irby et al., 2022, p. 419, 428). In October of 2020, Round Rock School District in Texas hired Dwayne Street to serve as its first chief equity officer. In this capacity, he will lead a newly created office of EDI, which will include six full-time positions (Macias, 2020). As an example of a reporting structure, the chief equity officer in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer of CPS (Chicago Public Schools, 2020). While these structural considerations, alone, are insufficient, they can provide meaningful support for systemic change district-wide.
In essence, the purpose of the chief equity office is to change current practice across the district toward equity in all areas. Ideally, the chief equity officer will use their positional authority and resources, including time, money, access, decision-making capacity, and leadership, to operate as an administrative leader responding to the district's context and to address racism and systemic inequities in their district. They should also elicit participation and engagement from all district and community members: principals, teachers, staff, other building administrators, district-level educational leaders, and members of the community. The chief equity officer can lead professional learning and transformative change efforts by articulating a theory of action aligned with the district's mission and goals for EDI to orient everyone in the district toward their overarching, collective response to equity-oriented work at all levels of the organization.
Transformative anti-racist leadership work requires educators to deconstruct the messages they have received about the value of Black and brown lives, specifically of school-aged students in schools, and together work to learn and develop a shared framework in alignment with the district's equity commitment. The role of the chief equity officer is to formally lead this work by articulating a shared mission and vision for the district's EDI work, and critically examine the policies, and cultural practices that disproportionately impact Black and brown students, such as discipline procedures, special education over-identification, and desegregation of schools within districts (e.g., Dumas & ross, 2016; Irby, 2018). To do this work, experts emphasize the importance of explicitly naming race and racism, coalition building, and self-care (Rice-Boothe, 2021).
Further, the work that the chief equity officer leads will likely align to or reflect concepts from critical pedagogy, organizational learning theory, and sociocultural learning theory in an effort to structure multiple, linked opportunities for ongoing, reflective learning, dialogue, and practice for all members of the district's clustered or nested communities: the individual, subject- and grade-level areas, school-level, professional identities across schools and buildings within the district, and at the district level. For example, the chief equity officer might select one or two books for all educators and practitioners in the district to read. The book may be selected to inform critical conversations about race, racism, and implicit bias in the classroom. These critical conversations can occur at multiple levels; for example, in small groups with subject area or grade-level colleagues, and at larger school-wide professional development sessions, as well as with educators in different schools across the district. The chief equity officer might select the book(s) and may also develop the activities that educators will be expected to engage in as part of their structured learning process. Over time, for example across a semester, marking period, or school year, teachers, leaders, and other educational personnel may be expected to document some of their small-group reflections, periodically describe how their practice is evolving, and share examples from their own practice as illustrative artifacts of their own professional learning and transformational work. The chief equity office may not use vocabulary such as encoding, reification, or transformation of participation (see, e.g., Knapp, 2008); however, these examples illustrate these concepts. In doing this work, it will be critical for chief equity officers and institutional allies to navigate a social-political context in which many school districts are facing organized resistance to equity-oriented, anti-racist work.
Leadership Preparation, Standards, and Professional Membership Organizations
The literature presented in this article also presents implications for leadership preparation, professional standards, and professional membership organizations. The creation of an explicit role dedicated to EDI reinforces the concerns raised in the K-12 leadership literature related to the limitations of leadership preparation programs, particularly in regards to anti-racism (e.g., Diem et al., 2019; Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Gooden et al., 2018; Miller, 2021; Young & Laible, 2000). Similar to higher education literature and the educational literature on other leadership roles in school districts, the work of chief equity officers is described as “isolating” (Samuels, 2019) or “lonely” (Starr, 2020).
Given the growing numbers of chief equity officers (Starr, 2020), educational leadership and teacher training programs should not only consider the opportunity to prepare future chief equity officers, but also continue to build on existing efforts to prepare anti-racist, equity-oriented principals, superintendents, teachers, and other educational leaders. Although chief equity officers have a specific named position within the district, their work requires an organizational commitment, and principals, superintendents, teachers, and other educational leaders are integral to organizational change for EDI. The higher education literature also emphasizes the importance of independent budgets. As such, leadership preparation programs should build upon existing curricular offerings, including those that relate to resource allocation, budgets, navigating the politics of school districts, and school finance, with a particular focus on equity and anti-racism. In addition, educational leadership preparation programs in higher education should collaborate with local community members and educational leaders at the district and school levels to support these efforts in multiple ways.
In addition to educator and leadership training programs, professional membership organizations, including school board associations, superintendent associations, and principal associations at the state and federal level, should consider how their membership might interface with the work of chief equity officers and how they might best support their efforts and the overall organizational commitment to anti-racism. This work coincides with growing efforts to prioritize equity and anti-racism across professional associations. For example, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) recently hosted an equity symposium (NSBA, 2020). Moreover, within its “Beliefs and Policies” document, NSBA urges school districts to adopt an equity policy (NSBA, 2019), which is directly tied to the work of the chief equity officer. Consistent with this work, under the leadership of inaugural Director Equity Services Dr. Heather Bennett, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association has engaged in unprecedented efforts to promote equity, including trainings, and encourage the adoption of resolutions addressing racial inequities (Pennsylvania School Boards Association, n.d.). Given the important role of school boards, this activity is critical to supporting the work of the chief equity officer and promoting meaningful, lasting anti-racist change in schools.
As the chief equity officer role grows nationally, professional standards may be on the horizon. Literature in K-12 and higher education illustrates the importance of taking a critical perspective when creating professional standards (e.g., Allen et al., 2020; Davis et al., 2015; Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015; Welton & Freelon, 2019). Drawing from prior scholarship, standards should emphasize community organizing and coalition building (Welton & Freelon, 2019) and explicitly name and center race and racism (Allen et al., 2020; Davis et al., 2015).
Implications for Research
The K-12 and higher education literature reveals several directions for future research, including additional collaborations across the P-20 pipeline. For example, K-12 and higher education researchers might work together to better understand the similarities and differences between CDOs and chief equity officers. Often, as educational researchers, we work in a higher education/K-12 dichotomy; however, this article demonstrates that working across the P-20 pipeline can provide meaningful opportunities to learn from one another. Given the limited research on chief equity officers, scholars might identify additional spaces for knowledge generation. For example, as a part of this work, K-12 researchers might consider working collaboratively with the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, an important publication of the NADOHE, to develop an expansive publication outlet that allows for reciprocal learning across the P-20 pipeline and furthers researchers’ impact on equity-oriented leadership and change in the field more broadly.
In the K-12 context, research could examine the role of the chief equity officer within the broader organizational structure and the district's overall commitment to equity and diversity. Irby et al. (2022) identified obstacles and supports that chief equity offers experience and provided preliminary insight into organizational structure of the chief equity officer position. Informed by the literature presented in this article, future scholarship could expand upon this work and include additional interviews with chief equity officers and other key stakeholders in systemic, anti-racist change efforts throughout the district. Moreover, future research should acknowledge the role of intersectional (race and gender) oppression in the work of chief equity officers (Irby et al., 2022). Future research studies should also examine the impact of having a chief equity officer on desirable outcomes such as school climate, safety, and cross-racial interactions and relationships among students in comparison to schools without one. This is an area of study that has been neglected in research on CDOs at the postsecondary education level. We have a great deal to learn, but this review of literature revealed a strong foundation to build upon.
Conclusion
The anti-racist work that public schools and districts need to take up in the United States cannot be accomplished by the sole labor of the chief equity officer, nor can chief equity officers bring about deep, sustained change through sheer force of will alone. The change districts seek—at least the early adopters, before mimetic isomorphism reaches nearly all districts—requires everyone to engage in this critical leadership and learning work and anti-racist educational practice.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
