This qualitative interpretivist research study focused on understanding perceived superintendent self-efficacy and instructional leadership in school districts that have persistently failed to serve students of color and that also may have contributed to persistent student achievement inequities and achievement gaps. This study yielded three complex and interrelated themes: rejecting responsibility, supporting persistent racism, and sustaining deficit viewpoints. Findings from this study serve to suggest that an important self-efficacy linkage may be absent or underdeveloped in superintendents who maintain paradoxical high efficacy beliefs in the face of ongoing low and inequitable student performance. Policy and practice recommendations are discussed that might assist and influence superintendents’ abilities to link their self-efficacy perceptions to improving equitable academic performance for all students.
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