Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated equity issues in education, spanning race, disability, language, and socioeconomic status. However, few studies examine the ways that district or state educational leaders consider equity in their decision-making during a crisis. The purpose of this study is to examine how K-12 state and local leaders conceptualized equity and actualized equitable policies and practices during the pandemic. We conducted a multi-level case study, interviewing state and local-level educational leaders (n = 64) from five school districts in the state of Michigan. Our findings reveal that leaders formed equity visions focused on meeting students’ individual needs, which were enacted differently at the state and local levels. Our findings demonstrate the need for partnerships across educational levels to promote equity-oriented change in systems, practices, and policies. Implications of our study extend beyond the COVID-19 pandemic to other crises, such as natural disasters or acts of violence, that can exacerbate inequities within education.
Introduction
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted schools and student learning with, at its peak, approximately 124,000 U.S. school closures affecting 55.1 million students nationwide (Peele & Riser-Kositsky, 2021). This unprecedented crisis has been well documented through various scholars who highlight the challenges faced by schools, families, and students during the pandemic (Singer et al., 2022), as well as educational leader responses to the impacts of COVID-19 (De Voto & Superfine, 2023; De Voto et al., 2023). More importantly though, the COVID-19 pandemic and its challenges exacerbated the pre-existing, long-standing educational equity crisis spanning race, disability, language, and socioeconomic status (Haderlein et al., 2021; Ladson-Billings, 2006). The Office of Civil Rights (2021) noted that the pandemic [deepened] divides in educational opportunity across our nation’s classrooms. . .[and] many of these impacts are falling disproportionately on students who went into the pandemic with the greatest educational needs and fewest opportunities—many of them from historically marginalized and underserved groups. (p. ii)
The purpose of this study is to examine how K-12 state and local-level educational leaders in Michigan conceptualized equity and actualized equitable policies and practices during the pandemic. Specifically, we ask the following questions: (1) How did state and local-level leaders conceptualize equity within their contexts during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis? (2) How did leaders prioritize equity in their decision-making in response to the pandemic and how, if at all, did these priorities differ based on their roles at the state or local level of the educational system? Much of the current research on crisis leadership is focused on organizational leadership through a managerial lens (see Grissom & Condon, 2021) and does not address challenges related to equity before, during, and after a crisis. This focus on equity is necessary as we consider the possibility of future crises, such as natural disasters or acts of violence in schools.
Recognizing that there is no single definition of equity—despite its frequent use with education policy scholars (Freidus & Turner, 2023)—we define equity in alignment with Galloway and Ishimaru (2015) as an approach that combats oppressive systems, policies, and practices that produce or exacerbate educational disparities for students from communities that have been marginalized, historically and presently. This study focuses on equity in its broadest sense to address disparities related to ethnicity, race, gender/gender identity, socioeconomic status, dis/ability, and sexual orientation. Further, we conceptualize equity-oriented, focused, or centered leaders in alignment with Gooden and colleagues (2023) as leaders who can identify and address disparities in student opportunities and outcomes.
Our research is situated within a partnership between researchers from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) and the Michigan Department of Education, as part of a broader study examining how schools supported students’ access to learning during the 2020–2021 school year and beyond. To better understand how educational leaders in Michigan considered equity during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a multi-level case study, interviewing a total of 64 state and local-level educational leaders 1 from five school districts. Our study sheds light on specific ways that leaders centered equity in their practices, decision-making, and thinking in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that district and state-level leaders were aligned in their reflections on equity during this crisis but differed in their equity-oriented decision-making. Specifically, state- and local-level educational leaders enacted different priorities for addressing equity. At the state level, educational leaders focused on influencing the sociopolitical contexts and developing technological infrastructures, while local leaders focused on collaborating with families and ensuring access to basic needs resources. These findings demonstrate the critical need for partnerships across educational levels to promote equity-oriented change aimed at combating oppressive systems, policies, and practices.
Literature Review
To ground our inquiry, we draw on previous literature on the roles leaders played in shaping education policy and practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. We then outline our conceptual framework, which foregrounds equity-oriented leadership to frame how state and district-level leaders might conceptualize equity and actualize equitable policies and practices during this pandemic.
Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Nearly all U.S. schools ceased in-person instruction and closed their doors in March 2020 due to the increase in positive COVID-19 cases. At its peak, school closures affected 55.1 million students nationwide and 124,000 U.S. private and public schools (Peele & Riser-Kositsky, 2021). Existing studies have found that in their initial responses to the growing pandemic, state leaders were prescriptive in their policymaking for districts and schools in Spring 2020 (Hashim et al., 2023). By the Fall of 2020, fewer state governments issued guidance on school reports (Grossmann et al., 2021). Instead, more states moved to a “local control” approach, leaving decision making about COVID-19 protocols, including reopening and instruction, to school districts.
As local control increased during the pandemic, there was continued strain on the education system. Researchers documented the impact of this strain through data on student achievement and academic performance. Studies show that U.S. students learned less academic content based on school and district-level assessments in the 2020–2021 school year than they did in previous school years. This trend, also referred to as the COVID slide, was even more noticeable for students from low-income families, English learners, early-grade, and Black and Latinx students (Dorn et al., 2020; Kilbride et al., 2021; Kogan & Lavertu, 2021; Kuhfeld et al., 2020; Pier et al., 2021; Sass & Goldring, 2022). Some states such as North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, and California saw widened gaps in student achievement between districts due to the pandemic (Domina et al., 2022; Kogan & Lavertu, 2021; Pier et al., 2021; Sass & Goldring, 2022).
Beyond widening achievement gaps, the COVID-19 pandemic led to other inequities in school communities. For instance, distance learning during the pandemic exacerbated socioeconomic inequities in student access to learning opportunities and widened the “digital divide” among students (Hayes & Gao, 2021; Cheshmehzangi et al., 2023). Additionally, English learners and students with disabilities experienced varied access to quality instruction and support during the pandemic (Blad, 2022; DeMatthews et al., 2023; Sugarman & Lazarín, 2020), further reflecting the varied ways that COVID-19 exacerbated inequities in schooling. LGBTQIA+ youth, especially those with intersectional marginalized identities (LGBTQIA+ young People of Color or undocumented immigrants) also experienced disproportionate rates of oppression and trauma (Salerno et al., 2020). As schools shifted to virtual or hybrid instruction during the pandemic, LGBTQIA+ youth faced stressors without essential resources, support, and community offered in school spaces (Fish et al., 2022). We view these widening inequities as a pressing leadership challenge across levels of the education system.
To better understand how leaders navigated the challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, recent studies have investigated equity-oriented crisis leadership during the early months of the crisis. This emerging scholarship, largely focused on school-level leadership, reveals that school principals prioritized equity-oriented decisions in response to the challenges of the pandemic, including decisions related to care for the general wellbeing of staff, students, and families (Jackson et al., 2022; McLeod & Dulsky, 2021). School leaders responded to inequities concerning the basic needs of students and families, access to technology, economic hardship, and access to social resources and networks (Supovitz & Manghani, 2022). At the same time, school principals had to enforce federal, state, and district level mandates—which, at times, went against their students’ unique needs and threatened their efforts to promote equity (Jackson et al., 2022).
Although there is a growing body of work focused on school-level equity leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Flack et al., 2021; Phakula, 2022; Stevens, 2023; Supovitz & Manghani, 2022; Virella, 2023), few studies examine how equity was addressed across the different levels of the U.S. education system, including at the state and district levels. 2 To help frame our analysis of equity-oriented leadership across state and district levels, we next summarize frameworks of crisis management and equity-oriented leadership.
Crisis Management in Education
For the last 2 decades, many scholars have presented frameworks to address crisis management (Boin et al., 2013; Grissom & Condon, 2021; Muffet-Willett & Kruse, 2009), with some focusing on the unique context of education (see Smith & Millar, 2002). Scholars have defined crisis as an “urgent situation that requires immediate and decisive action by an organisation” (Smith & Riley, 2012, p. 58, as cited in De Voto & Superfine, 2023) with distinctions between a sudden crisis (i.e., occurring unexpectedly and without warning) and smoldering crisis (i.e., occurring internally between individuals due to managerial negligence; De Voto & Superfine, 2023; Grissom & Condon, 2021; James & Wooten, 2005; Smith & Miller, 2002). Crisis management scholars have emphasized the importance of organizational preparation and preparedness prior to a crisis (i.e., crisis management leadership), the development and training of core leadership skills (i.e., crisis leadership), and leadership’s immediate actions during and following the crisis (Boin et al., 2013; De Voto et al., 2023; Grissom & Condon, 2021).
From a crisis management perspective, the American education system was not prepared for a sudden and unprecedented crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic (García & Weiss, 2020) as schools lacked planning and resources to support the transition to distance learning (DeMatthews et al., 2023). At the same time, baseline inequities in student access to learning opportunities leading up to the pandemic (Ladson-Billings, 2006) created conditions of a smoldering crisis that likely imploded with the onset of the pandemic. Taken together, the lack of school preparedness for the pandemic, coupled with long standing and systemic inequities, created a perfect storm whereby students from historically marginalized communities—including those affected by racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination—experienced the most adverse consequences from the pandemic.
Despite growing inequities during the pandemic, much of the crisis management literature is focused on organizational leadership through a business organization lens (see Grissom & Condon, 2021) and pays less attention to inequities before, during, and after a crisis (Supovitz & Manghani, 2022). Specifically, few studies in K-12 crisis management center the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting students from communities that have been marginalized, historically and presently.
Research foregrounding equity and its intersection with crises can more fully address the experiences of educators, families, and students during the COVID-19 pandemic. While recent studies call attention to the significance of equity in school-level crisis leadership (see Virella, 2023), our study expands on this work by highlighting how equity is conceptualized during crises at both the state and local levels of the U.S. education system. Previous research demonstrates that policy responses at the state level can directly influence the decision-making choices available at the district and local levels (Grossmann et al., 2021). Given the interconnected nature of state and local decision-making, we use rich case study data to illustrate how responses across multiple levels of the education system collectively shaped the experiences of families and students in Michigan during the pandemic. We also attend to distinctions across state and local leaders’ equity-oriented priorities and decision-making.
Conceptual Framework: Equity-Focused Leadership
To guide our examination of how leaders across levels of the education system considered equity during the COVID-19 pandemic, we draw on Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) high-leverage equitable leadership practices for K-12 school leaders. Notably, this research speaks to the importance of developing and implementing leadership standards explicitly focused on equity commitments and justice (Gooden et al., 2023). These practices build upon previous scholarship examining leadership as a powerful pathway for disrupting educational inequities (e.g., Byrne-Jiménez & Orr, 2013; Childress et al., 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Marshall & Oliva, 2010; Shields, 2010; Theoharis, 2010). Galloway and Ishimaru’s “high-leverage equitable leadership practices” were developed as a shift from existing national leadership standards to better foreground equity, which the authors define as: “an approach to practice that counters oppressive systems, policies, structures, and practices that create or exacerbate disparities in education for nondominant students” 3 (p. 380). To develop the practices, they drew on prior literature related to leadership and educational equity considering a range of identity dimensions including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, home language, ability, sexual orientation, and gender. 4
In combination with prior literature, Galloway and Ishimaru (2015) gathered feedback from 40 experts on educational equity including K-12 leaders, higher education faculty, policy consultants, and community leaders. Centering the voices of current leaders—including many leaders of color—helped to ensure the resulting practices were directly applicable to practice. Through a series of surveys and focus groups, the experts converged on 10 high-leverage equitable leadership practices. In this study, we focus on five of these practices, which we summarize below:
(1) Engaging in self-reflection and growth for equity: Leadership works to understand the historical and present ways that power, privilege, and oppression operate in school and society. This includes an exploration of their own individual identities, biases, assumptions, privileges, and core values.
(2) Constructing and enacting an equity vision: Leadership engages with the school community to develop and enact a vision that assumes collective responsibility for the success of all students and explicitly recognizes inequities as systemic. Leadership models this vision in action by enacting democratic decision-making processes and instituting strategies to sustain the vision.
(3) Collaborating with families and communities: Leadership builds meaningful relationships with parents, families, and community leaders, especially those from historically marginalized communities. These relationships are developed in order to gain knowledge of the beliefs, values, practices, and cultural and social capital in the community thus further enacting a collective equity vision.
(4) Influencing the sociopolitical context: Leadership publicly creates and supports socially just policies and implementation that addresses the roots of systemic inequities. They use the authority and power of their role to prioritize policies that ensure a high-quality education for every student.
(5) Allocating resources: Leadership allocates time, material, financial, and human resources to support students from communities that have been historically marginalized and underserved. They also advocate for the equitable use of resources not only within their schools or institutions but also throughout the system.
These five practices offer actionable steps that can be implemented by leaders to promote equity across levels of the education system. Our study builds on Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) framework by highlighting how equity is conceptualized during a crisis at both the state and local levels of the U.S. education system. As explained in more detail in the methods section, we draw on these high-leverage leadership practices to foreground equity within our analysis of how leaders navigated the COVID-19 crisis across levels of the education system.
Methods
Our inquiry stems from an ongoing longitudinal study examining how state and district-level leaders approached supporting student learning in Michigan during and beyond the pandemic. The broader study began in 2021 and was situated in a partnership between researchers from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) and the Michigan Department of Education (MDE). Responding to the state Return to Learn law of 2021 (2020 Public Acts 147, 148, 149), the research partnership examined student progress toward learning goals during the pandemic, as well as local-level approaches to education across in-person, hybrid, and remote instructional modalities.
For the present study, we draw on qualitative case study methods to examine how state and local leaders in Michigan promoted equitable access to education amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Case study methods are well-suited to examine a phenomenon as it unfolds in its real-world context which, for our study, is equitable leadership practices amidst crisis (Creswell & Poth, 2016; Yin, 2014). More specifically, our case focuses on how educational leaders in the state of Michigan navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this broader state analysis, we engaged in embedded case analysis through diving deeply into leadership practices within five districts.
Data for this study included interviews with 18 state-level leaders and 46 district and school leaders. As is typically in case study research, we used these perspectives to expand theory on leadership during the pandemic. Throughout this study, we define state leaders as those involved in state-wide governance and educational administration (e.g., the governor’s office, state department of education), as well as representatives from professional associations (e.g., teachers’ unions, administrator associations) and student advocacy groups. Our conceptualization of local-level leaders includes district superintendents and administrators (e.g., special education directors, curriculum directors) as well as school principals and teacher leaders. Our work builds upon previous research illustrating how decision-making at the state and local levels are deeply interwoven, with state policies often guiding, constraining, or shaping the decisions made at the local level (Grossmann et al., 2021). We explore this dynamic by looking across the state and local levels of the education system to deepen our understanding of whether and how educational leaders engaged in equitable leadership practices amidst crisis.
Study Context
It is important to note that there were few federal mandates to address COVID-19 during the initial school closings in March 2020. Instead, states issued differing mandates to local districts and schools (see Goldhaber et al., 2022; Grossmann et al., 2021). Michigan is well-suited for an examination of educational leaders’ responses to the pandemic, given its similarity to many other states in the nation. Like many other states, Michigan first mandated school closures in Spring 2020 and then allowed for a more “local control” approach throughout the 2020–2021 school year (Grossmann et al., 2021; Weddle et al., 2024). After the initial period of statewide closures, districts in Michigan adopted a range of in-person, remote, and hybrid approaches to education (Hashim et al., 2024).
The state also includes 835 traditional public and charter school districts spanning urban, suburban, and rural contexts, and has a complex history of education and politics. Michigan is mixed politically, often referred to as a “purple” or “swing” state (Mclean, 2022). Throughout the period being studied (2020–2021 and 2021–2022), the state had a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled legislature. In addition, the state is characterized by a history of strong local control, mediating the authority of many state-level actors. The state Superintendent of Public Instruction, who leads the Michigan Department of Education (MDE), is appointed by and reports to an elected state Board of Education. These conditions, at times, made it challenging for state leaders to take swift and unified action to challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic (Weddle et al., 2022) and, as we elaborate below, prompted state-level leaders to reflect on the consequences of their actions with regards to equity.
Michigan also demonstrated baseline trends of inequity leading up to the pandemic, thereby serving as an illustrative case where a smoldering crisis of inequity was exacerbated by the onset of the pandemic. Compared to all other states in the country, Michigan ranked last for education funding growth between 1995 and 2015 (Arsen et al., 2019). In the immediate years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state experienced a teacher shortage, as well as gaps in internet connectivity and access to technology across local communities. Baseline disparities in educational opportunities between students from different racial, ethnic, socioeconomic status, and ability groups, as well as across urban, suburban, and rural contexts, set the stage for pre-existing achievement gaps that were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Kilbride et al., 2021).
Data Collection
Data collection included 64 interviews with 18 state-level leaders and 46 local-level leaders. As outlined in Table 1, the 18 state-level leaders included representatives from the executive office of the governor, the department of education, professional associations, and statewide advocacy groups.
State-Level Interview Participants
The district and school level interviews spanned five districts. Following mutually defined guidelines developed with the Michigan Department of Education, we identified a purposive sample of Michigan school districts that adopted different instructional modalities (in-person, hybrid, and remote) and performed better-than-expected on statewide assessments during the 2020–2021 school year. This sampling was part of a broader mixed-methods study exploring pandemic response across the state, which was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Details about the broader study and district sampling approach are outlined in Appendix A. 5 Importantly, the broader study focused on district-level (as opposed to school-level) comparisons. Accordingly, school-level interviews were conducted to better understand district approaches to leading and learning during the pandemic.
The five districts selected varied in size, geographic contexts (e.g., urban, suburban, and rural), and instructional modalities during COVID-19 school closings (e.g., in-person, hybrid, or remote). Table 2 shows variation in local context across our district cases. We report general instead of specific descriptors (i.e., levels of student populations instead of exact percentage values) to protect district confidentiality. Within each of the five districts, we began our interview recruitment process by reaching out to district superintendents, assistant superintendents, and administrators (e.g., directors of special education, curriculum leaders, etc.). Based on recommendations from district leaders, we then invited school-level leaders (e.g., principals, assistant principals, and teacher leaders). We aimed to connect with leaders at both the elementary and secondary levels within each district. Table 2 outlines the number of interview participants by leadership roles in each district.
Summary of District Cases and Interview Participants
Note. LEA = local education agency, and PSA = public school academy, or a charter district; BIPOC = the percent of students in the district who are Black, Indigenous (e.g., American Indian or Alaska Native), and People of Color (i.e., Asian, Hispanic or Latino/a/x, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander); ED, EL, and SWD indicate the percent of students who are considered economically disadvantaged in the state data system, English learners, and those who are identified as having a disability, respectively. Pupil exp = per-pupil expenditures on instruction, and teacher exp = average years of teacher experience as measured in terms of teaching assignments of school staff from the 2002–2003 to the 2020–2021 school year. Reading and math performances are reported as the actual score minus predicted Spring 2021 test scores. Positive values indicate a larger difference between actual and predicted test scores that are adjusted for district Fall 2020 test performance, 2019 M-STEP scores, urbanicity, student grade-levels and demographics, and assessment vendor. District size refers to total enrollment. To compare district cases to districts across the state, we divide all Michigan districts into terciles based on the attributes reported in this table (i.e., high, medium or “med,” and low). Because we limited district samples to those that tested a large enough number of students to observe reliable trends in test performance, our final sample only includes districts in the upper tercile for student enrollment. Adapted from “Responding to Crisis: A Multiple Case Study of District Approaches for Supporting Student Learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic,” by A.K. Hashim, H. Weddle, and O.N. Irondi, 2024, Educational Administration Quarterly, 60(5), p. 9–10 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X24127131). Copyright 2024 by Sage Publications.
Interviews were conducted and recorded from November 2021 to May 2022 on Zoom, and lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Interviews were semi-structured and focused on leaders’ priorities and efforts to support staff, students, and families during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, interview questions prompted leaders to share their specific approaches for promoting student learning and engagement amidst the pandemic, key collaborators in this work, relevant successes and challenges, and any initiatives designed to support specific student populations (e.g., English learners, students receiving special education services, etc.) In alignment with the conceptual framework, we also asked leaders to reflect on any lessons they learned about equity as they led during the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 school years, including how their thoughts on equity may have shifted due to the pandemic. Following the interviews, all recordings were transcribed by a transcription service and the resulting transcripts were reviewed for accuracy by a research assistant. While transcripts were not shared directly with participants, all participants were given opportunities to review and share feedback on preliminary findings for the broader project (see Weddle et al., 2022).
Analysis
We met as a research team prior to the initial coding of the data to build out broad conceptual categories in alignment with our interview protocol and research questions. Analysis was a collaborative process among the three authors of this paper, and began by coding the interviews for leader priorities during COVID. The authors then identified broad conceptual categories, which included leader priorities for the 2020–2021 school year, practices for engaging families, barriers or challenges to implementation, and equity. The team continued to meet weekly throughout the analysis process to ensure consistent application of the codebook and identify emerging themes stemming from the data.
Following the initial round of coding, our research team wanted to more deeply understand the practices local leaders enacted to address equity during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first author used deductive codes stemming from Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) 10-high leverage leadership practices to code the broad conceptual categories. The first and second authors met weekly to refine codes based on participant responses. The first author coded each transcript based on participant descriptions of equity leadership practices that aligned with these practices (even if it was a partial alignment). This was particularly true for the code “Hiring and Placing Personnel” where many local leaders shared their practice of placing teachers and staff in supportive roles for students with IEPs or to combat attendance challenges for students with internet access issues. However, rarely did a school leader address recruitment of staff from “othered” groups or with strong equity commitments (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015).
We conducted a final round of coding utilizing descriptive codes based on participant responses about their thoughts and actions around equity. Specifically, we began to consider: (a) descriptions of shifts or adjustments that leaders made in their thinking or policies that were a direct result of equity concerns, experiences, or new learning; and (b) reflections of practices that were outside of the 10-high leverage leadership practices and revolved around equity as either an individual issue or a more structural/systemic issue. These reflections include mentions of solutions to equity-based problems, reflections on equity, and challenges in participant contexts. We also considered (c) ways that participants defined equity for themselves. This is especially true as our initial round of analysis applied Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) definition of equity, which may not align with participant’s own understandings. A full list of the 16 codes used in this study and their definitions is outlined in Appendix B.
After coding the interview data, we created an analytic memo to deepen our understanding of the data. This practice helped to inform refinements to our research question, generate emerging themes during the analysis process, and enrich our understanding of these themes (Miles et al., 2019). Within the memo, we created summaries for each of the five districts and provided supporting quotes for each emerging theme to establish a chain of evidence. During this phrase of analysis, we also remained attentive to any variation between district and school-level perspectives. Ultimately, we did not find meaningful differences between district and school leaders’ reflections, and thus refer to both groups as local-level leaders throughout this paper.
To more deeply understand how leaders enacted Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) “high leverage equitable leadership practices” across contexts, we refined the analytic memo to categorize emergent themes according to the practices and level of the education system. Through this process, we identified several interesting distinctions between state and local-level leaders. For example, we identified student well-being and access to basic needs resources as a more prominent strategy for conceptualizing equity at the local level. In contrast, we identified efforts to influence the sociopolitical context at the state level as an ongoing approach to address equity concerns. In the final phase of analysis, we compared findings across district cases to identify any similarities and differences. Much of the local-level findings were consistent across districts, allowing us to present several claims across local-level participants. Throughout the findings, we directly note any district-specific considerations.
Researcher Positionality
The members of our research team hold various social locations. We identify as Nigerian-American, White, and South Asian/Indian women, respectively, and hold a range of experiences related to equity issues in K-12 education. The first author has extensive experience as a classroom teacher of students whose identities include: Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), low-income, multi-lingual, LGBTQIA+, and students with disabilities, and navigated the early phases of the pandemic as a school-level leader. The second author has experience studying policy implementation across the state and district levels, and also has experience informing state-level education policies. The third author approached this work as both a scholar with expertise examining district-level leadership approaches, as well as a parent of children in K-12 schools during the pandemic.
As with all research, our identities and life experiences impacted the way that we collected, coded, analyzed, and interpreted our data. During this research, we were (and are) committed to advancing equity for all learners whose identities have been historically marginalized in school. We enacted these commitments by collaborating as a research team throughout the data collection, analysis, and writing phases of this study. Throughout our research, we continually reflected on our own identities and the identities of our participants. We met weekly to ensure that our participants’ voices were uplifted in this work and to ensure alignment of analysis given our varying experiences.
Study Limitations
Although efforts were made to maintain a rigorous research design, we acknowledge several limitations to our study that we recommend be explored in future work. First, our study includes only five districts within the state. Additionally, we did not track participants’ social identity locations including race, ethnicity or gender relative to their roles. We also did not systematically gather information related to years of experience in education, although some participants shared these details in their responses. More background information about each participant may have provided additional information for our analysis on the ways that leaders conceptualized equity. Further, our interviews focused only on leaders at the state and local levels, which primarily included district and school administrators as well as a few teacher leaders. Notably missing are educators in non-leadership roles, families, community members, and students across cases. These perspectives would deepen our understanding of leaders’ equity approaches and provide insight into additional ways to approach future crises with an equity lens.
Findings
Drawing on Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) high-leverage equitable practices, we found that leaders across both the state and local levels engaged in self-reflection and growth for equity throughout the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis was compounded by the highly publicized protests for racial justice in the summer of 2020, which led many leaders to examine their understandings of race and racial equity. While leaders grappled with both race and socio-economic status in these broader reflections, leaders’ equity visions within their contexts were less likely to explicitly attend to systemic racism or anti-LGBTQIA+ bias. Instead, both state and local leaders constructed and enacted equity visions focused on socioeconomic status and meeting students’ individual needs to provide accessible education for all students including students with disabilities and English Learners. These visions for equity were enacted differently across levels of the education system. While state leaders engaged in practices related to the broader sociopolitical context and strengthening infrastructure to promote continuity of learning, local-level leaders focused more on collaboration with families and allocating resources to ensure access to instruction (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015).
Engaging in Equity-Focused Reflection
Across both the state and local levels, participants shared examples of engaging in equity-focused reflection. As noted by Galloway and Ishimaru (2015), such reflection is integral to understanding how power, privilege, and oppression shape education. For many leaders in our study, reflecting on equity occurred before, during, and after school closings in March 2020. As one district leader explained, “none of us are evolved to the point where we need to be with equity, we always have to work on it. As a district, this was a big focus for us going into this.” Other leaders reflected on how the events of the pandemic allowed for additional commitments to equity and enacting equitable policies. As one state leader described: It’s kind of like opening a new eye to say, “what systems, practices, and policies are not meeting the needs of all students in an equitable way?” . . . We would be missing a huge opportunity if we did not capitalize on that understanding.
This leader went on to explain their efforts to commit to equity at the state level by hosting conference speakers for school counselors with expertise in equitable practices.
For some state and local leaders, this focus on equity was not solely due to the pandemic. Some leaders attributed their thinking about equity to the heightened racial tensions in the Summer of 2020 due to protests of police brutality against Black people following the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. One state leader identified a shift in conversations about racism while sharing, “I feel like [pre-]pandemic—people just didn’t talk about it. . . . They knew racism was there, but they didn’t talk about it. Because of what’s happening around us, you can’t not talk about it now.” This leader highlights the ways that the nationwide demonstrations for racial justice served as catalysts for reflections on racial equity. The COVID-19 pandemic and the “summer of racial reckoning” (see Chang & Martin, 2020; Chavez, 2020) were two concurrent events that both state and local leaders described as contributing to their considerations of equity.
Alternatively, some participants reported that the pandemic helped to amplify inequities and bolstered previous commitments to equity. When describing the effects of the pandemic on their equity work, one district leader reported: [The pandemic] solidified a lot of our thoughts and feelings about [equity], and it gave it even more real-life stories to why it was important for us to work on. For myself personally I will just say that I continued to learn even more. . . . You saw the differences more, you saw the places where equity wasn’t there. [The pandemic] brought it out more.
In this sense, witnessing students’ and families’ experiences during the pandemic brought equity reflections to the forefront and made goals for equity more concrete for participants. As this quote suggests, state and local leaders’ reflections about equity often included both socio-economic status and race, and many described thinking about broad systems of oppression. However, when constructing and enacting equity visions in their contexts (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015), both state and local-level leaders were more likely to foreground socio-economic status and focus on students’ individual learning needs.
Creating Visions for Equity: Foregrounding Socio-Economic Status and Students’ Individual Needs
State and local leaders engaged in individual growth for equity, leading to constructing and enacting visions of equity within their contexts (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015). Both state and local-level leaders developed a vision that foregrounded socioeconomic status and explicitly recognized its systemic nature, but did not explicitly address other systemic issues such as racism or anti-LGBTQIA+ bias. Leaders also enacted equity visions focused on students’ specific individual needs, allowing leaders to provide tailored support for students with disabilities and English Learners. We describe these efforts in more detail below.
Foregrounding Socio-Economic Status
For almost all participants, visions for equity within their context foregrounded socioeconomic status. Multiple state and local-level leaders described students in terms of “haves and have nots,” and discussed how wide variation in socio-economic status contributed to opportunity gaps across the state. One state leader expanded on this idea when comparing two different school district’s experiences during the pandemic. They explained the ways that the pandemic called attention to and “intensified” this problem across the state: I meet with the principal in [one district], and she tells me, "This is gonna set us back 10 years." I go up to [another district]—highly educated parent community, a lot of college professors, a lot of different socio-economic—and the principal tells me, "Yeah, we’ve got some gaps, but you know what? By and large, the kids are progressing.” . . . It is just disgusting, actually, seeing these gaps and really feeling like it has just gotten worse.
Across interviews, leaders positioned themselves as actively working to address these inequities across socioeconomic status through ensuring all students’ access to instruction, as described further in the next section.
At the local level, the focus on disrupting inequities related to socioeconomic status was particularly strong for districts who served fewer students of color (i.e., Districts B, C, and D). For example, a local leader from District B, a majority white district, shared, “While we do not necessarily have a very diverse population racially, the socio-economic status of different people in our building varies. . . . Equity has been a huge focus lately.” Aligning with this quote, other leaders from this district primarily framed equity in terms of socio-economic status.
Yet, even in districts with higher numbers of students of color, leaders rarely grappled explicitly with racial inequities when describing support for students. Put another way, few participants explicitly connected broader reflections on systemic racism in the United States or Michigan to their efforts to promote equity in their specific contexts. Instead, local leaders’ visions for equity tended to focus on other aspects of students’ identities such as their ethnicity, language, nationality, or socio-economic status. For example, a district leader who described equity as their “core value” shared their commitment to “resourcing all students equally” in terms of access to devices, Internet, and food. As explained in the following section, leaders also emphasized the importance of attending to students’ “individual needs.”
Attending to Students’ Individual Needs
Across interviews, both state and local leaders enacted equity visions focused on providing tailored support to ensure all students had access to learning opportunities during the pandemic. More specifically, participants described supporting social-emotional learning, providing resources for basic needs such as food and clothing, and ensuring technological or physical access to learning spaces. One district superintendent summarized this approach to equity as a question of “what do you provide for students that they need?” Similarly, a state leader described focusing on “making sure that [districts and schools] had all of the resources that students had to have.” For this leader and several others, such resources ranged from meals, devices and Internet to academic and social emotional support. Reflecting on the importance of meeting students’ individual needs, a state leader shared, “We need to think differently about the system and try to personalize it to deliver systems [and] programs that are more suited to the individual rather than expect[ing] them to fit into the standard crowd.”
For many district and state leaders, attending to students’ individual needs included a focus on students with disabilities. Across interviews, participants described prioritizing special education services as part of their visions for equity throughout the pandemic. One state leader described this priority as “ensuring that [students with disabilities’] rights were not being violated and that we weren’t opening up schools to lawsuits while ensuring that they were getting the services that they need. Many of those services could not be performed remotely.” This priority played a key role in advancing inclusive representation on state-level councils, tasked with developing recovery recommendations for schools. While this state leader implied that school districts were neglecting the needs of students with disabilities, the local-level leaders in our case sites described special education services as a key aspect of meeting students’ individual needs and ensuring students did not “fall through the cracks.” Additional efforts to attend to students’ individual needs are described further in the decision-making finding below.
Local-level leaders’ efforts to address individual student needs were shaped by district-specific contexts. For example, leaders from District D reported that prior to the pandemic, the district had a strong history of considering the holistic needs of their socioeconomically and linguistically diverse students. Local leaders reported extensive experiences with wraparound services that allowed them to better support special student populations such as students receiving special education services, English learners, and students living in poverty. One District D leader shared: I do feel like [District D] was always a little bit ahead where we had to be ahead. We have always [worked] with students in poverty. We have always [worked] with English language learners. We have always worked with students with disabilities.
Similar to District D, local leaders in District A reported that their previous experiences attending to students’ individual needs served as an advantage during the pandemic. Specifically, leaders in District A highlighted a longstanding focus on promoting equity for their English learner students. This provided a helpful foundation to support students with being “engaged in their learning experiences” throughout the pandemic.
While all state and local leaders expressed a commitment to meeting students’ needs, few explicitly connected their positions to dismantling systems of intersecting oppression. More specifically, few leaders shared visions for equity that explicitly attended to disrupting systemic racism or anti-LGBTQIA+ bias in their contexts. Instead, state and local leaders’ equity visions and, subsequently, their decision-making, were focused more so on access to quality education amidst crisis.
Prioritizing Equity During Decision-Making
State and local leaders’ visions for equity were enacted through their decision-making, which varied across levels of the education system. As explored in more detail below, local-level decision-making focused more on collaboration with families and allocating resources to ensure access to instruction (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015). At the state level, leaders engaged in practices related to the broader sociopolitical context and developing technology infrastructure.
State Priority: Broader Sociopolitical Context
Aligning with Galloway and Ishimaru’s (2015) framing, state-level participants described attending to the broader sociopolitical context by advocating for policies and approaches that promoted a high-quality education for every student. State leaders shared several examples of leveraging their leadership roles and collaborative relationships to improve support for students. One state leader explained how the pandemic made them “a lot more vocal in spaces because I know I can influence things . . . when I show up in a space and if I can push on things, I am pushing.” Similarly, another state leader shared: I am more frequently going to board members who are influential in other circles around the state. I’m learning to reach out directly to leadership at the Department of Health Human Services and MDE. I think that’s what the pandemic has done to me. It’s just made me a more assertive, intentional leader, and learning how to leverage what I have for greater impact.
State leaders in advocacy organizations also described efforts to use their roles and statewide relationships to elevate student and family needs in the development of state-level orders, policies, and guidance.
State leaders engaged in extensive collaboration across state-level organizations to promote more equitable education during the pandemic, such as bolstering technology infrastructure, increasing mental health resources, and allocating funds to support English learners. However, references to direct collaboration with stakeholders “on the ground” (e.g., educators, students, and families) were limited. In reflecting on their limited interaction with educators, students, and families, one statewide professional association leader shared that, “We’re probably the furthest away from the classroom that you can imagine. . . . That was hard.” In this sense, state leaders’ efforts to promote equity at the broader systems level, at times, took precedence over in-depth collaboration with local-level decision makers, families, and community members who were directly experiencing the inequities.
State Priority: Developing Infrastructure for Accessible Instruction
Across state interviews, leaders prioritized developing infrastructure to ensure continuity of learning during the COVD-19 crisis. For many leaders, this priority included concerns and decision-making addressing disparities in access to technology. One state leader described challenges with internet access across both urban and rural contexts and worked collaboratively with the state superintendent to distribute technology to students. They shared, “[We were] trying to secure enough laptops with people, so they weren’t working on their phones. How do you do school on a phone?” Similarly, another state leader described their work during the first few months of the pandemic as: We provided a lot during that time. . . . Providing hotspots for communities, assisting with gathering data on the need for devices and connectivity, coordinating regional device purchasing—we purchased over a million devices in that first year—and coordinating expansion of internet connection and trying to work both with private [companies] and nonprofits to evaluate the safety and security of the process.
For this leader and several other state-level participants, improving access to the technology was foundational to promoting equity during the pandemic.
State leaders also discussed efforts to bolster infrastructure for learning through providing free educational modules on mental health, optional standardized testing for college applications, and resources for districts about remote learning. State leaders from professional associations and student advocacy associations took the lead on identifying and responding to district needs while building local-level capacity. As one association leader shared, We immediately started collaborating with our other partners in the education world, talking about what the needs would be from the districts, dividing up who could do what so that we weren’t overlapping and that we would best be serving the field.
The majority of our participants relied on these collaborative relationships that were established prior to the pandemic to address inequities. These findings align with crisis management literature on the importance of organizational preparedness and the use of pre-existing infrastructures when responding to sudden crises (De Voto & Superfine, 2023).
When reflecting on their decision-making during the pandemic, one state leader described the need for a more innovative education system. They explained, If we do not develop the systems and processes that address our new reality, then we are going to continue putting out fires and not make any progress. . . . We have to accept where we are and figure out new ways.
As reflected in this quote, state leaders’ decision-making tended to focus on systems-level improvements. In contrast, district and school leaders were more often in direct contact with families and community members.
Local-Level Priority: Collaboration With Families and the Community
Strong relationships with families and communities are integral to equity-focused leadership (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015). In our study, local leaders described efforts to foster and sustain relationships with families as a key aspect of how they enacted equity and supported student needs during the pandemic. For many local leaders, family engagement centered around inequities in student access to technology. With school buildings closed, local leaders across districts described being forced to “think outside of the box” in order to engage and connect with families, especially those who were less “savvy when it comes to technology.” One principal described the ways that the school’s relationships with families intersected with their relationships with the community. They shared, “The reason we have so many EL families that come to us is because they know we’ll take care of their kids, and the agencies know we’ll take care of their kids.” Local-level leaders described previously established community partnerships as a tool to further collaboration with families.
For some districts, collaborating with families helped teachers and school staff to support students with their academic instruction. Another school principal described the constant communication with families especially those with students receiving special education services. They described, “our Dean of Students would call the parent and say, ‘I’m in the classroom waiting to see [your child], but your child is not in the classroom.’” Many local-level leaders prioritized maintaining strong relationships and consistent communication with families to better understand students’ academic needs.
Engagement with families was often spearheaded through teachers and specialized staff (e.g., special education educators, interventionists, staff providing support for English learners).
School leaders noted that specialized staff engaged in home visits and provided support during and after class. Describing home visits, one teacher explained, “The special ed resource teacher, the speech teacher, the psychologist—all of those individuals were like godsends for the families and students.” Consistent with these accounts, our data on district test performance suggests that special student populations performed comparably to the general student population in these district cases (Weddle et al., 2022). Collaboration across educator roles and with families to provide tailored support for students is consistent with these more equitable achievement trends.
Across interviews, many local-level leaders also described relationships with families as aiding in their understanding of student needs, allowing districts and schools to provide adequate resources to students and families. One district director described using parent surveys to better understand the district’s technology needs and shared that families’ responses helped to “put things in perspective . . . maybe there is a big need out there, maybe there is a need for more.” The family surveys, spearheaded by the challenges from the pandemic, offered a “realization” that helped many district leaders to guide decision-making.
Local-Level Priority: Allocation of Resources
Equity-focused leadership also includes allocating resources in ways that promote high-quality education for all students (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015). Across interviews, local-level leaders supported students and families by promoting access to resources during the pandemic, such as technology devices. When discussing technology, one superintendent explained, “We made sure that anybody that needed access to a computer had access to a computer. . . . If they needed access to internet, we offered the T-Mobile hotspot for free.” Relatedly, a principal in District B reflected on how they viewed equitable access to resources when considering the technology divide in their school. They explained: Equity also played a factor when it came to thinking about internet. Every kid takes home a laptop. Every kid is able to request a hotspot. It’s definitely at the forefront now, and I think about it way more often, probably, than I ever did.
Local-level leaders extended their support past academic needs and prioritized distributions of resources that support basic needs. According to one district leader, this level of support “makes an impact instructionally, as well.” Across cases, local leaders reported providing resources to families including food services, clothes, and transportation. One district leader described school-level efforts to understand the needs of their refugee student population. The team of counselors and administrators asked, “Do they have jobs, do they not have, do they have enough food, do these kids have enough resources at home, do they have Internet connection, do they have pencils and paper?”
Relatedly, local-level participants reported connecting families and students to resources available in the district, schools, or greater community. One principal described a school-level effort between the counselor, social worker, and administrators to disseminate information to students and families. They shared, “Our Dean of Students created a resource booklet that had everything in there from where you could go get food, where you could get support with your bills, health care. It was just a plethora of resources.” A counselor from this same district reported their efforts to utilize relationships with community members including social workers to provide housing information and aid in mental health support.
Discussion and Implications
This study investigated how state and local-level leaders addressed equity (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas prior studies examining equity-leadership during the COVID-19 crisis tend to focus on school building leaders (see Flack et al., 2021; Phakula, 2022; Stevens, 2023; Supovitz & Manghani, 2022; Virella, 2023), this study extends the analysis to explore how equity was addressed across the different levels of the U.S. education system including at the state and district levels. Our findings reveal notable similarities and differences across how state and local leaders conceptualized and actualized their equity-focused efforts. Both the state and local levels engaged in self-reflection and growth for equity, grappling with how race and socioeconomic status shape systemic inequities in the United States and Michigan. State and local leaders also enacted equity visions in their contexts, which were less likely to explicitly consider systemic racism or anti-LGBTQIA+ bias. Instead, state and local leaders primarily focused on socioeconomic status and providing accessible access to education through meeting students’ individual needs.
Finally, our findings reveal how state and local-level leaders approached decision-making during the pandemic. Prior studies highlight how state-level policy responses influence decision-making opportunities at the local level (Grossmann et al., 2021). Building on this understanding, our findings reveal distinct differences in how state and local educational leaders addressed equity during the pandemic crisis. Specifically, state leaders attended to the broader sociopolitical context by leveraging their leadership roles and collaborative networks to create new policies and guidance, as well as bolstering infrastructure for learning. Local-level leaders prioritized collaboration with families and communities and allocating resources to meet students’ academic and basic needs.
Implications for Policy and Practice
Previous research highlights the importance of learning from crisis response to inform how leaders navigate future challenges (Grissom & Condon, 2021). Therefore, implications of our study may extend beyond the specific circumstances and context of the COVID-19 pandemic to other crises, such as natural disasters or acts of violence, that can further exacerbate inequities within education. In this spirit of learning from crisis, we offer several implications for policy and practice.
Investing in equity-oriented leadership
First, it is important to note that the districts included in this study were identified as cases in which students performed better than expected on the statewide assessment. In our broader examination of how these “bright spot” districts navigated the pandemic, we found that each had strong leaders who were described by participants as trustworthy, communicative, and empathetic (Weddle et al., 2022). Crisis leadership literature highlights the importance of leaders’ personal qualities, skills, and values when making impactful decisions (Cheshmehzangi, 2023). Further, equity leadership scholars identify the need for anti-racist leadership, equity-oriented mindsets and equity-focused self-reflection (Stevens, 2023; Virella, 2023). These equity-oriented leadership practices may provide a promising pathway for supporting student learning during and beyond a crisis.
Findings from the present inquiry reveal the critical role leaders played in promoting equity through developing guidance amidst crisis, collaborating with families, and promoting students’ access to learning opportunities. Based on these findings, we recommend that state educational leaders and policymakers invest in training, recruiting, and retaining strong equity-oriented leaders. We expand upon the work of other scholars who recommend incorporating crisis management skills into educational leaders’ pre-service training programs (Grissom & Condon, 2021). Our findings suggest that, given the varying priorities on equity, it is essential for leaders across the education system to be trained not only in their specific areas of responsibility but also in how their roles intersect and influence one another. Further, leadership development programs should emphasize the importance of collaboration across levels with a focus on shared goals of equity and justice.
Given that stress and burnout are pervasive across levels of the education system (Hashim et al., 2024; Weddle et al., 2024), approaches to bolstering the leader pipeline must also consider how to proactively foster well-being. As described in more detail below, it may also be important for leaders to receive support with broadening their equity visions to more directly grapple with intersecting systems of oppression.
Broadening equity visions
Existing research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to students’ extraordinarily different educational experiences shaped by race and socioeconomic status (Supovitz & Manghani, 2022). Equity-oriented leadership scholars highlight the importance of creating a climate that deeply respects and values the racial, cultural, and economic diversity of the school community and maintaining an equity vision that is inclusive of all students (Byrne-Jiménez & Orr, 2013; Galloway & Ishimaru 2015; Theoharis, 2010).
Findings revealed that all leaders considered socio-economic status when enacting equity visions in their contexts, and some also prioritized specialized support for English learners and students with disabilities. While all participants prioritized meeting students’ individual needs, both state and local leaders were less likely to explicitly grapple with systemic racism or anti-LGBTQIA+ bias in their contexts. Although experiences with equity differ greatly, the literature speaks to the importance of educational leaders thinking about equity across many identity locations (i.e., race, socioeconomic status, language, gender identity, sexuality, etc.; Byrne-Jiménez & Orr, 2013; Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015; Gooden et al., 2023; Theoharis, 2007). Thus, it is important for leaders to consider which populations of students who have been marginalized are being centered in their contexts, who is absent from their current considerations, and how to move towards actionable policies and practices that support the needs of those students.
Although reforming educational systems for equity is often challenging, understanding the specific needs of all members of the school community can lead to effective, equity-focused strategies that create more just and equitable schools (Pollack & Zirkel, 2013). We recommend that both local and state-level leaders engage with community members for perspectives on how to amend systems, practices, and policies that are not meeting the needs of students from groups that have been historically and presently marginalized, including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color and LGBTQIA+ (see Ishimaru, 2019). Our findings highlight that most state-level leaders had limited interaction with local-level decision makers, families, and community members who were directly experiencing inequities during the crisis. Therefore, we encourage state level leaders to prioritize creating more opportunities for direct engagement with students and families outside of times of crisis, in order to better understand the needs of the community (e.g., school visits, town hall meetings, partnerships with community organizations, etc.).
Creating cross-level partnerships
Finally, our findings suggest that leaders’ roles and responsibilities affected the ways they conceptualized and actualized equitable practices during this crisis, leading to differing equity approaches between local and state-level leaders. These findings highlight the importance of partnering across levels in the education system (i.e., at the state, district, and school levels) to address the varying needs at each level. In alignment with literature on equity-oriented crisis leadership (Virella, 2023), our findings draw attention to the need for equitable and inclusive communication with teachers, families, and community leaders before, during, and following a crisis. Therefore, we recommend the creation of new structures such as cross-level committees or communities of practice to expand collaboration between decision-makers, school community members, community leaders, and families across the education system. Fostering strong, reciprocal partnerships between all levels of the education system could allow for more comprehensive equity efforts leading to both immediate relief and long-term systemic transformations.
Partnerships across levels of the education system could also help to inform future policy design and implementation. In our study, we found that local leaders engaged in more face-to-face interactions with students and families, which allowed them to be better positioned to identify practices and policies that supported basic and academic needs of the school community. However, state leaders were limited in their interactions with local-level decision makers, families, and community members. Therefore, we recommend using cross-level partnerships to facilitate feedback loops on state-level policy initiatives from local leaders, families, and community members. These collaborative relationships could be used to ensure that policies are not only equitable in intent but also effective in practice.
Future Research
Generally, we offer this study as a way to begin conversation about equity during a crisis. As we move further from the initial school closings in March 2020, additional research is necessary to understand the ways that state and local leaders continue to navigate the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, further research could include school-level comparisons that investigate ways that school leaders utilize the lessons learned about equity from the pandemic and investigate ways to bolster this learning. Such research could contribute to understanding of equity leadership during crises including the ways that educational leaders change, adapt, grow, or revert in their understanding and application of equity.
Although this study is situated from a U.S. lens within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, there are implications for other sudden and smoldering crises within a global context. These may include current crises related to educator shortages or future crises related to natural disasters. Given that challenges related to equity manifest differently based on context (Virella, 2023) and, perhaps, based on the crisis, educational scholars should investigate the ways that leaders across education levels attend to equity in these varying contexts.
Finally, we suggest future studies consider how teachers, families, students, and community members experience these varied approaches to equity. These perspectives would deepen our understanding of leaders’ equity approaches and provide insight into ways to approach future crises with an equity lens. Further, these analyses could provide recommendations for policy and leader preparation programs at both the state and local levels.
Conclusion
This study explored how state and local-level leaders in Michigan addressed equity challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study highlight the critical need for a comprehensive approach to equity that combines the strengths of both state and local educational leadership. By promoting collaboration and shared responsibility among educational leaders at all levels, we can better prepare for and respond to future crises beyond the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring that equity remains at the forefront of educational policy and practice.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Codebook
| Code Category | Code | Definition | Example Excerpt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Context Codes | State context | Direct descriptions of the specific district/school. For example, references to culture, relationships, demographics, etc. | Our charter schools—there’s 300 of them, approximately, 294, 150,000 students—they’re pretty much distributed across the state, proportionately. |
| District/School Context | Salient conditions/factors to know about Michigan and its districts/schools to inform analysis for our project. | We’re a very big city geographically. When you look at it, we have over 100,000 residents, 34 schools, but we also have kind of that small town feel. | |
| Equitable Practices | Engaging in Self-Reflection and Growth for Equity | Descriptions from participants that describe engagement in personal and intellectual work to understand how privilege, power, and oppression operate, examination of their identities, values, biases, assumptions, and privileges, and defining of core values around democracy, social justice, and equity. (Note: generally, in response to the question about how participant views on equity have changed, if at all). | I know that there are kids that have said historically that they just don’t feel like school’s a good place for them because there have been populations that have been marginalized by school. . . . That’s why I said I don’t like the word conform. You have to conform to this set of expectations, to our predominantly white, middle-class expectation to be able to do well in school because most of our teachers are white, middle class, and so they have an expectation of what school looks like and what it should be to be successful. |
| Developing Organizational Leaders | Participant descriptions of ways that leadership develops others (staff, parents, community members, students) as leaders and builds their capacity to (a) examine their own and others’ practices and underlying biases and assumptions, (b) dialogue about equitable teaching and learning grounded in systemic and historical understandings of disparities, and (c) collaborate to change educational practice to provide a high-quality education for each student. | We started doing a professional learning series that teaches [teachers] how and what about English learners. . . . Through that process, I think our ELs are getting a lot more service and it’s not pandemic specific, but it’s happened through the pandemic. | |
| Constructing and Enacting an Equity Vision | Descriptions of ways leadership engages in an inclusive process with the entire school community to develop a vision of collective responsibility for the educational success of each student regardless of background. |
I completely recreated our behavior matrix. It was apparent that our kids all would’ve been suspended pretty quick if we had left our good current behavior system in place. It didn’t take into consideration multiple learning interventions for behaviors. | |
| Supervising for Improvement of Equitable Teaching and Learning | Examples of ways that leadership supports staff in developing and implementing multicultural (e.g., critical race, queer-infused) curriculum and equitable instructional practices. | One of the priorities of the state superintendent was to have our students of color, experience literature in which the characters looked like them. . . . We reached out to our educators and said, “We are going to celebrate Black History Month by recognizing African American authors, and we’re going to put a calendar out that will recognize and acknowledge African American, Black authors one every single day.” | |
| Fostering an Equity School Culture | Descriptions and reflections of ways that leadership builds authentic relationships across the school community, furthers community understanding, and deepens belonging and voice for students, families, and staff who have been traditionally marginalized. | We have a large group of immigrants. Then, as well as all the rest of our students. What options exist for them? That helps them—motivate them to be engaged in their learning experiences. All of that rests on them having a caring adult—at least, one that they can—they feel comfortable talking to and building, sharing their concerns. | |
| Collaborating with Families and Communities | Participant descriptions of ways that leadership develops and maintains meaningful and ongoing relationships with parents, families, and community leaders, especially those from nondominant communities. This includes ways that leadership engages in ongoing, two- way communication to gain and build deep understanding of the diversity of beliefs, values, practices, and cultural and social capital in the school community. | Our goal is to educate families and make them good self-advocates for their kids. . . . We were helping family members advocate at the school board level for their child. | |
| Influencing the Sociopolitical Context | Descriptions of ways that Leadership collaborates with teachers, parents, community members, unions, and other organizations and coalitions to address the roots of systemic inequities by publicly advocating, creating, and influencing equitable and socially just policy and implementation. | I’m less patient, more vocal. . . . I am more frequently going to board members who are influential in other circles around the state. I’m learning to reach out directly to leadership at the Department of Health Human Services and MDE. I think that’s what the pandemic has done to me. | |
| Allocating Resources | Descriptions and examples of the ways Leadership equitably allocates resources, redistributing financial, material, time, and human resources to support teaching and learning for students who, historically, have not been well-served due to their race, ethnicity, class, home language, ability, gender, and/or sexual orientation. This includes examples of the ways that leadership advocates for the equitable use of resources throughout the system. | They started to have food drives and have internet wi-fi wireless that’s going to be distributed into the homes, so for a moment, . . . there was a lot of “how do we provide resources and necessary supports for these families and how do they know about it?” | |
| Hiring and Placing Personnel | Descriptions of ways that leadership recruits, retains, and promotes staff from traditionally “othered” groups and staff with strong equity commitments, understanding, and skills. | We actually have a homeless coordinator, . . . so she would work with the families a lot just to make sure they had their needs met. | |
| Modeling | Participant descriptions of ways that leadership demonstrates persistent pursuit of equity and social justice and leads by example in everyday practices, interactions, and decision-making. This includes ways that leadership models integrity, advocacy, conviction, and transparency to redress systemic inequities for nondominant students, families, and communities. | Wow, equity is always at the front of the discussion in [our district]. . . . We have a new superintendent this year, and he had made that—he’s put that at the center. I can’t even distinguish what’s pandemic-related and not. That’s who we are here. | |
| Descriptive Codes | Adapting/Shifting | Participant description of ways that shifts or adaptations were made to structures/policies because of equity concerns or challenges. | For the rest of the year. The learning shifted to equity. Where before, I think that was a new concept in the technology area, in the foods area, through the summer. We get it during the school year, right, but even some of our family’s need it throughout the summer. |
| Defining Equity | Definitions or descriptions of equity or issues around equity. This includes explicit descriptions as well as general references. | I don’t know that it’s changed my idea of equity. I think it just reaffirmed that. [Families with lower socio-economic status] have difficulty in managing things that other families can do quite easily. | |
| Structural Equity Issues | Participant reflections on structural or systemic practices or policies that create equity issues/concerns. | The history of [this district] we had [a Gifted and Talented (GT) program] and they’re proud of it, but yet it brings a lot of inequities too like why aren’t I a [GT] kid? And why do they get to go on these field trips? |
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the state and local-level leaders in Michigan who generously made time to speak with us and reflect on their experiences as educational leaders in the pandemic. We are also grateful to Dr. Katharine Strunk and Emily Mohr at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) for their guidance and support in this research, as well as Meg Turner who helped us reach out to and recruit state and local-level leaders for interviews. Results, information, and opinions solely represent the authors and are not endorsed by, nor reflect the views or positions of, our funders or institutions. All errors are our own. We would also like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful feedback.
Funding
We appreciate the Michigan Department of Education for funding and supporting this work.
Notes
Authors
OGECHI N. IRONDI is a PhD student in Education Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research draws on qualitative research methods to examine how K-12 education policies, practices, and programs promote or impede equity and justice for students, families, and educators.
HAYLEY WEDDLE is an assistant professor of Education Policy at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research draws on qualitative methods to explore how education leaders implement policies in ways that enable or constrain equity. Across her work, Dr. Weddle develops reciprocal partnerships between educational leaders, policymakers, and researchers.
AYESHA K. HASHIM is a senior research scientist at NWEA. She draws on interdisciplinary and mixed-methods research designs to study the impacts of district-level school policies on student learning, as well as the leadership, organizational, and implementation conditions that can explain observed results. Her research covers a range of topics including the integration of technology with standards-based instruction, school choice and accountability, teacher professional development, and COVID recovery.