Leveraging Crisis for Equitable School Improvement

Leadership Strategies from the Field

Edited by:
Patricia M. Virella, Montclair State University

A volume in the series: Leadership for School Improvement. Editor(s): Khalid Arar, Texas State University.

Call for Chapter Proposals

In our discipline of education, there continues to be a persistent gap between research and practice (Broekkamp & van Hout-Wolters, 2007; Dynarski, 2015; Nuthall, 2004). Improvement science shifts the locus of control to practitioners in the field, allowing instant feedback loops (Bryk, 2015). Improvement science improves outcomes in a variety of education spaces. For example, plagued by failing scores and other dismal conditions, Chicago public schools needed reform (Bryk, 2010; Bryk et al., 2015a). The framework was adopted at scale in large school districts such as Chicago to foster change in an underperforming school district. The Chicago Public Schools case study offered robust evidence of the effect of improvement science in education. Drawing on solid examples of improvement, this book will connect the design of improvement science to equity in the edited volume, Leveraging Crisis for Equitable School Improvement: Leadership Strategies from the Field.

Over the last decade, improvement and equity have evolved. Thus, equity has become an explicit act tethered to the work of improvement scientists (Peterson & Carlile, 2021). Over the past 36 months, the world has experienced numerous crises consecutively and concurrently. The COVID-19 pandemic has maintained its stronghold, while the war in Ukraine rages and mass shootings have affected the United States, Germany, and Nigeria (Al-Jazeera, 2022; Goodman et al., 2022; Guardian News Media, 2022; Owoeye, 2022). All these events have led to a collective shift in “normalcy” and moved societies into simultaneously trying to solve a global public health crisis while navigating policy changes and international negotiations. This unprecedented time has also impacted schools by questioning school closures and acclimating refugees fleeing war-torn Afghanistan and Haiti. Thus, managing crises has become a natural part of a school leader’s job more than ever. At the helm of recovery and restabilizing their school buildings, school leaders must lead through myriad crises while meeting the needs of diverse populations (Reyes-Guerra et al., 2021). The current context requires leaders to work in dynamic ways and engage in “collective knowledge building” (Bryk et al., 2015a, p. 3). Yet missing is how crisis leadership, equity and school improvement work together to improve outcomes from students.

Scholars have developed crisis leadership (Smith & Riley, 2012) and crisis management frameworks to guide how leaders manage crises. Previous frameworks allowed insights into how leaders can navigate a crisis by engaging in effective communication, quick and nimble decision-making skills, and other technical and adaptive skills. Other scholars have focused on developing crisis prevention frameworks that offer evidence to effectively prevent crises like school shootings in a school building (MacNeil & Topping, 2007). However, these frameworks are not only color-evasive (Daniel et al., 2020) but also context-blind (Sleeter, 2004) and do not incorporate evidence that a crisis disproportionately impacts marginalized populations. Similarly, these frameworks do not provide a school improvement lens that provides a strategic methodology to make a sustainable, equitable, and anti-racist change. Thus, this book fills this gap by centering equity and anti-racism throughout to provide strategies for schools that seek to improve and change their organizations by engaging in equity-oriented actions post-crisis.

This book builds upon a study I conducted with Dr. Casey Cobb (Virella & Cobb, 202) which examined how principals used the COVID-19 crisis to leverage opportunities to infuse equity and access. In this study, we found that leaders used the crisis in myriad ways to marshal equitable change on behalf of their students, thus making substantial improvements. This book presents strategies from educational leaders in the field - so that school leaders may take equitable action during a crisis on behalf of their stakeholders. The time for a common and feasible strategies for equity-oriented crisis leadership is now. This volume will provide useful strategies and tools so that leaders can implement these strategies to support vulnerable populations while working with their community to present a comprehensive plan that addresses a crisis.

This book builds upon a study I conducted with Dr. Casey Cobb (Virella & Cobb, 202) which examined how principals used the COVID-19 crisis to leverage opportunities to infuse equity and access. In this study, we found that leaders used the crisis in myriad ways to marshal equitable change on behalf of their students, thus making substantial improvements. This book presents strategies from educational leaders in the field - so that school leaders may take equitable action during a crisis on behalf of their stakeholders. The time for a common and feasible strategies for equity-oriented crisis leadership is now. This volume will provide useful strategies and tools so that leaders can implement these strategies to support vulnerable populations while working with their community to present a comprehensive plan that addresses a crisis.

INTENDED AUDIENCE AND READERSHIP:
This book is intended for six overlapping groups of readers:

1) Practitioners and school leadership attempting to recover from the myriad crises they currently face in addition to elevating academic achievement and social emotional skills.

2) Scholars interested in school leadership at all levels, district transformation, equity leadership and crisis leadership.

3) Social scientists interested in a large-scale study that invites multiple perspectives from diverse area codes across the continental United States and Puerto Rico.

4) Leadership preparation programs and curriculum development for universities and think tanks (i.e. EdPrep Lab) seeking to develop a nuanced understanding of how equity manifests in various aspects of a leaders tenure.

5) Educational policymakers interested in the broader consequences of crisis and the impacts felt by marginalized populations.

6) As course material, this book would be appropriate for undergraduate and graduate courses on: Leadership for Social Justice, Crisis Leadership, Instructional Leadership for Diverse Learners, and Leading Change in Complex Organizations.

POSSIBLE QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED BY CHAPTERS:
This volume will encourage scholars to consider conceptual, theoretical, methodological and analytical approaches to improvement science research. Authors must center equity-oriented frameworks, approaches to further provide knowledge to the scholarly discipline of educational leadership and research on improvement. Authors are asked to conclude their chapters with concretized improvement strategies that encourage school leader implementation. Authors may want to consider the following questions:

• How does improvement science and equity tether together to navigate a crisis?

• How do leaders deploy improvement science during or after a crisis to imagine better futures for marginalized populations?

• What does an equitable improvement science approach look like for leaders responding to myriad crises?

• What conditions influence an equitable improvement science approach in educational organizations? Strategy?

• How can improvement science disrupt inequitable systems and structures exacerbated by a crisis?

• What successful or instructional cases shed light on the success, barrier, tensions or contradictions of an equitable improvement science strategy?

PROPOSED BOOK OUTLINE:
The book will be draw upon the 16 indicators of equity (Bowers et al., 2021) aligned with the continuous school improvement cycle established by Byrk (2022). Using school improvement in conjunction with equity indicators, allows for precise leadership actions to transform schools.
I will encourage a broad range of contributions, including original empirical research, case descriptions, conceptual or theoretical discussions, critical reflection essays, and narratives. I especially encourage contributions that explore concretized strategies and their direct implications to improving schools and increasing equitable outcomes and opportunities for students. Each chapter will include discussion questions and labeled by the particular area of the improvement cycle this strategy can support as well as the aligned equity indicator.
Early book chapter author interests include Dr. Casey Cobb (UCONN), Dr. Melissa Martinez (Texas State University) and Dr. Reva-Jaffe Walter (Montclair State University). The interest garnered by these leading scholars in the field demonstrate the critical need for equity, school improvement and crisis leadership scholarship. Some authors have committed to chapters, descriptions are below.

I. Introduction a. The importance of considering equity for school improvement post-crisis

II. Organizational Level School Improvement for Equity a. Chapters in this section will discuss how to consider equity when looking to improve the overall organization. This may include reviewing policies through an equity lens post-crisis (i.e. attendance policies)

III. Equity-Oriented Leadership for School Improvement a. Chapters in this section will discuss how leaders can strategize post-crisis and engage in high leverage equity-oriented practices for school improvement.

IV. Equity Informed School Improvement Strategies to Advance Academic Achievement a. Chapters in this section will discuss how school improvement can be used to strategize post-crisis and engage in high leverage equity-oriented practices for academic achievement.

V. Conclusion

FORMAT OF PROPOSAL:
You are invited to submit a proposal of no more than 500 words (not including the listing of up to 10 references) by February 21, 2023. In your proposal, please indicate for which section you want your chapter to be considered. Please send your proposal via the following Google form: https://forms.gle/B8WdeEY78Cjh4ejB6. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Virella at virellap@montclair.edu

Submitting authors will be notified of the co-editors’ decision by March 30, 2023 (see projected deadlines below). Participating authors may be asked to participate as peer-reviewers in a blind review of up to two other full chapters, submitting comments no more than 6 weeks after the full chapter submission deadline.

PROPOSED TIMELINE:
February 21, 2023: Authors submit proposals to editors
March 30, 2023: Authors will be notified on final decision
August 1, 2023: Authors submit full manuscripts to editors
August 15 – October 1, 2023: Manuscripts undergo peer review
October 1 - November 1, 2023: Editors review and submit feedback to authors
December 15, 2023: Authors submit revised final drafts to the editor
February 2024: Targeted publication
Send all inquiries to Dr. Virella at virellap@montclair.edu