Muhammad Khalifa

A Re-New-ed Paradigm in Successful Urban School Leadership: Principal as Community Leader

Purpose: This article examines the impact that a principal’s community-leadership has on school–community relations and student outcomes. Comparisons are drawn between leadership behaviors that emphasize school-centered approaches and community-centered approaches. Research Methodology: Ethnographic research methodology was conducted over a 2-year period, during which the researcher conducted participant observations, interviews, and descriptive and interpretive memoing. Findings: The principal’s role as community leader—including high principal visibility in the community and advocacy for community causes—led to trust and rapport between school and community. Consequently, parents who were previously hostile changed their relationship with school, and supported his or her handling of their children. This led to improved academic outcomes for students. Implications: This study has implications for how principals view their role, presence in, and relationship with the community. It also offers reflection on how and where the center of school– community relationships should be (i.e., school vs. community).

Validating Social and Cultural Capital of Hyperghettoized At-Risk Students:

This study investigated how school leaders recognize and validate cultural and social capital of hyperghettoized at-risk students. Two primary research questions drove this research: (1) Did traditional school leaders recognize the social and cultural capital of at-risk, African American students? (2) How did an effective school leader validate the cultural and social capital of at-risk African American students. The findings indicated that traditional school leaders did not validate, or even accommodate, the social and cultural capital of hyperghettoized students. However, the school leader highlighted in this study was able to validate the capital of what became very academically and socially successful hyperghettoized students. Findings also highlighted the implications of how school principals may lead in a socially just manner as they attempt to value children equitably.

Racism? Administrative and Community Perspectives in Data-Driven Decision Making: Systemic Perspectives versus Technical-Rational Perspectives.

This case study describes tensions that became apparent between community members and school administrators after a proposal to close a historically African American public high school in a large urban Southwestern city. When members of the city’s longstanding African American community responded with outrage, the school district’s senior administration backed away from their proposal to close the school, despite making what it felt was a “neutral” and technical-rational decision. However, the local community interpreted this move as the historical continuation of racist behaviors and policies that had been experienced by the community over a period of several decades. Critical race theory (CRT) allows for an analysis regarding the nature of these beliefs about race and indicates the need for school administrators to engage the realities of the community members they serve, rather than merely enacting technical-rational administrative behaviors that serve to continue regimes of marginalization and oppression.

Derrick Bell, CRT, and Educational Leadership 1995-Present.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a centered conceptual framework to understand American education and reform (Ladson-Billings and Tate 1995; Solorzano and Yosso; 2001; Decuir and Dixon 2004). Indeed, educational leadership scholars have not been far behind in recognizing the explicative and powerful role of CRT studies in their work (Lopez 2003; Parker and Villalpando 2007). As we acknowledge the role of CRT, we cannot do so without reflecting on the life and works of the quintessential Critical Legal Studies (CLS) scholar Derrick Bell (1930–2011). In this article, we use Bell’s collective works to analyze current trends and research in educational leadership. We bring his works into conversation not only with conceptions of instructional and distributed leadership, but with the palpability that CRT has on the current state of educational reform. More specifically, we use Bell’s theories of interest convergence and conversations around ‘racial remedies’ to understand two recent trends in educational leadership: discourses of social justice leadership and the move toward data-driven leadership behaviors. We ask questions like: what has been the impact of research discourses social justice on the education of African American and Latino urban youth? And, how has the current social structures benefited from such discourses? We conclude with recommendations for educational leadership researchers and professors, and encourage them to consider race as an integral part of their works.

Psychological Heuristics and Faculty of Color: Racial Battle Fatigue and Tenure/Promotion

Abstract:Faculty who have been historically excluded from participating in academia present a unique quandary for those who have traditionally held power at the university. This article explores the promotion and tenure (P&T) process of Black faculty using a psychological construct to examine how racial micro-aggressions manifest and articulate themselves through individual and organizational phenomena such as Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF). We applied a psychological approach to narrative inquiry to examine how two faculty of color experienced the P&T process. Participant narratives highlighted how much of the P&T process, and even engagement in academia in general, is articulated by likability or congeniality—two constructs absent from P&T policies.

‘That racism thing’: a critical race discourse analysis of a conflict over the proposed closure of a black high school

Using critical race discourse analysis, this study examines descriptions of a heated controversy over the proposed closure of the only primarily black high school in a large urban city. Participants included community members and the district and school leaders who were key in the controversy. Based on Foucault’s analysis of power we looked for conflicts in the narratives of the participants in their description of the controversy. Four strands of discursive conflict emerged: the purpose of school; the relationship of school and community; communication; and the issue of racism. Taking these four strands together, the themes found in the discourse of the community members enacted an emancipatory knowledge paradigm, while the themes found in the discourse of the administrators enacted a technical-rational, instrumental paradigm of knowledge.

Can Blacks be racists? Black-on-Black principal abuse in an urban school setting

This study examines Black student and parental perceptions of exclusionary practices of Black school principals. I ask why students and parents viewed two Black principals as contributing to abusive and exclusionary school environments that marginalized Black students. After a two-year ethnographic study, it was revealed that exclusionary behaviors toward Black students—which was viewed as “abuse” by students and parents—was a reproduction of the districts racism, and thus adds new considerations for discussions around the value of racially-like (i.e., all Black) educators and students. Parents perceived these two Black principals as dealing more harshly and rigidly with the Black students and their families; moreover, analysis of the interview data revealed that the principals rejected the cultural and social capital, and proclivities of Black students, and blamed Black students for their lower achievement and unique behaviors. I draw significant attention to the larger contexts of White supremacy and racism as I examine how Black principals negotiate their own roles, how they understand their own treatment of urban Black students, and how they are (knowing or unknowingly) reproducing oppressive practices of White supremacy on Black students in school.

Understand and advocate for communities first

Culturally responsive parent-school relationships require educators to consider the cultural practices and understandings of families as a necessary condition of greater academic achievement. The establishment of healthy parent-school relationships is a complex and dynamic process. A school-community overlap, with a priority given to community sensibilities and histories, will help schools sustain positive relationships with parents. If communities have experienced racism or other forms of marginalization, they may become distant or uncooperative. What’s more, most educators feel they were hired to teach, not to perform community outreach. But in the absence of school outreach to their communities the strengthened relationships between schools and parents that increase the educational opportunities for children are often lost.

What We Can Do Right Now: What Needs Further Research?

Abstract This chapter sums up the previous chapters beginning with personal life stories of how school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) disastrously affects the lives of students, most especially African American youth, Chicano youth, working-class students, and those with disabilities. From there we moved to the institutional level where the authors described factors in schools that contribute to the STPP. Also at the institutional level, contributing authors critically examined current approaches in schools, which were designed to help dismantle the STPP. Finally, from policy prospective the contributing authors explained how some existing policies could be used differently to disrupt the STPP. After each summary, we present bullet points suggesting what we (school stakeholders – leaders, faculty, etc., and policy makers) can do right now to disrupt the STPP.