Sonya Douglass Horsford

Mixed Feelings About Mixed Schools: Superintendents on the Complex Legacy of School Desegregation

Purpose: This article considers the perspectives of superintendents who attended all-Black segregated schools and examines how their lived experiences informed their views on desegregation policy, programs, and practices. Research Design: This empirical, qualitative study used critical race theory as a methodological and analytical framework for collecting and interpreting participant narratives acquired through in-depth, semistructured interviews and autobiographical and biographical documents and artifacts. Findings: Study findings are presented as counterstories to (a) the inferior all-Black school, (b) equal education, access, and opportunity, and (c) integration, diversity, and inclusion, with implications for the perceived viability of school desegregation in the post- Brown era. Collectively, they reflect what one participant described as “mixed feelings” about school desegregation. Conclusions: The article concludes with implications for educational policy and practice to include support for racial literacy in educational leadership and policy and recommendations for promoting a proper education no matter the school context, separate or mixed.

‘Sometimes I feel like the problems started with desegregation’: exploring Black superintendent perspectives on desegregation policy

This paper is drawn from a larger qualitative study that explores the perspectives of eight retired Black school superintendents who personally experienced segregated schools as students and subsequent desegregation efforts as administrators. Unlike much of the mainstream literature that extols the virtues of desegregation for Black children, their accounts tell a very different story. Their reflections suggest that although they ‘got what they fought for,’ they ‘lost what they had’ and that many of the problems attributed to Black education today ‘started with desegregation.’ This study adds to the growing literature that interrogates the widely accepted assumptions that desegregation resulted in significant educational progress for Black children. Further, the perspectives of Black superintendents, which are often missing or forgotten in education research, can help inform our understanding of race‐conscious education policies and the role they play in promoting and/or realizing racial equality and social justice in education.

Promise Neighborhoods The Promise and Politics of Community Capacity Building as Urban School Reform

The purpose of this inquiry is to consider how the U.S. Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods (PNs) program can improve persistently low-achieving urban schools by making their “neighborhoods whole again” through community capacity building for education reform. As the “first federal initiative to put education at the center of comprehensive efforts to fight poverty in urban and rural areas,” we frame our inquiry according to PNs’ intent to build capacity in high-needs communities in ways that provide high-quality educational and systematic support for children and families. We begin with an overview of PN, followed by a discussion of community capacity for urban school reform. Next, using descriptive case study methods, we present the case of the Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood Initiative to illustrate the ways in which a low-capacity community in the American West engaged in community capacity building activities to improve selected urban schools, albeit unsuccessful in its ability to secure federal grant funds. We then deliver our analysis of this local initiative according to Chaskin’s framework for building community capacity and consider lessons learned and implications for similarly positioned low-capacity communities interested in community-based school reform.

This Bridge Called My Leadership: An Essay on Black Women as Bridge Leaders in Education.

The purpose of this essay is to contextualize the existing research literature on leadership for diversity, equity, and social justice in education with bridge leadership as historically practiced by Black women leaders in the USA. Its primary aim is to demonstrate how the intersection of race and gender as experienced by the Black woman leader has, in many instances, resulted in her serving as a bridge for others, to others, and between others in multiple and often complicated contexts over time. Framed by a discussion of Black feminisms, this project centers the intersectionality of race and gender identities alongside context as important indicators in the development of leadership philosophies, epistemologies, and practice. It concludes with how and why bridge leadership can serve as an effective model for leading diverse school communities where race and class divides continue to stifle learning opportunities for large numbers of poor, Black, Latino, and immigrant children and youth in the USA.

Inventing herself: examining the intersectional identities and educational leadership of Black women in the USA

And she [Black woman] had nothing to fall back on; not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may well have invented herself. (Mo...

Unifying messy communities: learning social justice in educational leadership classrooms

Learning about social justice is far different from engaging in the emotion‐laden work of learning social justice. Frequently, instructors of aspiring educational leaders find that when social justice content is introduced, the adult classroom becomes a messy community, filled with untidy and unexamined viewpoints, multiple stereotypes, and carefully crafted biases. Transforming perspectives about critical social justice issues seems an insurmountable task. This article draws on the work of Mary Parker Follett, particularly her principles of unifying, to examine instructional practices that foster a self that can weave itself in and out of raced, gendered, and classed relationships, and in turn, gain competence to unify school communities.

Vestiges of Desegregation: Superintendent Perspectives on Educational Inequality and (Dis)Integration in the Post-Civil Rights Era.

The purpose of this article is to extend the growing counternarrative in education research concerning the negative consequences of school desegregation and its implications for urban education, educational leadership, and policy reform in the post—Civil Rights Era. Guided by qualitative and historical research methods, this article presents the perspectives of eight retired Black school superintendents concerning the goal of integration during the civil rights movement and its disintegration in contemporary urban contexts. Findings reveal that despite desegregation efforts, schools and school systems have never truly integrated and now face a 21st-century brand of educational inequality, what I describe in this article as vestiges of desegregation, which further undermine the educational opportunities and experiences of those students school desegregation efforts were arguably intended to serve.

Community-Based Education Reform in Urban Contexts: Implications for Leadership, Policy, and Accountability

The top-down nature of school reform in urban communities has prompted educators, students, parents, and citizens alike to question the ways in which we hold public schools accountable for student learning and performance. Education research representing a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including history, sociology, political science, and public policy and interdisciplinary fields, such as leadership studies and program evaluation, has contributed greatly to our understanding of the role of schools, neighborhoods, and communities in urban education reform. Although research and policy discourses analyzing and comparing the effectiveness and drawbacks of reform, whether top-down or grassroots, are far from new, the knowledge base concerning how such efforts should take place, by whom, and the degree to which they are sustainable remain underdeveloped. This special issue of Urban Education presents a timely exploration of community-based reform efforts designed to improve student achievement and school success within the decades-long era of high-stakes, performance-based accountability. Given increased support for testing and standardization,

When Race Enters the Room: Improving Leadership and Learning Through Racial Literacy

This article explains (a) why racial literacy—an understanding of the origins and function of race in US schools and society—is essential to the work of educational leaders, and (b) how educational leaders can improve their leadership through racial literacy. It introduces the concept of racial literacy as a first step to improving school leadership practices, to be followed by racial realism, racial reconstruction, and racial reconciliation in racially diverse school communities. The article concludes with recommendations and resources designed to advance the racial literacy of educational leaders and their teams as part of a broader commitment to inclusion and social justice in US schools.This article explains (a) why racial literacy—an understanding of the origins and function of race in US schools and society—is essential to the work of educational leaders, and (b) how educational leaders can improve their leadership through racial literacy. It introduces the concept of racial literacy as a first step to improving school leadership practices, to be followed by racial realism, racial reconstruction, and racial reconciliation in racially diverse school communities. The article concludes with recommendations and resources designed to advance the racial literacy of educational leaders and their teams as part of a broader commitment to inclusion and social justice in US schools.

The past as more than prologue: a call for historical research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue that historical research methods offer an innovative and powerful way to examine, frame, explain, and disrupt the study of contemporary issues in educational leadership. More specifically, the authors examine how historical methodology might recast some of the questions educational leadership researchers presently engage and how the act of “doing history” might simultaneously lead to new research agendas and social change. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper provides a discussion of the explanatory and disruptive power of historical research methods and how intentional ignorance of uncomfortable historical realities, such as racist institutional structures and practices, undermines present-day efforts to advance equity in schools. Using the mainstream achievement gap narrative as an example, the authors consider the ways in which historical scholarship can effectively disrupt current conceptions of educational inequality and opportunity in th...