Terrance L. Green

Leading for Urban School Reform and Community Development

Purpose: Improving urban schools of color and the communities where they are located requires leadership that spans school and community boundaries. The purpose of this study is to understand how principal and community leader actions support urban school reform along with community development at two community schools in the urban Midwest and Southeast. Research Method: Using a cross-case study design, this research draws on interviews, school–community observations, and document analysis. Concepts from community development leadership and cross-boundary leadership are joined to theoretically frame this study and guide the analysis. Data analysis was conducted using the constant comparative method. Findings: Leader actions varied across the two research sites based on the specific school–community tasks that were undertaken. However, cross-case findings suggest that leaders developed a broad vision for school and community, positioned the school as a spatial community asset, championed community causes at the school, and changed school culture. Implications: This approach to educational leadership highlights principals who purposefully work with community leaders toward mutually beneficial school and community outcomes. The study concludes with implications for leadership practice and future research.

Transforming Out-of-School Challenges Into Opportunities: Community Schools Reform in the Urban Midwest

For more than three decades, community schools have aimed to improve education and neighborhood outcomes in low-income, urban communities of color. In this article, we position community schools as a place-based reform strategy that pushes back on top-down accountability systems. While most research on urban school reform focuses on improving in-school factors, this study shifts the research lens to out-of-school factors that shape low-income, urban school-community contexts. The purpose of this study is to examine the out-of-school challenges that instigated a neighborhood-driven community school implementation in a racially diverse and low- to working-class community in the urban Midwest. Drawing on interviews and archival data, critical urban theory is used to guide our analysis. This case study details the political and socioeconomic out-of-school forces that preceded a community schools implementation. In doing so, we consider how school leaders can confront out-of-school challenges across similar urban contexts, and conclude with implications for future research.

Community-Based Equity Audits A Practical Approach for Educational Leaders to Support Equitable Community-School Improvements

Purpose: To equitably transform urban schools of color and the neighborhoods where they are nested requires approaches that promote community equity and foster solidarity among a range of stakeholders. However, most school–community approaches solely focus on improving school-based outcomes and leave educational leaders with little guidance for how to critically understand their school’s community context and act in solidarity with neighborhood stakeholders on community issues. The purpose of this conceptual article is to introduce what I call community-based equity audits and explain how educational leaders can use this process to work toward equitable school-community outcomes. Method and Approach: This process builds on equity audits in educational leadership, community audits, and community-based research practices and is theoretically grounded in Freirean dialogue. To demonstrate its impacts, this article draws on reflections of aspiring principals who conducted community-based equity audits in a leadership preparation program. Findings: The community-based equity audit consists of four phases: disrupt deficit views about community, conduct initial community inquiry and shared community experiences, establish a community leadership team, and collect equity, asset-based community data for action. Implications: This instrument is developed to guide educational leaders, and those who prepare them, in creating context-specific, equitable school–community solutions.

The Great White Hope? Examining the White Privilege and Epistemology of an Urban High School Principal

This case was developed for use in courses on the principalship as well as school reform, with an emphasis on developing socially just, epistemologically and racially conscious school leaders. Data are presented about the principal, the school district, the school, the students, and the community. This case explores notions of White privilege to develop epistemological and racial consciousnesses, and works toward disrupting systems of repression. To do so, this case seeks to problematize how urban school reform can be self-serving for White principals, and aims to provoke urban school principals to go beyond epistemological and racial awareness, to action. Course instructors can use this case to examine students’ epistemologies as well as racial consciousness, explore the nexus of White privilege and urban school reform, and discuss race and racism in American schools.

School as Community, Community as School: Examining Principal Leadership for Urban School Reform and Community Development.

For decades, reform has been a persistent issue in urban schools. Research suggests that urban school reforms that are connected to equitable community development efforts are more sustainable, and that principals play a pivot role in leading such efforts. Yet, limited research has explored how urban school principals connect school reform with community improvement. This study examines principal leadership at a high school in the Southeastern United States where school reform was linked to improving community conditions. Using the case study method, this study draws on interviews and document data. Concepts from social capital theory are used to guide the analysis. Findings indicate that the principal’s actions to support urban school reform and community improvement included the following: positioned the school as a social broker in the community, linked school culture to community revitalization projects, and connected instruction to community realities. The study concludes with implications for practice and future research.

Enriching Educational Leadership Through Community Equity Literacy: A Conceptual Foundation

ABSTRACT Educational leaders are essential to fostering authentic and equitable partnerships between schools and communities. Yet, many aspiring principals leave preparation programs underprepared to develop these partnerships, counter inequitable neighborhood conditions, and work in solidarity with community stakeholders. Therefore, this article describes work to develop a conceptual framework around community equity literacy (CEL) to build educational leaders’ capacity, an assessment instrument to measure CEL, and a future research agenda. The CEL conceptual framework is anchored in leadership theories, research on school–community partnerships, and the national Professional Standards for Educational Leaders. This article concludes with implications for leader preparation and further research.

Doing Counterwork in the Age of a Counterfeit President: Resisting a Trump-DeVos Education Agenda.

Abstract In this article, we explore and conceptualize counterwork in education as a critical element for resistance and progressive social change in the era of Donald Trump’s presidency. We first discuss education in the context of a Trump–DeVos administration, and how this milieu necessitates activist research and counterwork. Grounded in a sense of critical hope and part of a larger anti-hegemonic project, we describe our conceptualization of counterwork in education as unfinishedness and the critical imagination, human agency, and transformational resistance for liberation. This approach to education is committed to sustaining an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and a critical social justice agenda in education across the P-20 spectrum