Becoming an Ally in the Battle for Social Justice

A former superintendent describes what she has learned about white privilege as she pursues educational equity and promotes cultural understanding
BY VERONICA MCDERMOTT/School Administrator, November 2017


Mr. M was a highly regarded, long-time principal in the Midwest whose support of an ill-conceived event intended to improve cultural understanding ended with his forced retirement and his reputation damaged.

Dr. K., a new superintendent in another community, was committed to social justice, including high expectations for all students. But before her vision could be realized, the community and board of education turned on her, and she was forced to resign.

Both scenarios, which took place within the past six years, involve white education leaders serving predominantly white communities undergoing demographic changes. Both involve leaders with big hearts, and both situations contain important lessons about the blind spots that leaders with a lifetime of white privilege may face when introducing efforts to build cultural understanding and equity.

As a former superintendent who emerged from the fog of white privilege to become an activist for social justice, I know now that getting equity right matters. Efforts gone awry stir up controversy. Communities can be left in emotional tatters. Initiatives to change attitudes and ways of doing business in diverse school settings grind to a halt.

A Misguided Initiative
Mr. M. was the principal of an elementary school in a suburban district that had no black students or faculty. While his school continued to draw students from an affluent part of town, other schools were undergoing demographic changes as families from a nearby city relocated.

His teachers wanted to help their students be culturally sensitive to these newcomers — mostly black and brown students. With his support, they planned a “slave day” to “help students understand what it was like to be a slave.” Students, for example, could “sleep” in a space the size of what an enslaved child slept in.

The black community who resided in the district was outraged. The white community was perplexed by the reaction to their efforts to teach multicultural understanding. In response, the teachers swore they would never do anything again to help students understand others. Instead of fostering better understanding, the event sparked heated discussions, community distrust and cultural division. Under the pressure, Mr. M. retired.

What went wrong? The planners of this event, all white teachers, took a story that belonged to others and told it without permission and without consultation. A leader versed in cultural sensitivity could avoid such controversy by moving the teachers to the next level of cultural understanding. That would mean asking the event planners to consider:

» the difference between the terms slavery and enslavement;

» why the story of enslavement is not theirs to tell;

» why the story of enslavement is not the ONLY story that could be told about the black community;

» the difference between learning about others and learning from them;

» ways to amplify the voices of the owners of the story; and

» the difference between working for a marginalized group versus working with them.

The kind of conversations members of a community have reflects and shapes the values and culture of that community. By changing the conversation to one deliberately fo-cused on equity, leaders change the culture.

Reduced Expectations
Dr. K. was the superintendent of a community of about 60,000 residents, which was undergoing demographic change. New families increasingly included students who identified as black or brown or were part of families challenged by poverty or spoke languages other than English at home. An insightful student of data, the superintendent discovered her district’s academic performance looked good in the aggregate, but this masked the reality that some student groups were not being served by the learning and teaching practices in place.

Simply put, many teachers and community members had lower expectations for newcomers. Programming and practices reflected this bias.

Dr. K. operated on the belief all students possess the intelligence to benefit from a rigorous curriculum as long as the schools provide the resources and support they need. Neither the teachers nor the community shared this belief. The school district had a long history of tracking students by ability. Those in-the-know rallied to have their children labeled gifted as early as possible. Advanced courses were reserved for those who met preordained academic and behavioral standards.

The community was not prepared to accept what they saw as a complete shift in how school operations were “always done.” They particularly feared that changes to ensure all students thrived would divert financial and staffing resources from the programs they loved and expected. They did not buy into the notion these programs were exclusive and benefited those students who already had many benefits. And they certainly did not want to have their children sharing classrooms with “those students.”

Through her work as a local school leader, Dr. K. had encountered the “crime of squandered potential,” a concept described in a 2012 book I co-authored with Yvette Jackson, Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools through Fearless Leadership. The so-named crime exists in the way learning and teaching were institutionalized in the district to serve effectively only a portion of the student population.

The superintendent, who was in her ninth year of leading the district, moved quickly to implement her vision, a completely understandable impulse. Unfortunately, the community was not prepared. She lost her job, and the students to whom she was dedicated remain in academically anemic courses. They still suffer the “spirit slashing” (a point I describe more fully in my new book We Must Say No to the Status Quo: Educators as Allies in the Battle for Social Justice) that often accompanies school policies and practices that do not value students from other cultures, their experiences or their world-view.

Five Prerequisites
The prerequisites to successfully address equity issues at the district and school leadership levels are these:

» ASSESS THE CURRENT REALITY. Ask what are the possibilities and limitations of taking on this issue, at this time, with this group of people. By articulating the possibilities, a leader will bolster the motivation needed to engage in promoting change in practices and policies. By articulating the limitations, a leader will have a clearer vision of where opposition may arise and what form it may take.

» STUDY THE HISTORY CAREFULLY. Faced with systemic change, community members often fall back on the trope “We always did it this way” — despite the truth. Knowing when, how and why a highly prized way of doing things was instituted is often enough to push back against change resisters.

» BUILD CONSENSUS. Your agenda may be to eliminate tracking and gifted programs, but announcing this at the outset could kick up a firestorm of protest. Instead, craft a vision statement on easily accepted, laudable principles that lead to the change you are seeking. Who is inclined to argue against a vision that speaks to all students achieving their potential or all students thriving? Prepare for ensuing steps by cultivating a relationship with those likely to oppose your ultimate goal.

» CRAFT AND EMPLOY A REVIEW PROCESS. With an agreed-upon vision in place, you can filter current and proposed new policies and practices through a robust process to assess their alignment with the vision. Using a 1-10 scale is helpful. Asking a group of community members, faculty or students to consider the merits of a long-standing practice — such as a spelling bee — would lead to some lively conversation. To what extent does conducting yearly spelling bees help all students meet their potential? (1 = not at all; 10 = very much). If the consensus is that spelling bees do not help all students achieve their potential, then the conversation could shift to what can or should be done about this.

» EXPECT FLARE-UPS. Having a clear vision and process offers some cover while pushing system change. So, too, does having a large and representative group involved in assessing policies and practices against stated criteria. Yet no process will totally prevent disagreements and backlash.

Blunt Reaction
As education leaders, we can promote collaboration and a spirit of inquiry. We can construct a shared sense of community and a consistent, agreed upon and productive way of addressing issues. Nowhere is this more important — or more fraught with dangers — than in addressing changing student body demographics, what we refer to as diversity. The truth is that diversity and the actions taken to address diversity — such as culturally responsive teaching, multiculturalism and cultural competency — fail to bring to the surface the real issue.

As described by Paul Gorski and Katy Swalwell in an Educational Leadership article “Equity Literacy for All,” one student, who identifies as black and was involved in a two-year multicultural initiative to address diversity in the school, sized up the project bluntly. She told the researchers the multicultural campaign did “nothing.” She wanted to know when the school would address the real issue: racism.

We can learn much from this student and from Mr. M. and Dr. K. Promoting cultural understanding in public education involves hard work, consensus building and honesty. It means recognizing that schools are grounded in multiple cultures that often do not see situations through the same lens. It requires recognizing that underlying issues may be fraught with biased overtones, if not outright hostility. It means realizing different timelines and priorities exist among stakeholders.

A Delicate Enterprise
Fostering cultural understanding and equity is a delicate enterprise. Educators typically possess three strengths that, if identified and intentionally cultivated, help them be successful in dramatically altering the lives of their most vulnerable students.

These strengths include:

» DISPOSITION. Educators often have big hearts. Educators want to make the world a better place.

» PREPARATION: Educators are strategic. Educators develop lessons, policies and practices with an intended outcome in mind to which they align activities.

» POSITION. Educators possess access and influence. Educators come in contact with every student in their school. Educators possess institutional power that they can harness to work with others as opposed to over others.

There is no scope and sequence to equity work. Different contexts demand different responses. However, educators can trust their three strengths to aide them in their efforts to become strategic allies in the quest for justice and cultural understanding.
 
 
VERONICA MCDERMOTT, a retired superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District in Patchogue, N.Y., is a resident of Montreal, Quebec, and author of We Must Say No to the Status Quo (Corwin Press, 2017). E-mail: veronica.mcdermott@icloud.com