Minorities in Educational Leadership

Throughout the history of the United States, minorities and especially those within the African American and Hispanic communities have struggled to achieve equal footing in terms of educational opportunities with their majority counterparts. The literacy rates of these groups over the past 2 centuries illustrate the magnitude of the problem. Before the Civil War, approximately 95% of all Blacks were illiterate mainly because they were refused access to educational opportunities. Approximately 50 years later (1910), that rate had dropped dramatically, with only 30% evidencing illiteracy. Reforms occurring throughout the 1800s and continuing through the 20th century enabled persons of color to have some of the same educational opportunities as those from the majority culture.

In the segregated schools of the South, minority school administrators were commonplace. With desegregation, a concomitant decrease occurred in the number of Black school leaders. States such as North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi evidenced dramatic changes (i.e., decreases) in the number of Black school leaders. Without any type of affirmative action and given the highly racially political nature of hiring practices immediately following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and occurring along with the desegregation of schools, the number of Black school administrators decreased. This circumstance began to change in the 1970s when Blacks and Hispanics, in particular, began to evidence an increase in terms of their representation in administrative roles.

The Brown decision and other federal mandates influenced not only the way in which students of color could attend school (i.e., which schools they could attend) but also the teachers who would teach them and the type of school leaders who would be responsible for administering their schools. Prior to the 20th century, racial segregation limited those opportunities and influenced who would provide classroom and school leadership. Persons of color were limited by what types of opportunities were available and what options they could exercise. In the post-Brown era, Blacks in particular struggled initially to be appropriately represented in school leadership positions, but as affirmative action and civil rights legislation emerged, the opportunities for school leadership expanded.

Schools serving minority student populations struggled to be recognized for their excellence even though there were examples of exceptionally high-performing African American schools. Thomas Sowell documents the performance of four public high schools (three White schools and one Black school) in Washington, D.C., during the late 1800s and poignantly describes how strong the achievement scores on standardized tests were for the students in the segregated Black school. Sowell notes that the school (originally M Street School and renamed in 1916 as Dunbar High School) “repeatedly equaled or exceeded national norms on standardized tests.” The challenge confronting educational reformers has been to find ways to replicate what researchers now know can be a reality in all urban settings: Schools can help students of color achieve their full intellectual potential.

One of the ways of making that possible is by creating schools that have teacher and administrator leadership that is reflective of the student culture being served. One of the salient findings of the work of researchers such as Gloria Ladson-Billings has been ensuring that the teacher population serving students of color has a deep appreciation of the learners in the classroom. Part of that deep appreciation means that the teacher possesses cultural and racial understandings that often are only possible if one is from the culture or racial group being served. Schools and school districts have translated this understanding into policies and practices focused on trying to ensure that a representative portion of their teacher population and school administration are persons of color.

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