Turning Our Gaze toward Transgender Educators: Fostering Social Justice Leadership in Educational Institutions

The purpose of this study is to find key supports for educational leaders to provide for transgender educators to succeed in an educational workplace setting. By being and becoming aware of the issues involved and conceptualizing interventions to help transgender educators function at their full potential in the workplace, a school’s leadership fosters social equity while also increasing the effectiveness of its organization. This paper draws from a mixed-methods case study that included a quantitative survey conducted with 27 transgender teachers and school principals and focuses on three qualitative in-depth cases. The results show that while some educational administrations support transgender educators in theory, they lack the proper tools to do so; alternatively, many other administrators remain openly hostile toward transgender educators, forcing some to find other work settings. For transgender educators of color, this task is more daunting because they face exponentially higher rates of violence and discrimination. To properly support and supervise transgender educators and principals, educational administrators must learn the necessary skills to provide a more welcoming environment for transgender educators, many of whom experience a myriad of personal struggles. These findings and the insights acquired have implications for transgender educators as well as state, district, and school administrators who wish to better support this growing segment of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Building Professional Capacity among Paraeducators through Onboarding

Many studies have investigated the inadequacy of training and support for special education paraeducators, but few have examined prehire activities or recommended a comprehensive plan to train and hire paraeducators. This quantitative action research study of 267 special education paraeducators and special education teachers was conducted in a large urban school district to address the concern over paraeducators’ lack of knowledge and training and the need to consider these factors when hiring staff in public school districts. Based on themes from the literature and the expertise of an insider, the purpose of the study was to increase the understanding of the relationship between and the perception of the importance of organizational factors, employee knowledge, and training. Results showed that paraeducators are not adequately trained, prefer specific training topics, and recognize that factors and knowledge affect job performance. The researchers then created a formal institutionalized onboarding program for new hire paraeducators based on a change management model. Immediate implementation recommendations, along with an onboarding plan and checklist, are included for school districts and their human resource departments.

Mid-career Teacher Retention: Who Intends to Stay, Where, and Why?

Teacher turnover is widely understood to be among the most pressing challenges facing the American public education system. Who and where are the mid-career teachers who choose to stay in the profession? Why do they stay? Researchers need to attend to these questions to inform both national dialogue and local actions regarding how to retain and sustain mid-career teachers who positively impact student learning. This quantitative study explored mid-career teachers’ responses to the 2015–2016 National Teacher and Principal Survey to ascertain if certain demographic factors (e.g., race, school location) and school climate and teacher attitudinal factors (e.g., job satisfaction, career pathway and opportunities, support from administrators and/or sources beyond school leaders and colleagues, and influence over school policy) affect a mid-career teacher’s decision to remain in the teaching profession. Findings indicate that mid-career teachers (5 to 20 years of teaching experience) in a secondary setting are significantly more likely to intend to stay in the profession than their peers in an elementary setting, and non-White mid-career teachers (Black/African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islanders, and Native American/Alaskan Native) than their White peers, respectively. Suburban mid-career teachers are more likely to express a desire to remain in the profession than their counterparts in urban, town, and rural settings. Related to the climate and attitudinal factors, mid-career teachers with more positive perceptions of school climate are more likely to remain in the profession. The most important factor in mid-career teacher retention is the teacher’s level of satisfaction with workplace conditions that directly impact teaching.

Leaning On Our Academic Shields of Gendered Support

Intersectionality reminds us that women of color face a particular kind of marginalization due to both gendered and racial oppression and underrepresentation. As such, they are more often “presumed incompetent” and may not feel as innately supported in social and professional structures as their white male and female counterparts. Additionally, the silencing effect of being one of very few women of color in academic departments puts us at risk for further marginalization, requiring that we engage in significant invisible labor that is neither recognized nor compensated. Grounded on our intersectionalities, we discuss our respective trajectories within our own fields and research, beginning with research that emphatically perpetuates the cycle of gender inequity in the academy. The discussion is then supported by analyzing the theoretical research on the salience of race, gender, and other axes of identity for the experiences of women of color. As authors, we present these narratives in an attempt to engage with ways of reflexivity that are, especially for women of color in academia, not usually discussed.

(Other)sistering: Black Women Education Leadership Faculty Aligning Identity, Scholarship, and Practice Through Peer Support and Accountability

This inquiry offers insight into how Black women assistant professors traverse the challenging journey toward tenure while acknowledging their connection to their students and communities, research, teaching, and service. By employing a phenomenological approach and utilizing Black feminist thought and community cultural wealth as conceptual and theoretical frameworks, this research advances scholarship identifying commonalities across Black women’s experiences. Further, we offer implications for how the academy can support Black women and other professionals from marginalized populations. Findings include how Black women assistant professors develop and create dynamic support systems amongst themselves to combat the multiple marginalizations of their positionality in the academy––a place where they are historically “outsiders.”

Black Women’s Resiliency in Community College Leadership

Black women leaders in higher education face a double bind of gender and racial disparity and biases within the education workforce and their institutions. The literature does not fully articulate Black women's considerations when pursuing community college presidencies and the strategies they use to overcome the hurdles and discrimination they encounter. This research expands the literature by using critical race and Black feminist thought as theoretical frameworks to examine the ascension and succession of eight Black women leading community colleges and how they circumvented barriers associated with the male-dominated position. Findings reveal how three elements of resiliency—emotional intelligence, authenticity, and agility—contest and challenge the oppressive nature of White male privilege in gendered organizations. This newfound perspective has implications for the recruitment, retention, and persistence of faculty and administrators, leadership development programs, and succession planning at community colleges across the United States.

A Study of Black Female Principals Leading through Twin Pandemics

In 2020, the United States experienced twin pandemics disproportionately impacting BIPOC communities and their schools and school systems—one new, COVID-19, and one longstanding, that of white supremacy and anti-Black racism. This phenomenological study of 20 Black female principals in two states provides insights into how these leaders, who so often center racial justice and caring for BIPOC children and communities in their leadership practice, grappled with these pandemics and how doing so impacted their leadership and work. Findings suggest that leading through these twin pandemics further cemented these women’s commitments to engage in advocacy and justice work on behalf of their communities and students. They also reported, regarding racial inequity and white supremacy, feeling both a cautious optimism stemming from seeing the work they had long engaged in being taken up at scale, and by white colleagues in particular, and frustration, experiencing this engagement often as “performative” and thus unlikely to lead to real change. And yet they also spoke of their deep commitment to advocacy and social justice moving forward and their role in ensuring that all their students receive the education, opportunities, and outcomes they deserve.

“I Assumed It Was a Much Safer Place Than It Really Is”: Nonbinary Educators’ Strategies for Finding School Jobs

People who are nonbinary—one of many kinds of trans identity that do not fit neatly within a man/woman binary—face particular challenges when seeking employment in P–12 schools, which have historically been places where rigid gender norms are strictly enforced. This paper draws on semistructured interviews conducted in 2018 to explore how 16 nonbinary educators navigated the process of finding, securing, and keeping jobs in Canadian and American schools. I found that most participants were concerned about securing a job or potentially losing their job or their safety at work because others might be inhospitable to their gender identity or expression. At the same time, participants had strategies to ensure that they found and kept jobs they were comfortable with, such as investigating a school’s support for queer and trans people, forging positive relationships with administrators and staff, and presenting their gender in particular ways during the hiring process. This study illustrates the limitations of individualistic, tokenizing forms of trans inclusion and reveals the continued prevalence of gender normativity in schools, despite a rapidly shifting gender landscape. While trans inclusion, at least on the surface, may be a selling point for some schools, trans people continue to face barriers when the underlying structures that privilege White, middle-class, cisgender, and heteronormative gender expression remain intact. I argue that, if trans people are to be fully supported in the education workplace, an intersectional and broadly transformative approach to gender justice is necessary.

The Intersectionality of Educating Black Students in Michigan: Public School Finance, Racial Segregation, and Housing Policy

This research investigates Michigan’s system for funding public schools, particularly for Black students, via critical race theory, focusing on structural racism and discrimination embedded in education finance laws, housing policies, and residential and educational segregation. Our research questions are (i) How does district per-pupil funding in Michigan vary by race and income? (ii) Does variation by race and income depend on whether funding is from state or local sources? (iii) How does district property wealth in Michigan vary by race and income? and (iv) How does the proportion of property wealth Michigan districts commit to local education funding vary by race and income? We find that the average Black student receiving free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) receives $411 less per pupil than the average White student receiving FRL and $783 less per pupil than the average White student who does not receive FRL. These disparities stem entirely from differences in locally sourced district revenues that are the result of vast differences in property wealth. On average, a one-percentage-point increase in a district’s proportion of Black students receiving FRL is associated with a $2,354 decrease in taxable value of property per pupil, implying that a district with all Black students receiving FRL would have $235,400 less taxable value per pupil than a district with no Black students receiving FRL. Through its continued reliance on local property taxation, the school finance system in Michigan is just another example of how laws and policies reinforce structural racism and discrimination against Black students. This study can discern a self-reinforcing system that relegates Blacks to a subordinate socioeconomic status regarding school finance, segregation and housing policy, and discrimination.