Equity-Driven Exemplar: EDL Team Facilitates Professional Learning Community for National Peers

All roads led to San Diego State University at the end of Spring semester. At least that was the case for more than two dozen academics engaged in a nationwide effort to improve equity-centered leadership in high-need school districts.

Supported by a grant from the Wallace Foundation, a team of faculty from SDSU’s Department of Educational Leadership facilitated an in-person professional learning community (PLC) in early May for university participants in the Wallace Foundation’s Equity-Centered Pipeline Initiative (ECPI) — a $102 million effort that sees school districts and university partners collaborating to build pipelines of principals equipped to meet the needs of diverse students.

“We know leadership matters,” said assistant professor Alejandro Gonzalez Ojeda, co-director of the project.  “So what we're discussing is, how do you define it, how do you operationalize it, and what are the things we can do to ensure that we're preparing leaders who are going to be not only good fits for their schools, but also embody equity-driven leadership dispositions and take action?”

In all, 16 universities are engaged in the SDSU-led PLC, including: 

• Morgan State University and Towson University (Baltimore City Public Schools);
• Ashland University and The Ohio State University (Columbus City, Ohio)
• Howard University, George Washington University (District of Columbia Public Schools)
• SDSU and National University (Fresno Unified School District)
• Spalding University and the University of Louisville (Jefferson County School District)
• Portland State University and Lewis and Clark College (Portland Public Schools)
• University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio (San Antonio Independent School District)
• University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Appalachian State University (Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools).

Selected for leadership

SDSU is a natural fit to lead the PLC. The university has a longstanding relationship with the Wallace Foundation, dating back to a 2016 initiative that spurred a redesign of the university’s educational leadership programs. 

Professor and chair Douglas Fisher is director of the project, supported by Gonzalez Ojeda, professors James Marshall and Nancy Frey, and lecturers David Lorden and Michelle Shin.

The PLC had previously gathered in Long Beach in February and has met twice virtually. Guest speakers at the San Diego convening included Dr. Joseph F. Johnson Jr., College of Education dean emeritus and founding executive director of the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST), as well Marco Nava, a prominent Los Angeles Unified School District administrator. SDSU faculty also shared the lessons of the university’s previous Wallace work.

“We were able to facilitate a showcasing of our practices and our struggles as well — what components in SDSU’s programs have been redesigned, how we evaluate and what that actually looks like in practice,” Gonzalez Ojeda said. “The participants were able to not only absorb that, but also reflect on where they're currently situated in their program redesign and what their common challenges are.” 

A different perspective

Among the attendees were four faculty members from UT-Austin, including Debra Cantú, associate professor of practice and co-director of the Texas Principal Leadership Academy. Cantú said her team came to San Diego interested in finding ways to improve the clinical experience for students in their program.

“What was great for me was that (SDSU) took time to prepare an exemplar spiral binder for us so we could see templates and artifacts that were influential in improving their program,” Cantú said. “That was very appreciated. But then to talk about the journey — of how it was developed and how it was implemented at the district level and university level — was very powerful.” 

“It allowed us to put it against our systems so we could say ‘Oh, we're doing really great here,’ or ‘Here's some opportunities where we can learn’ or ‘Here's a different perspective.’”

The SDSU team is planning multiple virtual PLCs as well as another in-person convening in fall, to be hosted on the East Coast.