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Although antiracism activism has contributed to substantive progress under certain circumstances and in certain contexts, little research attempts to theorize how antiracism activism is manifest across contexts. In this article, we explore individual and collective antiracist actions within and outside schools. We introduce a theoretical framework that identifies four domains of activism--policy, community, leadership, and teaching and learning--in which activists operate to make a positive difference in promoting racial equity and antiracism in education. The framework offers a systemic way of thinking about antiracist activism in education and the importance of recognizing that several aspects of antiracist activism usually conceived as distinct are interrelated within and across domains. Indeed, antiracist education activism must be understood holistically and systemically if we seek to dismantle the racism that is woven into every piece of the education system.

Purpose: For culturally responsive practices (CRPs) in schools to be successful, educational leaders must look outside of the school and consider school, district, and system-level policies and practices that influence the sustainability of culturally responsive classrooms. The purpose of our study was to conduct a comparative case study and explore how four district leaders promoted CRPs throughout each of their districts. Research Design: Situated in the Midwest, we used a comparative case study to explore the approaches of four Black women school district leaders. Data included a focus group interview with the leaders; four individual, follow-up interviews; and artifacts or documents provided by the leaders. The data collected was analyzed using the Culturally Responsive School Leadership analytical framework. Results and Discussion: Findings discuss school district leadership's responsibility to promote CRPs; district leaders' ability to foster trusting relationships with educators; and district-wide efforts to engage in purposeful teacher retention practices. A discussion and conclusion include implications considering how district leadership can influence the implementation of CRPs in schools and classrooms.

School district decentralization typically shifts authority and resources from central office administrators at the district level to leaders at the school level. Although decentralization reforms have been prevalent in urban educational contexts for decades, they often yield poor results for low-income, minoritized communities. In this article, we examine stakeholder rationales behind decentralizing a large, diverse countywide district and the extent to which equity was part of these rationales. The findings suggest that although stakeholders aim to improve student achievement, financial and administrative efficiency, and family/community engagement through decentralization, many failed to consider how school-level disparities might result in sustaining or worsening inequities.

Leaders of education policy continue to decentralize school districts, particularly in predominately large urban districts, despite mixed results from this reform. In this article, we seek to explain how decentralization came to fruition through the policymaking process in one of the largest and most diverse districts in the United States that serves urban, suburban, and rural communities. Employing concepts related to advocacy coalitions and critical policy analysis, our analysis suggests that the policymaking process to decentralize this district was complex, messy, and political with clear delineations between those voices that were (un)heard and (un)involved.

Policymakers and educational leaders continue to use school district decentralization as a reform effort that attempts to shift power and authority from central office administration to school-level leadership. In 2015, the Nevada Legislature passed legislation to restructure the Clark County School District (CCSD), the state's largest school district, with the intent of breaking it up into smaller districts but instead evolving to decentralization. In this article, we use case study methods to explore the events leading up to the reorganization of CCSD. We take a critical perspective on Kingdon's multiple streams framework to analyze the reorganization efforts, focusing specifically on how Nevada's political context provided a window of opportunity for the reorganization to occur. We also examine the extent to which equitable educational opportunity was a factor in these efforts. Our analysis of the reorganization of CCSD contributes to a wider understanding of state-level policy development and politics within contemporary educational contexts. In this case, we find that state-level policymakers successfully leveraged the opportunity to enact the power and authority necessary to significantly and rapidly impact the structure of one of the largest school districts in the United States.

The U.S. education system has been a critical site in the nation's ongoing fight for racial equity. Yet, despite many attempts to promote equity within and across schools, efforts fall short in a system designed to uphold norms rooted in whiteness and white supremacy. We need anti-racist educational leaders who can identify and push back at the racial bias embedded in educational policies. Through a research-practice partnership with a Midwestern high school, we sought to understand how an anti-racist policy decision-making protocol can be used to redress inequitable policies to be racially just. The anti-racist policy decision-making protocol promotes social justice by empowering school practitioners to become policy agents. Implications from our findings point to the need for school practitioners to be critically introspective and identify and directly address the politics of whiteness that can ensue when working in partnership to do anti-racist policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspiring school leaders must be equipped with skill sets to facilitate the critical examination of district policies that reproduce inequities. Policies such as school choice, which have racial and socioeconomic implications for educational opportunity, require leaders to operate from a social justice identity while seeking to enhance their sense of efficacy in antiracist leadership behaviors. In this study, we examined how graduate students in a leadership preparation program developed their racially aware identities while professionally embedded in a district that utilizes school choice policies and practices. Our findings illustrate the intentional work necessary to develop school leaders with antiracist identities.

Gentrification and the displacement of low-income residents of color from neighborhoods where they have long resided has accelerated over the last 20 years. In some cities, this process has begun to impact school demographics. Although research shows that school districts experiencing gentrification are responding in ways that fuel segregation and inequality, in some contexts gentrification is viewed by administrators as an opportunity to seek racial and economic integration. In our exploratory comparative case study, we examined districts in gentrifying cities pursuing integration in the face of rapid gentrification. Our critical policy analysis illustrates how district leaders' diversity efforts can be overshadowed by their desire to appease and attract gentrifying families. Although districts are maintaining or increasing diversity in gentrifying contexts, our study raises broader equity questions that call for further inquiry of within-district equity and the displacement of students.

Critical education policy research has a deep-rooted history, evolving over four decades to challenge traditional positivist approaches. Reimagining epistemology, theory, and methods, scholars pioneered critical policy analysis (CPA), examining power dynamics and contextual influences on educational experiences. In the ensuing paragraphs, we explore how the articles in this volume exemplify critical approaches to policy analysis, examining topics such as racial inequalities in college recruitment, platform technologies' impact on policy, and racialized discourses in corporal punishment policies. Embracing critical theories and methodologies, scholars reveal how language, hierarchy, and privilege construct realities, perpetuate inequities, and reinforce power structures, and they advocate for equitable policy solutions, challenging the status quo to envision a more just educational future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1" (2007) has forced school districts to begin thinking of new ways to integrate their schools without relying on race as the single factor in their assignment plans. While some school districts already have begun to implement race-neutral student assignments, others are just beginning the process and are looking to plans that have been able to maintain diversity despite the new limitations being placed on them. In an effort to understand factors critical in shaping racial and socioeconomic diversity in school districts given the new requisite limitations, this study examined the relationship between the design, context, and implementation of three different integration plans that rely on voluntary choice and socioeconomic status (SEAS). The findings suggest that geographic and political contexts matter in the shaping and adoption of integration plans based on voluntary choice and SES. Suggestions are offered to help maintain integration given the local sociopolitical context of the school districts. (Contains 3 footnotes and 3 tables.)

In this qualitative case study, we explore the political impulses behind suburban secession from the 2013 Memphis-Shelby County merger, the largest school district consolidation in recent history. Decades removed from the Civil Rights Movement, during a period of stark inequality, colorblind law and policymaking, and a diminished understanding of education as a societal benefit, the central suburban rationale for secession, local control, carries new weight. It gives already privileged communities a race-neutral, legally sanctioned, and politically persuasive way to discuss resource accumulation that maps onto existing racial and economic segregation. Memphis-area lessons offer insight into an increasing number of secession struggles and enrich our understanding of how educational advantage is consolidated in the 21st-century metropolis.

Boundary lines have long served as a mechanism to divide people, determining the quality of available resources, and ultimately, educational opportunity. In recent years, new school district boundaries have proliferated as local communities attempt to secede from larger school districts. In this study of Memphis-Shelby County, Tennessee, we extend prior research on school district fragmentation and consolidation by examining the largest American school district merger--and swift, subsequent suburban secessions--in recent decades. In Memphis, policy and political actors fostered decentralization and competition through the expansion of choices among new school districts defined by highly salient racial boundaries. These actions exacerbated segregation between districts with students' racial and economic school-level exposure differing substantially across the new district lines. State and local actions that fostered the fragmentation of the consolidated district reduced possibilities for further integration and equity, with significant implications for students, families, and the larger community.

Suburbs across the US are experiencing dramatic demographic shifts, yet there is little research available on how suburban school districts are dealing with these changes. In this article, we examine the discourses surrounding race and demographic change in three suburban school districts that have been undergoing rapid demographic changes and which contain demographically distinct areas within their district boundaries. Utilizing a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, we analyze how the policy context (federal and state) frames actors' discourses and understandings of race, paying particular attention to the political and institutional factors affecting school policy. We illustrate how the discourse, in turn, is related to the actions (or inactions) taken by district and school leaders to respond to demographic change. We conclude the article by discussing policy implications and potential challenges districts may face in the future if efforts to purposively address racial changes continue to be avoided.

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows that racially diverse countywide districts can make integration more feasible. However, as courts constrain mechanisms used in policies to establish/maintain racial integration, it is crucial to examine how school boards make policy decisions while navigating the politics of their communities and competing conceptions surrounding racial diversity. Research Method/Approach: This study employed qualitative case study methods to understand under what circumstances school boards are creating policy, paying particular attention to the local sociopolitical and geographic contexts. Data collected consisted of 37 interviews with school district officials and community stakeholders. Mainstream and specialty media articles, legal documents, and policy documents from the districts or other governmental bodies also helped frame the local contexts. Findings and Lessons Learned: The two districts in our study illustrate political and legal factors that create complex environments to pursue school-level diversity even in districts with a long history of diversity policies. Our study also illustrates the difficult role of the superintendent and school boards in leading diverse communities with different histories and experiences as they navigate the local politics of diversity amid a variety of competing policy goals. We conclude with implications including the importance of remaining vigilant about student diversity efforts and perfecting technical details to minimize politicization about diversity policies.

Although regional equity scholars have demonstrated how cross-jurisdictional collaboration on transportation, housing, and employment can promote opportunity for low-income families, few have paid serious attention to the potential of regional "educational" policy to improve opportunity for children. This study seeks to address this gap by examining inter-district "collaboratives" or cooperative agreements between school districts within a metropolitan area. These collaborative arrangements address two inter-related demographic shifts: the rising level of segregation in public schools and the shift from within district segregation to between-district segregation. This article examines three regional collaboratives (Rochester, NY, Omaha, NE, and Minneapolis, MN) that involve varying degrees of cooperation, funding, and legal force. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews across the three sites, this analysis considers how each program's design features interact with local political dynamics to shape the degree to which these collaboratives are able to achieve policy goals.

Despite the federal government's historical effort to ensure educational equity via policies targeting issues critical to U.S. urban cities, a transformation has taken place in the discourses shaping educational policy solutions. While policies targeting educational equity have not completely vanquished, they have been largely re-written by discourses of efficiency and accountability. Informed by Hajer's notion of policy vocabularies, this article highlights how the written inscription of equity-related discourses within documents used to guide leadership preparation may shape the ways in which programs consider the construction of curricula focused on issues related to equity.

Many school districts have recently revised, or tried to revise, their policies for assigning students to schools, because the legal and political status of racial and other kinds of diversity is uncertain, and the districts are facing fiscal austerity. This article presents case studies of politics and student assignment policy in three large school districts: Boston, Massachusetts; Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina; and Jefferson County (Louisville), Kentucky. In all three districts, there has been pressure to change student-assignment policies in ways that respond to the priorities of White and middle-class populations, with the potential to worsen the options available to students of color. Our case studies reinforce the criticisms of race-neutral politics and policy that have been made by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and others. Race-neutral politics during fiscal retrenchment tends to reframe privilege as common sense and to obscure some students' structural disadvantages.

As US schools return to the levels of segregation that existed when many initial desegregation orders were established and concentrations of poverty are escalating, the judicial tools in place to achieve integrated schools have shifted. In its most recent ruling on school desegregation, "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1", the US Supreme Court required school districts to implement less race-conscious student assignment plans when attempting to achieve racial diversity throughout their schools. In this article, I explore the nexus between current race-neutral judicial preferences, racial integration, and the segregated realities that are present across many US school districts. Specifically, I examine the challenges of one urban school district, Omaha Public Schools, who utilizes a race-neutral student assignment policy in its integration efforts. I pay particular attention to the history around racialization in the Omaha metropolitan area and how it impacts the district's efforts to achieve racial diversity in its schools. Finally, I conclude with a discussion on potential challenges urban school districts may face in trying to achieve their intended diversity goals if new methods of student assignment are not considered in shifting sociopolitical contexts.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of critical policy analysis (CPA) in the fields of educational leadership and policy. In addition to exploring how CPA compares to traditional research approaches in educational leadership and policy, the authors consider the influence of long-established ways of knowing, why scholars choose to engage in CPA and how and why scholars who utilize this approach decide on specific methods. Design/Methodology/Approach: The exploration draws primarily on the use of CPA in the USA, though the authors also examine how scholars working within the UK utilize CPA. Findings: In the review of critical policy literature, the authors identified a number of assumptions common to traditional and critical policy research theories and approaches. For example, systems theory and analysis, structural analysis, cost-benefit analysis, technicist models, and political models were commonly used within traditional literature. In comparison, critical policy researchers relied on theoretical perspectives informed by critical theory, feminist theories, and critical race perspectives, among others. Critical policy researchers used these perspectives to engage in critique, interrogate policy processes, and epistemological roots of policy work, reveal policy constructions, and examine players involved in the policy development, interpretation, and implementation processes. Notably, the work of critical educational leadership and policy scholars also emphasizes the importance of context, the theory-method relationship and methodology. Originality/Value: While there is a growing movement occurring in the education leadership and policy fields toward critical analyses of educational research, little is known about how scholars decide what methods to employ when conducting such analyses. The authors discuss the possibilities for scholars utilizing these methods in order to explore the complexities of education leadership and policy problems.

This article examines the first regional governance reform in public education, created in the Omaha, Nebraska metropolitan area in 2007. The legislation creating this regional reform, which is called the Learning Community, established a regional governing body, the Learning Community Coordinating Council, consisting of an elected 21-member board. The board oversees a tax-sharing plan that redistributes general revenue, an interdistrict diversity transfer program, and programming aimed at enhancing early childhood and after-school opportunities for low-income students. In this article, we examine the implementation of the Learning Community, evaluating the extent to which the regional governing body has been able to advance the regional goals with which it has been charged. This article also illustrates how, as a result of the regional governance reforms, school districts within the Omaha metropolitan area are reevaluating the very definition of "local community."

This study focuses on how the demographic change occurring within two county-wide school districts and communities in the South, including the creation of suburban enclaves alongside central cities overwhelmingly made up of low-income students of color, influences community support for diversity policies within two school districts with a history of voluntary integration efforts: Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, KY) and the Wake County Public School System (Raleigh, NC). By focusing on two urban-suburban school districts, our research extends prior work examining the politics of diversity in urban school districts to county-wide school districts experiencing rapid suburbanization and stratification.