Exploring intersectionality and the employment of school leaders
| Pages | 134-151 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-07-2018-0133 |
| Date | 08 April 2019 |
| Published date | 08 April 2019 |
| Author | Edward Fuller,Liz Hollingworth,Brian P. An |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Exploring intersectionality and
the employment of school leaders
Edward Fuller
Department of Education Policy Studies, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Liz Hollingworth
College of Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA, and
Brian P. An
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Abstract
Purpose –There is growing recognition of the importance of educator diversity. The purpose of this paper is
to examine the production, placement and employment of school leaders as assistant principals, principals
and school leaders in Texas by the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender over 23 years.
Design/methodology/approach –This is a quantitative study that employs multilevel logistic regression
analysis to examine using 25 years of educator employment data from Texas.
Findings –The authors find descriptive evidence of an increase in diversity of school leaders driven by a
decreasing percentage of white men educators and an increasing percentage of Latina educators. Important
differences, however, emerge when examining assistant principal vs principal positions, particularly with
respect to the odds of being hired. The authors find black male and Latino educators are more likely than
white male educators to be hired as an assistant principal but are less likely than white male educators to be
hired as a principal. Women educators, regardless of race/ethnicity were less likely to be hired as assistant
principals or principals relative to white male educators. Women of color had the lowest odds of being hired in
any position relative to white male educators. With respect to school leader preparation program
accountability, the authors find few program characteristics associated with placement and differences
between programs explained very little of the variation in placement rates, bringing into question efforts to
hold programs accountable for such outcomes.
Originality/value –A longitudinal examination of racial/ethnic and gender intersectionality over 25 years is
a unique contribution to the study of inequitable access to school leadership positions.
Keywords Leadership, Racial discrimination
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Research underscores the need to increase the racial/ethnic and gender diversity of school
leaders (Khalifa et al., 2016). Rationales for increasing leader diversity include evidence that
leaders of color positively influence a range of outcomes for teachers and students of color.
Most directly, leaders of color are more likely to employ teachers of color (Grissom and
Keiser, 2011; Grissom et al., 2015) who, in turn, have positive impacts on students of color.
For example, an increase in the percentage of teachers of color employed in a school is
associated with a reduction in differential discipline outcomes for students of color, an
increase in the likelihood of placement into gifted education programs for students of color,
the disproportionate placement of students of color into special education, an increase in
graduation rates for students of color and improvements in the overall achievement for
students of color (Grissom et al., 2015).
With respect to gender diversity, women leaders often lead differently than their male
counterparts (Gipson et al., 2017) and these differences are associated with more effective
leadership practices. For example, Eagly et al. (1992) concluded women principals employed
a more collaborative, participative and democratic style than men principals. Further, Urick
and Bowers (2014) found women principals were associated with more positive schooling
outcomes for students, potentially because of how they lead.
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 57 No. 2, 2019
pp. 134-151
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-07-2018-0133
Received 24 July 2018
Revised 25 October 2018
14 January 2019
Accepted 15 January 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
134
JEA
57,2
While evidence continues to accumulate about the importance of diversity in school
leadership positions, studies concomitantly underscore the relatively slow progress made in
increasing the percentage of principals of color and women principals. For example, the
percentage of principals of color has increased from 13 percent in 1988 to 20 percent in 2012
while the percentage of women principals has increased from 25 to 52 percent over the same
time period (Hill, Ottem and DeRoche 2016). By 2012, the percentages of white, black, and
Latinx principals were 80, 10, and 7 percent, respectively (Hill et al., 2016). In contrast, the
percentages of white, black and Latinx students were 46, 15, and 29 percent, respectively
(Snyder et al., 2018). Thus, the racial/ethnic characteristics of principals are not
representative of student characteristics. With respect to gender, the percentage of
women principals was 52.4 percent in 2012 (Hill et al., 2016). However, at the middle- and
high-school levels, only 40.0 and 33.1 percent of principals were women (Hill et al., 2016) –
substantially lower than the percentage of female students which is approximately 50
percent in any given year.
What we know little about, however, is the intersectionality of the race/ethnicity and
gender of school leaders. By intersectionality, we mean the percentage of individuals with
specific racial/ethnic and gender characteristics such as being a black female or a white
male. Intersectionality is a legal antidiscrimination framework developed by Kimberle
Crenshaw to understand the “tendency to treat race and gender as mutually exclusive
categories of experience and analysis,”(Crenshaw, 1989, p. 139). This conceptual framework
was initially used to examine the degree to which individuals such as black women faced
“double jeopardy”in hiring and in the workplace –discrimination based on both their
race/ethnicity and gender. Researchers have adopted this framework to also examine the
phenomena of discrimination and bias against individuals –in particular, women of color
(e.g. Rosette et al., 2016; Breslin et al., 2017). This is a particularly pertinent conceptual
framework for our analysis given our study includes an examination of the degree to which
employment as a school leader is affected by the racial/ethnic and gender intersectionality of
educators.
Unfortunately, we could not find any national statistics about the intersection of race/
ethnicity and gender and we only found information for five states –Texas, Illinois, New
York, North Carolina and Tennessee. The National Center for Education Statistics does
collect survey data that would allow for estimates of the intersection of race/ethnicity and
gender for school leaders for all states and for the country, but has not yet made such
calculations available publicly. We suspect many states also collect the data to make such
calculations but simply have not done so.
Concomitant with a growing concern about the diversity of the educator workforce, there
has been growing interest in holding school leadership preparation programs (SLPPs)
accountable for their outcomes (Fuller and Hollingworth, 2018; Grissom et al., 2018). Indeed,
there have been calls for the adoption of SLPP accountability systems from organizations
such as the Alliance for the Reform of Educational Leadership (Briggs et al., 2013), the
National Conference of State Legislatures (Shelton, 2009) and New Leaders (Ikemoto et al.,
2014). These calls focus primarily on outcome measures such as the ability of graduates to
“secure jobs, retain jobs, [and] demonstrate an impact on student achievement”(Briggs et al.,
2013, p. 34). As of 2014, nine states already have used placement rates for SLPP
accountability (Yoder et al., 2014).
Thus, there are three primary reasons to examine the intersectionality of race/ethnicity
and gender with respect to becoming a school leader. First, such studies examine how
individuals can encounter different barriers and opportunities in their career based on the
intersection of their race/ethnicity and gender (Núñez, 2014), particularly women of color
(Núñez, 2014; Jean-Marie, 2013). Second, given the movement to hold SLPPs accountable for
outcomes such as the placement rate of graduates in school leader positions, identifying
135
Employment
of school
leaders
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