By Yubin Jang and Lauren P. Bailes, Ph.D.
University of Delaware
Sarah Odell, Ph.D.
San Francisco University High School
This is the executive summary of a working paper published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and a presentation done at the NAIS Thrive Conference. This study was done in partnership with NAIS. Read the full paper here. The presentation is available at this link.
Introduction
When organizations experience crises, they often have to adapt to survive. Sometimes that adaptation means diversifying at every level, including the leadership. Independent schools nationwide had to adapt in numerous ways in 2020 in response to both the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice reckoning.
The glass cliff phenomenon occurs when women and members of other underrepresented groups are appointed to leadership roles during turbulent times and then are expected to clean up the mess. This often leads to the misapprehension that these leaders are less effective when, in reality, crisis circumstances make their jobs more difficult.
Independent schools benefit from understanding who leads them and under what conditions. Diverse leadership is more than a matter of representation. Research shows that having minoritized leaders can positively impact teacher experiences and student academic well-being outcomes. However, in schools across the country, women and people of color remain underrepresented in the highest and most prestigious leadership role: that of the head of school.
For a recent study, NAIS partnered with researchers at the University of Delaware and San Francisco University High School to find out whether independent schools responded to the crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice reckoning by diversifying headships and whether that diversity persisted for the five years that followed. They explored the factors influencing the appointment of minoritized leaders in independent schools, particularly during the pandemic. Their findings offer critical insights into leadership diversity, the contexts in which these leaders rise, and what schools can do to support meaningful change.
Preliminary quantitative findings are available in the full paper (at the link above) in which the researchers addressed the likelihood that a woman or a person of color served as head after the 2020–2021 school year. They included intersectional identities and investigated, for example, whether a Black woman is more likely to hold a headship after the 2020–2021 school year.
Literature Review
When the demography of students and school leaders reflects that of diverse student populations, all students benefit, and schools tend to see improved academic performance.[1] The benefits of leader diversity also extend to school staffing-related outcomes: Gender congruence between teachers and principals decreases teacher mobility and turnover while enhancing teacher efficacy and motivation.[2]
The researchers found no evidence that men or white people make better school leaders than women or people of color. In fact, women and people of color who are school leaders tend to be very good at certain aspects of leadership that contribute to high-performing schools, such as democratic and participatory leadership styles,[3] instructional leadership practices,[4] and organizational stewardship.[5]
Women and people of color tend to lead schools effectively, and there are many benefits of diverse school leadership. However, systematic barriers persist for women and people of color who aspire to school leadership. Systems of school leader hiring and promotion continue to be biased in favor of men and white candidates.[6] Despite the fact that women and people of color often have more instructional experience than white men, women remain in assistant roles longer.[7] In short, minoritized individuals tend to possess adequate leadership knowledge, skills, and ambition, but their pathways to leadership remain constricted.
Study Details
The researchers examined 9 years of the dataset from NAIS’s Data and Analysis for School Leadership (DASL) database, from the 2014–2015 school year through the 2022–2023 school year. The authors adjusted the data for non-reporting schools and missing data, with the resulting approximately 9,600 observations included in the analysis across the 9 years of data.
The researchers centered the study on these two questions:
- What patterns of headship were evident among minoritized individuals—women, people of color, and women of color—during and after the pandemic?
- To what extent is the headship of a minoritized person in any year related to school-level contextual challenges or crises?
The outcome variable was defined as the gender or race of the head of school in any given year. The researchers assessed that outcome in two ways that were aligned with the research questions. First, they calculated the individual and organizational characteristics associated with a woman or person of color holding a headship in any school in any year. To address the first research question, they used logistic regression. Second, they used an interrupted time-series design to examine the relationship between the overall proportions of minoritized heads of school relative to the onset of the pandemic and the racial reckoning in the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 school years.
Findings
Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches (interviews, regression analyses, and time-series analyses), the researchers found that minoritized leaders often work in less favorable conditions than their white or male counterparts. For example, in comparison to male heads of school, female heads typically serve in smaller elementary or K–8 schools with a higher proportion of students applying for financial aid, lower yield rates, and fewer teachers. Similarly, school heads of color are more likely to work in smaller schools with higher numbers of students receiving financial aid. Also, minoritized leaders in independent schools are more likely to work at schools with higher minority representation on their boards (e.g., higher proportions of women or people of color).
Further, the study suggests that the onset of the pandemic significantly increased the likelihood of minoritized individuals serving as the head of school. Specifically, compared to their nonminoritized peers, female heads were 17% more likely to hold the role of head in the year following the start of the pandemic; heads of color were 20% more likely; and female heads of color were 33% more likely. Even after the initial shock of the pandemic had somewhat subsided, the researchers identified an 11% annual growth in the likelihood of a person of color becoming a head of school in the following year.
Finally, teacher attrition was strongly linked to the increased likelihood of a school having a female head, which suggests that schools facing staffing challenges may be more inclined to appoint a female head in the following year.
Qualitative data collection, led by Sarah Odell, included interviews with female heads of school who had left their positions. Interviewees stated that they benefited from mentors of different genders and specifically from the mentorship of men who offered them career advice. Interviewees also noted that they would have benefited from more training on board management or leadership and that the pandemic sometimes caused rifts when widespread adoption of Zoom had a deleterious effect on the relationship between the head and the board. Finally, interviewees discussed the cultural shifts that took place in schools in response to the 2020 racial reckoning, which happened concurrently with the pandemic and often resulted in very large-scale teacher turnover. Researchers also noted that board representation plays a key role in diversifying leadership, especially in independent schools, where the diversity of the board strongly correlates with leadership diversity.
Recommendations
Diversifying school leadership is essential for improving representation, as gender and racial congruence between leaders and teachers positively impacts both teacher career satisfaction and student outcomes. Despite ongoing efforts to increase diversity in leadership positions, underrepresentation persists due to higher turnover rates and less favorable evaluation results for minoritized leaders. The appointment of leaders during times of crisis, such as the pandemic, makes objective evaluation complicated. These leaders often experience significant stress and pressure and receive limited resources to support their work, and this can greatly hinder their effectiveness.
It is also important to examine how search firms influence leadership diversity. Since search firms play a key role in appointing school leaders, understanding their decision-making processes could provide valuable insights into how diversity goals are prioritized or overlooked during the recruitment process. This area remains underexplored and warrants further study.
Finally, increasing board representation is closely tied to leadership diversity. To ensure more equitable leadership representation, schools should focus on diversifying upper-level bureaucracy. Diversifying decision-makers at the board level can create a more inclusive environment and support long-term changes in leadership diversity.
Notes
- [1] Frank Perrone, “Why a Diverse Leadership Pipeline Matters: The Empirical Evidence,” Leadership and Policy in Schools, February 2023; online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2021.2022707.
- [2] Brendan Bartanen and Jason A. Grissom, “School Principal Race and the Hiring and Retention of Racially Diverse Teachers,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University, EdWorkingPaper No. 19-59, May 2019; online at https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai19-59.pdf. Bartanen and Grissom, “School Principal Race, Teacher Racial Diversity, and Student Achievement,” Journal of Human Resources, March 2023; online at https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.58.4.0218-9328R2. Mehmet Sukru Bellibas and Yan Liu, “Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship Between Principals’ Perceived Practices of Instructional Leadership and Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Perceptions,” Journal of Educational Administration, February 2017; online at https://doi.org/10.1108/Jea-12-2015-0116. Aliza N. Husain, David A. Matsa, and Amalia R. Miller, “Do Male Workers Prefer Male Leaders? An Analysis of Principals’ Effects on Teacher Retention,” Journal of Human Resources, September 2023; online at https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.58.5.1118-9838R2. John D. Marvel, “Gender Congruence and Work Effort in Manager–Employee Relationships,” Public Administration Review, February 2015; online at https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12355.
- [3] Alice H. Eagly, Mona G. Makhijani, and Bruce G. Klonsky, “Gender and the Evaluation of Leaders: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin, January 1992; online at https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.111.1.3.
- [4] Philip Hallinger, Li Dongyu, and Wen-Chung Wang, “Gender Differences in Instructional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Studies Using the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale,” Educational Administration Quarterly, March 2016; online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0013161X16638430. Haim Shaked, Zehavit Gross, and Jeffrey Glanz, “Between Venus and Mars: Sources of Gender Differences in Instructional Leadership,” Educational Management Administration & Leadership, August 2017; online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143217728086. James Sebastian and Jeong-Mi Moon, “Gender Differences in Participatory Leadership: An Examination of Principals’ Time Spent Working With Others,” International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership, 12(8), 2017; online at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1172437.pdf.
- [5] Lihua Xu, Trae Stewart, and Paige Haber-Curran, “Measurement Invariance of the Servant Leadership Questionnaire Across K-12 Principal Gender,” School Leadership & Management, May 2015; online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2015.1010502.
- [6] Edward J. Fuller and Michelle D. Young, “Challenges and Opportunities in Diversifying the Leadership Pipeline: Flow, Leaks and Interventions,” Leadership and Policy in Schools, February 2022; online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2021.2022712. Ellen Goldring, Mollie Rubin, and Mariesa Herrmann, The Role of Assistant Principals: Evidence and Insights for Advancing School Leadership (New York: The Wallace Foundation, 2021). Toni Templeton et al., “A QuantCrit Analysis of the Black Teacher to Principal Pipeline,” University of Houston Education Research Center Working Paper 102-21, June 2021; online at https://www.uh.edu/education/research/institutes-centers/erc/reports-publications/rev_working-paper-102-21-black-teacher-pipeline.pdf. Henry Tran et al., “Systemic Barriers in District Principal Development and Hiring Practices for Women and People of Color in the Principalship,” Journal of Research on Leadership Education, November 23; online at https://doi.org/10.1177/19427751231213096.
- [7] Lauren P. Bailes and Sarah Guthery, “Held Down and Held Back: Systematically Delayed Principal Promotions by Race and Gender,” Aera Open, June 2020; online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2332858420929298.