This document summarizes preliminary findings from a study examining how emancipatory leaders respond to competitive pressures within educational market contexts. Interview findings suggest that leaders who strongly value equity did not implement inequitable practices like selecting students to improve scores. Instead, they invested resources to support low-SES students and provide specialized programs with equal access. Rather than promotional tactics, leaders focused on building authentic community relationships. The purpose of the research is to understand how leaders can respond to market pressures in just ways and if their experiences provide insights into neoliberal policies that assume some students will lose. The implications are that leaders can implement emancipatory practices to improve their school's position within market hierarchies, but market policies remain inherently inequitable.

1. Presentation
Title Goes Here
Subtitle of
Presentation
Emancipatory Leadership in
Educational Market Contexts

2. Background

3. Educational Markets
• School districts are increasingly utilizing educational market
systems (aka school choice) in which schools compete for
students
• Markets are meant to improve educational offerings and
opportunities within a district through competition
• Similar to the commercial free market
• These systems may be oppositional to equity and social justice
in schools and communities
• Segregation, winners and losers, etc.

4. Emancipatory Leadership Practice

5. Emancipatory Leadership Practice
within Markets
• School leaders face immense pressure to promote student
enrollment
• Leader responses may include substantive change, mimicking
competitors, filling a niche, advertising, selecting students, and more
• Some of these responses are inequitable, such as selecting students
• Other practices may not be inequitable but do not benefit students and may
divert school resources, such as advertising
• However, no research specifically examines emancipatory
leadership practice within markets

6. Purpose and Design

7. Purpose
• Like it or not, markets seem to be here to stay…
• How can we prepare leaders to work equitably within markets?
• How can school leaders respond to competitive pressure in ways that
honor all students and their communities?
• Do emancipatory leaders’ experiences within markets yield any
insights into actually-existing neoliberalism?

8. Research Question
• How do emancipatory leaders respond to competitive
pressures?
• (This presentation focuses on this question.)

9. Methods
• Seven school districts across the U.S. using various market
designs
• Sequential exploratory design
• Interviews followed by a survey
• Survey sought to determine whether interview findings occur more
broadly
• Dissertation research—still ongoing

10. Preliminary Interview Findings

11. Leaders’ Responses to Pressure
• For school leaders who strongly value justice, competitive
pressures did not incentivize inequitable practices
• Leaders saw equity work as driving academic and non-
academic changes that would attract students
• Rather than selecting high-achieving students to improve test
scores, leaders invested significant resources in providing
services to get students ready to learn
• Rather than relying on advertisements, leaders sought to create
a positive reputation by forming authentic relationships with
parents and the community

12. Responses to Competition
Competitive Response Typology Emancipatory Leader’s Practice
Substantive change—change
instruction, operations, organization,
allocation of resources
Investing in additional resources to benefit low-SES
students, train teachers related to social justice and
CRSL
Environmental scanning—mimic
competitors
Provide specialized programs but ensure all students
have access to those programs
Fill a niche Provide specialized programs but ensure all students
have access to those programs, provide a home for
students with inclusive clubs
Promotional—anything to promote
school’s image
Beautifying the community, investing in community
resources, working authentically with families to promote
positive word of mouth
Structural—changes to governance,
funding, ownership
Was not reported
Screening and selecting Was not reported
Systemic—attempting to modify system
that oversees the market
Engage in activism on leaders’ own time

13. Participants’ Theory of Action
Engage in
emancipatory
practice
Improve academic
and accountability
scores
Improve reputation of
school and
community
Increase enrollment
Increase status

14. Conclusion

15. Implications
• Market policies create immense pressure for school leaders
• School leaders can use justice-oriented practices to increase
their school’s position within market hierarchies
• Preparation
• Practice
• While leaders can respond to these pressures in just ways,
market policies remain a system built with an underlying
assumption that some students will be winners and some losers

16. Thank You
Meagan Richard, mricha44@uic.edu
College of Education | Policy Studies in Urban Education