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Critical Race Theory In Public Schools

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Current career paths to executive ranks within American public schools reveal that all roads can lead to the superintendency. The myriad of pathways has attracted a diverse candidate pool for many of our nation’s public schools. The most recent decennial study of the superintendency by American Association of School Administrators (Kowalski et al., 2010) report that superintendent career paths remain similar over the past three decades and identify three primary career paths to the office. Forty-nine percent of superintendents matriculated from being a classroom teacher to assistant principal or principal and then to a central office administrative position before becoming a Superintendent. The second pathway indicated that 31 percent of …show more content…

A theory subscribed to by ―a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism and power” (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001, p. 2). Critical Race Theory confronts the experience of whites as the normative standard and grounds its conceptual framework in the distinctive experiences of people of ethnic minorities (Taylor, 1998, p. 122).
Gatekeepers. This term can be the school boards or other entities hired by school boards to search and recruit candidates for the superintendency (Chase & Bell, 1990)
Glass ceiling. The term "glass ceiling" is generally used to refer to instances where women and minorities have progressed within an organization, but despite their ambitions and qualifications, find it difficult to make the movement into key higher level management positions, or management positions at all. The social disadvantage these glass ceilings is the inability of the most qualified employees to move into the most important positions due to irrelevant criteria such as race or gender (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2006).
Mentoring. A process whereby knowledgeable individuals counsel, guide, and assist individuals of lessor experience and or proficiency (Dunbar & Kinnersley, …show more content…

Community building includes working closely with teachers and administrators, the school board, and the various citizen groups that comprise the larger community. This work requires both the political acumen implied in the role of superintendent as democratic leader and the academic skills of the applied social scientist. An important responsibility of democratic leadership is to garner the resources to support district initiatives (Grogan & Brunner, 2005b). Scholars in public education (e.g., Hanson, 2003; Wirt & Kirst, 2001) recognize that even the best education policies usually prove to be ineffective when they are unacceptable to the public. Kowalski (2005a) argue that policy and politics are inextricably joined in a democracy; a reality that promotes democratic administration. Keedy and Bjork (2002) point out that perhaps more so now than in the past, ideological and moral differences among community factions require facilitation and conflict management. Modern superintendent must be aware of and willing to participate in the democratic / geo-political process in order to evidence

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