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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1521049
This article is part of the Research Topic Succession Planning in Educational Leadership: Advancing Diversity in the Principalship and Equity-Oriented Leadership Practices View all articles
Stepping Forward on Shaky Ground: Developing Equity-Centered Principals in Politically
Provisionally accepted- University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, United States
Large urban districts across the country have tried to establish programs or partnerships that would ensure a pipeline of high-quality equity-centered school leaders. However, dubious, and sometimes hostile political contexts have often made these endeavors uncertain. In this critical discourse analysis, we examine the contexts that frame the role of leadership pipelines in North Carolina, a state where the legislature has introduced several measures to diminish educational equity efforts along the K-16 spectrum. We find that the unsettled nature of a legal case, Leandro v. North Carolina State Board of Education, has helped to create an atmosphere of low certainty and that competing definitions of equity frame the role and necessity of leadership pipelines.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), educational equity, school leadership and school reform, politics of education, Educational polices
Received: 01 Nov 2024; Accepted: 18 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lewis-Durham, Bradford, Hernandez and Clarida. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Tiffanie Lewis-Durham, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, United States
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