Word puzzles can be fun, but the statistics regarding opportunities for educational leaders or not.
A 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Education confirms that 52% of public and private school principals are female. While this seems appropriate to the number of students that also identify as female, considering that 82% of public school teachers are female, it becomes clear that there is a disparity causing fewer women to attain leadership roles. This becomes more clear when looking at the number of women in Superintendent positions in United States. Tom Glass, reported for The School Superintendent Association that just 13.2% of school superintendents in the United States are female; this number has almost tripled in the past quarter-century, but still does not reflect the teaching workforce.
Since teaching is a prerequisite for principal jobs in most states, the underrepresentation of women is somewhat surprising, but what is not surprising, based on statistics, is that educational leadership is also severely lacking diversity. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 82% of public school teachers and 80% of principals in U.S. public schools are white. While this mirrors what should be expected based on the percentage of non-white teachers (18%), as leaders advance, the numbers become more stark. Based on a 2000 report by The School Superintendents Association, just 5.1% of the nation’s superintendents are non-white.
FLI has been created to uniquely address the questions that minority educators are forced to answer such as, “What barriers to education remain barriers to entry in long-term careers and leadership roles in the education sector?” We believe that in order to ensure that leadership not only considers the impact of diversity and talent that represents the students that we serve, but are also represented at all levels of their school organizations, we must commit to a theory of change that requires each individual to make a difference. School staffs must recognize that the same systems that serve as barriers to learning for our kids also impact candidates from underrepresented backgrounds from becoming visionary pioneers in the educational space; likewise, the same systems that have historically prevented women from attaining the same level of achievement of their male counterparts are present in educational leadership, and must be shifted.