To consistently provide each student access to the learning opportunities they need to excel, schools need strong culturally responsive leaders. We define culturally responsive leadership as being able to recognize how institutionalized racism affects your own life and the lives of the students and families you work with, and embracing your role in mitigating, disrupting and dismantling systemic oppression. Culturally responsive leaders focus on academic success, cultural competence, and developing students’ and educators’ abilities to think critically about the world around them. They create learning experiences intentionally built to meet the needs of every child. Being culturally responsive is the work at the heart of making school systems more equitable. We support school and school system leaders in using an equity lens to implement a vision, build strong school and district culture, set clear and high expectations, and develop and lead principals and teachers who ensure rigorous and culturally responsive instruction and the opportunity for all students to be successful.
We offer research-based hands-on, job-embedded learning experiences and deep group instruction to maximize development, and guide leaders through hard conversations on race and bias, developing their ability to lead their own staff in the work required to disrupt systemic inequities. A strategic approach is essential for making authentic and sustainable growth and change. We help leaders and their teams conduct equity-informed assessments of systems, policies, and practices, and use those findings to prioritize needs and develop and implement longer-term strategies. We provide and can customize professional learning that develops culturally responsive leaders equipped with the knowledge, skills, and resources to advance equity, including reflecting on their personal equity journey, defining and observing culturally responsive instruction, and building school and family coalitions.
"If we want to hold equity officers accountable for their work, we must be clear ...
Thirteen percent of school systems across the country—and up to a quarter of urban districts—welcomed ...
The Leadership Academy is proud to release its Accomplishments Report 2021-22. Read stories of how ...
Education leaders have faced an unprecedented set of challenges over the past two years. In ...
The Leadership Academy is pleased to announce the appointment of two leaders in education and ...
"Educators are facing a revolutionary moment—classrooms have become battlegrounds over what young people should or ...
"Over the last two years, the challenges and traumas of leading through the pandemic and ...
"With the dispositions, we created tangible and observable behaviors to help leaders show up in ...
"In the past two years, school districts across the country have been moved to write ...
What leadership approach is most courageous, sustainable, and strategic for centering students and families in this moment? In the latest ...
Principals play a critical role in making sure children enter schools that are places of ...
In a new blog post featured on the National Policy Board for Educational Administration website, ...
"The work of creating equitable school systems is everyone's responsibility, but when a superintendent and ...
The Leadership Academy is thrilled to announce the appointment of former Governor and Congressman Bob ...
Schools will soon have a new set of research-based tools and resources to help them ...
In an op-ed featured in The74, The Leadership Academy President & CEO Nancy Gutiérrez and ...
We hear it time and again from senior school system leaders: Finding excellent principals is ...
The NYC Leadership Academy’s West Michigan Leadership Academy held its kick-off sessions last week. Twenty-one ...
The Des Moines Public School District has selected the NYC Leadership Academy to build the ...
More and more often, we hear and read about the work of “leading for equity.” ...
In 2015, the American Express Foundation, in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School ...