Chapter 5: Practitioner-Scholars As Social Justice Advocates For Discipline Reform

Social justice-oriented educators face the daunting challenge of advocating for the welfare of their students of color within institutions that are designed to ensure the failure of those same students (Rector-Aranda, 2016). The purpose of this chapter, using Khalifa et al. (2016) culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) framework and critical race theory (CRT; Bell, 1995; Crenshaw, 1988; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), addresses the challenges practitioner-scholars face when advocating for social justice, specifically mitigating the school-to-prison pipeline for students of historically marginalized populations, in the public school system and provides strategies to counter an inherently oppressive institution’s reflexive obstruction to change (Kohli et al., 2017; Theoharis, 2007). Education’s role as a tool for maintaining White supremacy is evident when considering historically marginalized populations have been relegated to centuries of disparate outcomes, including mass incarceration, generational poverty, and even lower life expectancies (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2016; Mordechay et al., 2019; Orfield, 2014; Williams et al., 2010).