Chapter 10: One Educator’s Perspective Of The Disconnect Between The Academy And African American School Districts

Although I embraced the two worlds of the academy and public education over the course of my career, I am presently experiencing a disconnect between my past role as educational leader and my current position as assistant professor in an educational leadership program teaching prospective administrators. In this new role I find I am experiencing a crisis of confidence I attribute to the academy’s failure to effectively utilize and honor the wealth of experiential knowledge I bring to educational leadership programs. The sources of my disconnect are functions of a colorblind perspective embedded in leadership research, epistemological constraints of a White middle-class constructed curriculum, including research that does not differentiate leadership roles in Black schools. In addition, the challenge of delivering a social justice oriented curriculum to classes of predominantly White students with negative perceptions of Black schools or little interest in problems of Black schools is a source of disconnect. The relationship between a school administrator’s experience and the agenda of a school leadership program is particularly important because of the expectation that these areas would be complementary. As a former African American male administrator with more than 30 years in an urban predominantly Black district, I am in a unique position to provide a dual critique of urban school leadership and the academy’s educational leadership program with a focus on educational leadership program improvement.