By East Bay Bureau

Featured in the California Voice, April 9, 2000

Oakland – Can school leaders influence race relations in a positive direction? According to a recently released study called Leading for Diversity, the answer is yes. Principals, teachers, and others who play leadership roles in schools can take a number of actions to address racial/ethnic tensions and develop a school environment where positive interethnic relations can flourish. The study documented the approaches used in 21 schools across the U.S. where the leadership had improved race/ethnic relations in their schools or communities.

Typically, when there is a conflict related to race or ethnicity on a school campus, the leadership mobilizes a reactive response, such as adding security personnel or suspending the offenders. While these responses are often necessary to address safety issues in the moment, the study found that proactive leaders do much more. They not only contain violence but actually prevent it by building a strong foundation for respect and understanding across lines of difference.

The study documented twelve approaches to improving race relations. For example, many schools used a curricular approach in which teachers embed interethnic relations topics in their curriculum. A student who had benefitted from this noted, " People would like to see our race problem disappear. And the way they think it’s going to disappear is by not talking about it. But the real way you make it disappear is by talking about it, learning about it, and understanding it, and then you’ll see a change, not just by ignoring it."

Many schools also employed conflict resolution and other programs that teach social skills and appreciation for differences. Some schools, especially large ones, had restructured to create smaller units such as families or houses, which encouraged a higher degree of personalization. The researchers found that no single approach was adequate; rather, proactive leaders create a "mosaic" of approaches, trying them together through unifying themes such as "community building" or "nonviolence." Furthermore, it wasn’t enough to focus only on students; school leaders had to work at improving relations among adults, including faculty and parents as well.

Societal racism still impinges on these schools, despite their proactive leadership. According to the report, "Schools and districts play a complex and uneasy role in changing race relations, both hindering more positive relations and fostering them as well, often at the same time."

If schools can make a positive difference in race relations, why aren’t all schools doing this? Why are students in many schools suffering from harassment, exclusion, and even violence based on their race, ethnicity, language, or other characteristics? According to the report, many school leaders have not had adequate preparation to deal with racial/ethnic issues, and as a result, they tend to react only when there is a crisis. As a teacher said, "If you have a principal who’s pulling out fires all the time, that’s not going to lead to a vision. You can prevent the fires by having a vision." One of the goals of the project is to use the study findings to develop curriculum for future school leaders, thereby enabling them to learn from the experience of the proactive leaders in the study. In an increasingly diverse and inter-related world, interethnic relations has to become part of the "required curriculum."

The 198-page final report is the result of a three-year study that involved elementary, middle, and high schools and was conducted by Art, Research and Curriculum Associates, a nonprofit organization in Oakland, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE) and Field Initiated Studies Program.

Here are some highlights from the executive summary:

The Leading for Diversity Research Project grew out of a Principals’ Forum developed by ARC Associates in 1995. Participating principals expressed a need for strategies focused on dispelling racial tensions, class conflict and violence (particularly violence related to race or ethnicity); creating a vision that proactively includes all students; and working with staff members to increase understanding of cultural differences.

Two key research questions guided the study: