The East Carolina University International EdD supports school leaders in the United States and across the globe to address local educational equity challenges. To achieve this, we prepare and support school and district leaders to use evidence as practitioner-researchers together with members of their educational community. As a result, the reimagined EdD harnesses the power and utility of participatory action and activist research to address a contextualized, equity-focused dissertation in practice. We explore how two doctoral students have transformed their practices during and after their EdD experience.

The work of changing schools means acknowledging that we are, in fact, changing systems. Often, these are long-established systems enacted by multiple stakeholders invested in their preservation. Many efforts to promote educational equity attempt to tackle a single problematic aspect of the school in the hope that addressing an identified need in one area will improve the system as a whole. Some schools adopt a new math curriculum, hoping it will yield higher 4-year graduation rates. Other schools introduce computer-based learning, believing it will improve the ability of teachers to differentiate content. Still others practice mindfulness with students to reduce suspension rates. Efforts such as these are praiseworthy, but the piecemeal approach often fails to translate into meaningful change. At the other extreme, many schools choose to implement various reform efforts simultaneously—a new math curriculum, for instance, supplemented by computer-based learning and followed by a schoolwide mindfulness exercise. The result, generally, is mile-wide and inch-deep efforts that leave already overtaxed schools and principals with the challenge of running multiple initiatives at once, very likely without the resources to implement any one of them successfully (Cuban, 1990). Piecemeal or duplicative approaches to school transformation are particularly troubling as they rarely produce the systemic transformation required to reduce broadscale inequities within the system. When problems are identified in isolation, solutions tend to address symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the most acute or prevalent manifestations. More often than not, addressing the root cause requires some level of attention to the system itself. When these systems-level changes are ignored, similar problems are likely to occur again in the future. Nowhere is this more true than in the systems designed to address learning and mental health challenges in schools. Special education services rely largely on pull-out approaches to service delivery only after students have shown substantial deficits in their learning. The words mental health are often synonymous with clinicians providing closed-door therapy to specific students or supporting young people with disabilities who have been placed in specialized, segregated settings.

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Changing the economic and structural systems of schooling, as explored in the previous chapter, is essential. But systems change, in and of itself, is insufficient for true transformation (Elmore, 2007). Our schools are more than structural systems. They are communities—networks of human relationships that inform the trajectory of students’ future lives while defining their current experiences. As discussed in Chapter 2, under-resourced, siloed systems create a fractured framework troubled with economic inefficiencies. These same conditions simultaneously promote a splintered relational network. In other words, schools with the greatest opportunity gaps face multiple layers of resource-related stressors that shape not only their physical and systematic design but also the psyches of entire school communities. Parents come to expect that schools lack either the willingness or the ability to help their children and engage with schools in a manner consistent with this underlying belief. Students make sense of the system by figuring out what others expect from “students like them” and acting out their assigned role accordingly. Staff squabble over the few resources that do exist and blame each other for the gaps in support and services available. To mitigate the effects of resource-related stressors we must cultivate school communities of safety, acceptance, and belonging. In this chapter, we ask: How can specific intentional approaches to relationship remediate past experiences of exclusion? Childhood poverty is widespread in the United States and income inequality has become increasingly pronounced in recent years. According to a report published by the National Center for Children in Poverty, nearly half of our nation’s children (30.6 million) live in families classified as “low income,” many without consistent means to meet their most basic needs (Jiang, Ekono, & Skinner, 2016). Nowhere is America’s class divide more evident than in our nation’s schools. Low socioeconomic status has time and again been linked to reduced educational outcomes. Ultimately, students from low-income families nationwide are less likely to graduate on time than their peers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015).

Researchers within the field of organizational development have made a concerted effort to distinguish between two types of change organizations experience: first-order change, in which individual parameters shift but the system itself stays firmly in its place, and second-order change, in which the system itself undergoes meaningful transformation (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974). The unconditional education (UE) approach shares the four common features of complex, or second-order, change: …change that involves multiple processes and tools being introduced to multifaceted human service systems, thereby requiring a certain level of trial and error to determine how the intervention best “fits” within each adoptive organization; change that involves a shift in stakeholders’ work roles and responsibilities, including how individuals coordinate and communicate; change that introduces new skills and knowledge; and change that requires a fundamental paradigm shift that may conflict with prevailing values and norms, including shifts in how participants are supposed understand and think about their work (Bryk, 2016; Waters & Grubb, 2004). … Acknowledging the complexity that exists in change initiatives is often the first step in understanding how to promote their successful implementation (Bryk, 2016; Waters & Grubb, 2004). Chapters 5, 6, and 7 have introduced the framework behind the UE model and its core principles of practice. This chapter will explore some of the essential strategies that promote successful implementation within a wide range of school and district settings, including (1) the role of leadership in initiating complex change, (2) the common developmental stages that begin UE transformation, and (3) the financial drivers capable of sustaining change over time. Initiating a complex change process requires an intentional approach. Successful implementation of UE hinges on the ability of leaders to inspire a unified vision across all stakeholders while simultaneously connecting this vision to concrete actions that create a clear path forward. Rather than assuming an overwhelmingly positive response, successful UE leaders anticipate skepticism and resistance. They celebrate early adopters, but also make plans to ensure the voices of dissenters are included in decision-making.